As a current $124 trillion Great Wealth Transfer redefines American power, a critical question looms: Where does it leave Black America? While white women are set to inherit a historic windfall over the next two decades, Black communities face a radically different reality in a nation built on racial economic disparities and a huge wealth gap.
Described as the largest intergenerational handoff in modern history by financial research firm Cerulli Associates, the Great Wealth Transfer is projected to move a staggering $124 trillion in assets from older generations to their wives and their female heirs now through 2048. As women outlive their baby boomer husbands, their fortunes are being handed over after decades of real estate appreciation, stock market growth, and compounding privilege, this monumental windfall is happening simply because an aging demographic must pass the torch.
“In order for there to be a wealth transfer, you got to have wealth to transfer,” Loren Douglass, a seasoned board advisor and global business executive, told The Root in an exclusive interview. “Is there going to be some wealth transfer in the Black community? Absolutely. But it’s going to be a pittance compared to the wealth transfer in the majority community because government policy and history made sure that we were locked out of any wealth building opportunities.”
Those wealth building opportunities systematically offered to white men has led to $54 trillion of the $124 trillion fortune to be passed over to white widows and their female heirs, leading to an unprecedented opportunity to control money, according to USA Today.
These staggering numbers paint a picture of modern financial evolution, but they also force a painful reckoning with America’s origin story.
“If you go back into history, the way society was organized we were left out of those productive pursuits that built wealth. […] If you go back and look at the early balance sheet of America, the slaves were used as collateral,” Douglass continued. “We, our people, were considered collateral. They could borrow on us. They could trade us. So when you talk about wealth transfer—we were the wealth!”
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The era of slavery might feel like ancient history, but when it comes to the current nature of the wealth transfer, “it really doesn’t apply to us so much” because “we were the components of that wealth before they got it. So the irony of thinking about the wealth transfer, you can see the bitter irony.”
According to Douglass, that transfer—that is currently underway—will “absolutely not” help bridge the racial wealth gap.
“In fact, our wealth is trending towards zero median wealth by the end of 2050 in the Black community. And it’s getting worse,” Douglass said, citing the Institute for Policy Studies.
But there’s hope. Although that racial wealth gap may not close completely, there may be another way into financial stability: ownership. “This is an opportunity for communities to ask the development community, ‘You want to build a data center? Ok. Cut me in on it.’ Give the community a part of the cut; one percent of what you make from the technology company that’s leasing the building from you.”
Because intelligence can be purchased for $20 a month with an AI subscription, “ownership is still what gets passed down, and the job for our community is to convert the first into the second as great fortunes are about to be made.”
That fortune can come in the form of AI data centers that are erecting at a rapid pace across the nation. Data centers “involve land use policy, tax policy, it involves a building that is a manifestation of people who loses their job, who doesn’t. […] Electricity rates, the environment, all of that stuff are manifestations of the class struggle that’s happening at the door of the data center.”
As technology advances, the way Americans build wealth has also shifted.
“It was land, labor, and capital before—they teach you in economics—and then it was information when the Internet came out,” Douglass told The Root. “But now, you can walk around with a huge, huge computer and brain in your pocket because you can get ChatGPT and Claude to tell you everything you need to know.”
And to truly understand how the wealth shift affect communities of color in the future economy, the starting point is the aging of the baby boomer generation.
Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964 and are currently between 61 and 80 years old, were not heavily involved in their household finances. For this great wealth transfer, baby boomer women alone are projected to assume control of $40 trillion and expected to control almost 40% of US wealth by 2030 as many outlive their husbands, according to Forbes.
Half of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S. are expected to receive $500,000 or more, according to a Citizens’ bank survey.
“When you talk about wealth transfer, now we’re in a situation where having large amounts of land, having lots of property, and equipment and all of that stuff, we’ve never had that stuff,” Douglass said. “So we couldn’t build any wealth to transfer. But now, you give some of this stuff to some of these young, creative, resourceful young brothers and sisters—and we’ve always been that—imagine what we can do with this stuff.”
