NEW JERSEY — When Martin Luther King Jr. gave his now-famous “The Other America” speech in the 1960s, he spoke about the “Two Americas” that were dividing the nation by race: one rich and the other poor.

And in New Jersey, it’s a situation that sadly still exists today, statistics show.

As Black History Month nears its end, social justice advocates continue to spotlight severe racial wealth gaps throughout the Garden State, which are also impacting Latino and Latina families. They include the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ), which released a new report on the problem this week.

“We’ve known for a while that New Jersey – while one of the most prosperous and diverse states in the country – has some of the largest economic racial disparities,” said Harbani Ahuja of the NJISJ.

According to the Newark-based nonprofit, here are some of the uglier statistics that illustrate the state’s massive wealth gap:

• INCOME – In New Jersey overall, the median income for white households is $109,100 – compared to just $65,400 and $70,200 for Black and Latina/o households, respectively.
• HOMEOWNERSHIP – White homeownership in 19 of New Jersey’s 21 counties exceeds 70%. By stark contrast, Black and Latina/o homeownership rates in about two-thirds of counties are under 50%.
• HEALTH INSURANCE – In New Jersey, 3.5% of white residents are uninsured, compared to 8.3% of Black and 17.9% of Latina/o residents.

“New Jersey’s racial inequality can be directly tied back to our often-overlooked history of slavery and the generations of structural racism that have followed,” said Laura Sullivan, a researcher with the NJISJ.

In 2022, Sullivan helped to spearhead a report on the state’s wealth gap – “Making the Two New Jersey’s One” – which found that the median “household wealth” of white families in New Jersey is $322,500, compared to just $17,700 for Black families and $26,100 for Latina/o families.

The gap is just as bad for single people, researchers said. The median net worth of white New Jersey residents, was $103,500, compared with just $4,900 for Black individuals and $2,300 for Latina/o individuals.

“The U.S. has a major racial wealth gap problem,” Sullivan said at the time. “New Jersey has a racial wealth gap disaster.”

Other reports have cited a lingering wealth gap in New Jersey, as well.

Financial information website WalletHub has been publishing an annual list of “States with the Biggest and Smallest Wealth Gaps by Race/Ethnicity.” For 2024, New Jersey ranked as the 12th highest state on the list – the same spot it has occupied for the past two years.

OWNING A HOME: A LINGERING GAP IN NEW JERSEY

According to the NJISJ, the primary driver of New Jersey’s racial wealth gap is homeownership.

It’s systemic racism that has been around for ages, the nonprofit said.

“During slavery, New Jersey designed a racially discriminatory system for landownership – a system that continues to shape the modern day through generations of housing policies such as restrictive covenants, discriminatory access to the GI Bill following World War II, racial segregation, racially discriminatory lending practices and modern-day redlining,” the group wrote.

These policies – created with a guided hand – have left a legacy of housing inequity in the Garden State, advocates say.

The statewide homeownership rate for white New Jersey households is 76.4 percent: nearly double the homeownership rates for Black and Latina/o New Jersey households, who have homeownership rates of 39.7 and 39.6 percent, the NJISJ noted.

The NJISJ isn’t the only organization that has taken note of a lingering homeownership gap in New Jersey – and America as a whole.

Last week, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) announced that homeownership rates for racial minorities in the United States increased in 2022, with Asian and Hispanic Americans achieving “historic peaks” on the national level.

Despite these advancements, disparities persist among racial and ethnic groups, with Black homeownership lagging behind, the NAR reported:

“The Hispanic American homeownership rate rose to a record high of 51.1% in 2022. In the past decade, Asian Americans experienced the sharpest increase in homeownership rate, reaching 63.3% – a gain of 6.1 percentage points, or an addition of 1.5 million homeowners since 2012 – also a record high. While homeownership rates improved across all racial and ethnic groups over the past decade, the homeownership rate among Black individuals continues to trail at 44.1%.”

Here are the latest homeownership rates by race in New Jersey, according to the NAR:

• White – 76%
• Black – 40%
• Asian – 66%
• Hispanic – 42%

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