Six figures used to sound like arrival. For a lot of us, it is. We earned it, usually with twice the preparation and half the margin for error.
So let’s ask the hard question out loud. Once you get there, what do you owe the people still climbing?
Start with the numbers, because they set the stakes. In 2024, median household income was $56,020 for Black households and $92,530 for white, non-Hispanic households. That’s the Census Bureau figure, reported by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Income is the easier gap. Wealth is the one that stays. The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances put median net worth at $45,000 for Black households and $285,000 for white households.
Education doesn’t fix it. A Brandeis study found that in 1989, white households headed by a college graduate held roughly 5 times the wealth of comparable Black households. By 2013, researchers said that gap had tripled. We did what we were told. We got the degrees. The gap grew anyway.
Business tells the same story. Black-owned employer firms were just over 3 percent of all employer businesses in 2022. That’s about 194,585 firms out of roughly 5.9 million. Our share of the population is far larger than that.
Here’s the political point, plain. A good salary does not erase a century of locked-out wealth. Earning well is not the same as owning well. Most of us have a paycheck. Far fewer of us have a house that was paid off before we were born, or a parent who covered the down payment, or a family business waiting for us. That’s why a 6-figure income can still feel thin.
That brings me to the question you sent in. Are we lifting as we climb?
I think the honest answer is yes, unevenly, and mostly in private. We pay for a cousin’s car repair. We cover a niece’s textbooks. We fix a parent’s roof. That’s real, and it’s costly, and it rarely gets counted. But private rescue isn’t the same as building something that lasts. A check keeps one person afloat this month. Ownership keeps a family afloat for decades.
So the real question has three parts. Do you bank where Black-owned institutions need deposits? Do you hire, refer, and pay Black-owned vendors? Do you teach the people behind you what you learned about equity, retirement accounts, and negotiation, without waiting to be asked?
Culture matters in that answer. Success that sits apart from community isn’t safe. It’s isolated. And community that treats every high earner as an ATM burns people out. We have to hold both truths.
Here’s why it’s harder than it sounds. Meet Sharon. She isn’t real. I built her from numbers I know.
Sharon earns $150,000 a year. Every paycheck lands, and every bill is already waiting. She carries $150,000 in student loans from her professional degree. She has a $50,000 car loan, a $2,200 mortgage, and tuition of $1,200 a month for her kids’ private school. Nothing about her life is fancy. It’s a standard 6-figure life.
Run it. After taxes, Sharon takes home roughly $9,000 a month. Her loans, car, mortgage, and tuition take about $6,100 of it. Groceries, insurance, utilities, gas, and retirement take most of the rest. She’s left with about $200.
Now meet Daisia. She earns $60,000 and has about $200 left, too.
Same $200. Different salary. That’s the part nobody says out loud when they ask why we haven’t “made it.”
Here’s why. A white household at Sharon’s salary often starts from somewhere else. There’s a grandparent’s house, a parent’s down payment, or a cosigner who never needed to be asked. Sharon had none of that, so she borrowed for every step. The borrowing starts early. Brookings tracked 2008 graduates for 4 years after graduation. Black graduates owed $52,726 on average. White graduates owed $28,006. Black graduates owed more than they had borrowed. White graduates owed less. And the gap grows wider from there…
So Sharon didn’t just climb. She climbed carrying weight. And the weight shows up on every rung, in raises that come smaller and promotions that come slower.
Eventually the mortgage gets paid off, and that will build some wealth. I’m not dismissing that. But a paid-off house is one asset. Wealth multiplies when you have extra money to invest early, and Sharon’s extra money is $200. Her counterparts with family money put real dollars to work in their 20s. The same dollar, invested earlier, grows for decades longer.
Now back to lifting as we climb. Sharon’s $200 is the answer. We lift, but we lift from almost nothing, and nobody counts it. The people asking why we aren’t doing more should look at what’s left in the account.
I run these numbers, and the same answer sits there. Without a windfall, I can’t see how the gap closes in my lifetime.
So no, dropping $1,000 into a worthy cause is not in the budget. Being a leading investor in a Black education co-op is not something I can swing. And no, I’m not going to be able to give $5,000 to help a smart, young Black woman seed her business.
It’s a hard thing to write. It’s even harder to believe.
If your salary went up and your breathing room didn’t, what ate the difference? Tell me in the comments.
