Let’s be crystal clear. There has never been full equality in the earning power between African Americans and white Americans. Our free labor for over 300 years (including sharecropping, another form of slavery) put us on a virtual treadmill where the earnings gap has never closed. Racist policies and laws helped to ensure the widening schism. A recent report by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) underscored this depressing fact. So don’t let LeBron James’ $110 million dollar contract cloud your vision that the entire race is moving forward on the economic front.

The Institute reported the wealth gap between white and African-American families increased more than four times between 1984-2007. The wealth of middle-income white households now exceed that of high-income African Americans. And while income is different from wealth, they are inextricably linked. In both cases, the disparity between blacks and whites in wealth and income are real and wide. It is proof that higher income alone will not lead to increased wealth, security and economic mobility for African Americans.

Some blacks joke that our persistent poor economic state makes us resilient when bad economic times fall on the country. While that is true, there’s nothing funny about the impact of public policies that favor the wealthiest and discriminate in housing, credit and labor markets. Our ability to take care of our families, build wealth and contribute to society on all levels is compromised. While blacks could buy less and save more, it’s the structural framework that systematically keeps us eating the dust of our white counterparts sprinting in front of us.

The other albatross is the payday loan predators that generally have free reign in our communities. Bloodsuckers like W. Allan Jones, founder of Check into Cash, who have built their dynasties of the backs of poor folks. Poor communities and communities of color are often the targets subprime loans, along with payday lending and check-cashing stores.

Unemployment and underemployment are additional factors that affect our ability to get ahead financially. Currently, the unemployment rates for African Americans are over 15% compared to the overall national rate of about 10%. In some cities and for certain age groups, the rates are even higher.

In an article by Orlando Patterson entitled “Can’t Call It Progress: African-Americans Are Earning Less Than Their Parents Did,” Patterson says the unemployment figures reflect only part of a broader pattern of socioeconomic disparity between blacks and whites. He states that “nearly all indexes - income, wealth, educational attainment, homeownership and foreclosures - show growing gaps and a retreat from gains made in the 1990s, gaps that are being devastatingly widened by the Great Recession.”

Getting educated, working hard and working smart won’t make a dent in this reality. We must get creative about economics under a system that ensures rich people get richer and poor folks get poorer. The underground economy that has developed is a stop gap measure but what really is needed are more collective forms of economic development such as co-ops. This concept is not totally foreign to us as a people. We brought that communal spirit with us from Mother Africa but have allowed it to be perverted by a system where human needs are subservient to maximum profits for a few. It is past time for pooling our resources and getting our economic health together as we build stronger, viable communities.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Jamala Rogers is Leader of the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis and the Black Radical Congress National Organizer. Click here to contact Ms. Rogers.