Ted Barlow is appalled by the gap in median net worth between whites ($120,900) and blacks ($17,000), and asks “Can that be right?”

Yes it can. Ted’s discovered the difference between income-based and wealth-based measures of inequality. A good place to get oriented on the black-white wealth gap is Dalton Conley’s book, Being Black, Living in the Red. Scroll down this page on Dalton’s website for reviews of the book. Two other good overviews of wealth inequalities in the U.S. are Lisa Keister’s Wealth in America and Wolff and Leone’s Top Heavy (2nd ed.).