One in four Black Americans live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared to one in 13 white Americans, but the gap goes further. Opportunity Insights, a nonprofit organization that focuses on social mobility, found in a report that race is a major factor for generational mobility even within neighborhoods, and Black-white gaps are even larger in low-poverty neighborhoods.

While guaranteed income alone won’t be a magic fix to the historical injustices around race in the US, cash transfers that reduce contemporary income gaps can begin to make a dent in racial wealth inequalities. To think about it another way, if cash transfers had been given to low-income families in 1960, it would’ve lessened the racial income gap back then, which in turn would have compounded into a smaller racial wealth gap today. We didn’t do that in 1960, but we can start today.

Until we address the growing wealth gap in a variety of ways, possibly guaranteed income, we can not begin to really fix the ongoing damage of systematic racial inequality.