Overall, it paints a rather gloomy picture for Americans with lower incomes, especially if those Americans also happen to be African-American. As I noted last week, the 1963 March on Washington left many unfulfilled hopes, and the worrying fact that middle class salaries have fallen over the past 14 years only makes the situation worse.

America is more of a continent of insurmountable plateaus than it is a land of opportunity. Rarely do people who start out on one side of the mountain make it to the other. Surely someone who stated, «It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,» didn’t grow up in poverty.

Even poverty isn’t distributed fairly, though. In a few decades, two centuries of racial oppression do not end. Race is still a factor in demographics because black and white people make up the majority of the population.

In 2010, 70 of the top 100 U.S. metropolitan regions, which are home to more than half of the country’s population, were so segregated that black residents would have to move to new neighborhoods in order for white residents and black residents to coexist equally. The typical black community is twice as poor as the typical white community.

The majority of black kids in segregated public schools are from low-income families. Additionally, blacks were 60% more likely than other ethnic groups between 2008 and 2010 to reside in regions with double-digit unemployment rates.

Even when income is taken into account, whites are still two to three times more likely than blacks to enroll in highly selective colleges, and racial differences have grown over the past 30 years. However, access is far from the only issue.

Only two out of every five black students graduate from college within six years, compared to three out of five white students. During this process, blacks accrue noticeably more loan debt and are more likely to default, and particularly to default without a degree. Only 18% of Black people and 30% of White people have college degrees.

Once in the workforce, circumstances hardly change. Even after controlling for education, seven out of eight occupations in America are racially divided, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Compared to occupations where white males are overrepresented, occupations with a high proportion of black men earn only 73 cents on the dollar.

The average black home only makes 58 percent of what the average white household does. Black households in the bottom quintile earn 53 times as much as white households in the top 5%. Blacks have earnings that are less than half those of whites, even in low-income homes.

Relegating minorities to excruciatingly impoverished areas doesn’t do anything to improve their chances of success in life. There are few policies that are more effective at promoting inequality.

There are several of these invisible restraints. Another illustration might be how people locate employment. Most likely, if you’ve ever gotten a job through a friend or parent, you’re white. In fact, as Nancy DiTomaso has documented, informal networks are among whites’ largest labor market advantages. Seven in ten white job seekers obtain jobs through friends or insiders, a route that is frequently inaccessible in underprivileged neighborhoods.

Of course, genuine shackles will work just as well as invisible ones. Perhaps only incarceration is distributed more unequally across America than income. More than six times as many black men are behind bars as white males. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one in three black men will serve time in jail over the course of their lifetimes if current policing techniques are maintained. Black people are also more prone to become victims of crime.

The latest financial crisis was no exception to the rule that times of crisis reveal society’s flaws. The Great Recession was characterized by glaring racial inequity.

Blacks felt the effects of the housing market collapse. Close to twice as many black homeowners had their homes foreclosed upon as white homeowners.

Blacks were in the forefront as the public sector shrank. Only 14% of white people work for the government, compared to one in five black people.

Blacks were the first to lose work when unemployment increased. Black unemployment during the recession was twice as high as white unemployment, and their average unemployment duration was longer by a third.

On the other hand, being black in America means regularly accepting recession. According to EPI, the average black unemployment rate over the past 50 years has been 11.6 percent, which is significantly higher than the overall Great Recession average of 6.7 percent. The black unemployment rate only fell below recessionary levels once in the previous 50 years (1969).

Such is the current level of racism in the US. Implicit, societal, and offensive. Its socioeconomic component increases its hazard, and its self-replicating cycles increase its permanence.