We talk about Black poverty, Black unemployment, Black crime, and public policies for Blacks. We rarely, however, talk about the gains whites receive from the troubles experienced by Blacks. Only when the diverging fates of Black and white Americans are considered together-within the same analytic framework-will it be possible to move beyond the current stale debate over how to transform the American color line.

In our view, the persistence of racial inequality stems from the long-term effects of labor market discrimination and institutional practices that have created cumulative inequalities by race. The result is a durable pattern of racial stratification. Whites have gained or accumulated opportunities, while African Americans and other racial groups have lost opportunities-they suffer from disaccumulation of the accoutrements of economic opportunity. Rather than investigating racial inequality by focusing on individual intentions and choices, we concentrate on the relationship between white accumulation and black and Latino disaccumulation.