Fifteen cents on the dollar is the one statistic about America’s racial wealth gap that says it all

Wealth is what you own minus what you owe. Because people don’t understand wealth very well, they don’t understand wealth gaps.

Ebony Reed is a community news journalist. She began her career as a reporter at Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer, and then covered the 2008 economic crisis for the Detroit News. She has held senior roles at the Associated Press, Boston Business Journal, and the Wall Street Journal and taught at more than half a dozen institutions, including The Yale School of Management. Now, she is the chief strategy officer at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.