The Black Wealth Curve: The Math, the Memory, and the Misunderstanding

Why do so many Black families feel behind, even when they are working harder, carrying more responsibility, and making progress the generations before them never could?

The Black Wealth Curve explains why the answer is not found in income, motivation, or personal behavior, but in history, policy, and time.

This book introduces a framework that reveals how unequal starting lines were created long before modern financial decisions ever entered the picture. Through clear narrative and generational analysis, it shows how wealth compounds for some families while progress resets for others. Not because of discipline or intelligence, but because of access, interruption, and inherited timelines.

From redlining and the GI Bill to housing policy, credit systems, and generational pressure, The Black Wealth Curve traces how opportunity was distributed unevenly and how those decisions continue to shape outcomes today. It explains why first-generation success often feels heavy, why stability can feel fragile, and why progress can feel slow even when it is real.

This is not a book about blame. It is a book about clarity.

It also highlights the invisible forms of wealth Black families built to survive when economic systems were not designed to support them. Resilience, support networks, adaptability, and identity carried families forward when financial compounding was denied.

The Black Wealth Curve is the first volume in The Black Wealth Papers, a series designed to give language to realities that were lived but rarely explained. It helps readers understand their pace, release misplaced shame, and recognize that progress must be measured against the timeline that shaped it.

Understanding the curve is the first step toward bending it.