The answer to the title question is certainly "Yes," but not always where some people think. There's certainly racial inequality in the NBA, NFL, MLB and major college sports, but that racial inequality doesn't seem to concern anyone.
Where else in our culture is there inequality? Is there racial inequality in the entertainment world? In movies, television shows and commercials? Among pop music stars and dancers? In the student bodies on major college campuses?
Is blackness somehow de-emphasized in our culture? What other race has an entire month devoted to recognizing them? If a person has one black parent or one black grandparent, that person is most likely to identify as which, white or black? Do we spend less money per pupil on predominately black schools? The answer to each of these questions is "No" so where is the inequality?
There is indeed an inequality between whites and blacks in average household income, which it would be nice to be able to do something about, but much (though not all) of the reason for that is that black households are often headed by a single mother.
Over the course of several generations, single motherhood hinders a child's ability to accumulate wealth, often by limiting the economic help available from grandparents. A child who has four grandparents is in a much better position to build wealth, is more likely to afford college and a home, less likely to wind up addicted to drugs or alcohol, and less likely to be imprisoned, than a child who has only one grandparent who is often herself a single mother.
Broken down by race, Asians had the highest percentage of children living with their married birth parents (81%) in 2022, followed by whites (70%), Hispanics (55%), multiracial children (51%) and blacks (33%). Of children living apart from their biological father 57.6% are black, 31.2% are Hispanic, and 20.7% are white.
Moreover, the figures in that last sentence don't reflect the fact that though children might be living in the household with their biological father, he may not be married to their mother. Almost 70% of black children are born to unmarried mothers.
Not coincidentally, Asian households, who have the highest percentage of intact families, also have the highest median household income, while black households, which have the lowest percentage of intact families, have the lowest median household income.
In 2023, the median household income for Asian households was $112,800. The median household income for white households was $89,050, for Hispanic households it was $65,540, and for black households it was $56,490.
These figures track the statistics for households with both biological parents.
So what can be done to reduce the economic inequality between blacks and everyone else? Maybe the best place to start is to recognize that only blacks can solve this problem, no one can solve it for them. The second thing that should be acknowledged is that if blacks are going to narrow the income gap they're going to have to narrow the marriage gap.
There won't be much economic progress until they do, and that's true of households of all races headed by single mothers.
