The bottom 50% of American households own 1% of total household wealth.
“90% of Black America is in the bottom half of America. That half owns 1% of the wealth.”
Read that again. Slowly.
Nine out of ten Black American households are sitting in the half of this country that controls one penny of every dollar of national wealth. And Moore isn’t done:
“The bottom half of Black America has negative net worth if you add it up. Nothing. The average is nothing on top of nothing.”
Here’s what the full picture looks like:
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White America’s total wealth: $160 trillion. Black America’s total wealth: $7 trillion, and nearly half of that is tied up in Black Boomer homes and pensions.
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From 2018 to 2025, white wealth jumped from $93 trillion to $147 trillion, a $50 trillion increase in 7 years. Black wealth jumped $1 trillion in the same period.
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In 2025 alone, white America added $9.46 trillion just in stocks and mutual funds. That single year’s stock gain is larger than all of Black America’s wealth combined.
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White America has $26 trillion in cash and bank accounts. Black America has $800 billion.
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There are 83 million white households and 20 million Black households, a 1-to-4 ratio. The wealth ratio is 1-to-23.
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Only 5% of Black American families have a net worth above $350,000, including their home. To crack the top 10% of Black wealth, you need roughly $150,000 to $200,000 in net worth.
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The median Black family’s net worth is approximately $17,000. Remove the family car, and it drops to nearly nothing.
“Don’t let nobody tell you that owning your car ain’t a big accomplishment. 90% of Black America is in the bottom half of America that owns 1% of the wealth and we out here talking about we going to have it all.”
5 Key Takeaways
1. 90% of Black America is in the bottom half of American wealth, the half that owns only 1% of everything.
This is not an estimate or a talking point. It comes directly from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. Moore has been citing this data for over a decade. The bottom half of Black America has negative net worth. The average is nothing on top of nothing.
2. White wealth jumped $50 trillion in 7 years. Black wealth jumped $1 trillion.
From 2018 to 2025, white America’s total wealth grew from $93 trillion to $147 trillion, driven almost entirely by stock market gains and corporate equity. In the same period, Black America’s wealth grew by $1 trillion. In one year alone, white America added $9.46 trillion in stocks. Black America’s total wealth is $7 trillion.
3. Black celebrity was engineered to mask Black poverty and it has worked.
From the Cosby Show to LeBron James, the projection of Black wealth through a handful of celebrities has given America, including Black America, a distorted sense of where Black people actually stand economically. Moore co-authored a Fortune magazine study with leading economists identifying this as the number one myth about closing the racial wealth gap.
4. Nearly all Black wealth is concentrated in Black Boomers and the $124 trillion generational transfer will largely bypass Black families.
About 75% of Black wealth sits in the top 10% of Black families, almost entirely Boomers with homes and pensions. The massive intergenerational wealth transfer underway by 2048 will flow overwhelmingly through white Boomer hands. If you don’t have a connected Black Boomer in your family, you are structurally locked out of that transfer.
5. Reparations must be precise and grounded in data to mean anything.
Moore helped lay the groundwork for California’s reparations bill and is clear: reparations apply to American Descendants of Slavery specifically. But more fundamentally, no reparations framework means anything without understanding the actual depth of the wealth gap. The Federal Reserve data is the argument. Everything else is noise.
“90% of Black America is in the bottom half of America. That half owns 1% of the wealth. And we out here talking about we going to have it all.”
— Attorney Antonio Moore, Tone Talks