Africans were commodities during chattel capitalism, producing that was appropriated by Whites. This was instrumental discrimination: racially differential treatment because it was profitable. Chattel capitalism was ended by government policy, during the US civil war. White control of Black citizenship was the core element of structural racism during servitude capitalism. Instrumental discrimination included convict leasing, debt peonage, sharecropping, and the chain gang: policies that held down black wages and wealth accumulation, reduced public expenditure on services to the African American community, and public infrastructure that transferred wealth from Blacks to Whites. Lynching was used to enforce racial identity norms. Labor market discrimination increased during the Nadir, even as Blacks closed the skills gap with Whites. Black self-help was also expressed in The Great Migration and Urbanization (1914–1965). African American self-help, President Roosevelt’s New Deal, World War II era changes in federal hiring and the utilization of Black troops, and President Johnson’s Great Society gave rise to racialized managerial capitalism. Thereafter, exclusion is expressed as differential socioeconomic opportunities due to racial wealth disparity and identity norms governing access to resources, especially managerial power, along with relatively greater injustice in the criminal legal system and greater exposure to hate crimes.

African American family income is 63 percent of White family income. African American family wealth is 4–14 percent of White family wealth. African American women and men earn 84 percent and 68 percent, respectively, of the weekly wages earned by White women and men; both ratios are lower than during the mid-1970s. It is a multi-decade truism that the African American unemployment rate is twice the White unemployment rate.