If we are committed to tackling racial wealth inequities, we must focus squarely and unapologetically on their root causes. Whether you call it the racial wealth gap or the racial wealth divide, it’s time to go beyond the supreme goal of closing it altogether if we want to actually start making progress toward a more economically equitable society. It may seem counterintuitive, but we can’t tackle racial wealth inequality by predominantly focusing on closing the gap.

There are several key reasons this framework is not useful today.

First, describing the problem as a racial wealth gap doesn’t help us clearly articulate a vision that is based on the values we hold most dear. We could simply narrow the Black-white racial wealth gap if white families lost their wealth and became poorer without providing any gains to Black families. This is not what we want for either community or our society more broadly. What we really want is liberation and dignity for all people; however, fixating on closing racial wealth gaps does not guarantee that we can deliver that.

Second, focusing on closing the racial wealth gap keeps us locked into the status quo—and often reflects a neoliberal discourse—by upholding personal responsibility narratives and strategies of entrepreneurial liberation and other fallacies. Solutions born from the racial wealth gap framework have traditionally included individual-based approaches.