Dr. Michael Casson, dean of the College of Business at Delaware State University and a panelist at the National Urban League's 2021 conference
in a Wednesday virtual session, titled, “The 21st Century Blueprint for Building Black Wealth,” panelists focused on career growth and networking.
“When we think about our current community, we see that Black wealth disparities still persist,” said Dr. Michael H. Casson, dean of the College of Business at Delaware State University (DSU), one of the country’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Before the pandemic, studies showed that almost 30% of Black college-educated households would not have been able to pay their bills after a $400 emergency expense. Casson and fellow panelists pointed out that COVID-19 only worsened this financial precarity.
“One of the key indicators of that gap is home ownership,” he said. “Black and brown home ownership rates remain far lower than white ownership. But these disparities don’t happen in a vacuum. We should think about how we are investing in our own communities.”
Even though more Black people in the U.S. are getting college degrees, he added, the majority of wealth continues to lie in the hands of white communities. Yet Casson said HBCUs still play a key role as engines of Black socioeconomic mobility.
“At DSU, we’re primarily teaching first-generation students,” he said. “So, for institutions like us, that racial wealth gap is bridged a lot of the time right at HBCUs because of the communities we serve.”
