Racial gap growing, Census Bureau finds

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"WASHINGTON -- Decades after the civil rights movement, racial disparities in income, education and home ownership persist and, by some measurements, are growing.

"White households had incomes that were two-thirds higher than those of blacks and 40 percent higher than than those of Hispanics last year, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

"White adults also were more likely than black and Hispanic adults to have college degrees and to own their own homes. They were less likely to live in poverty.

"Race is so associated with class in the United States that it may not be direct discrimination, but it still matters indirectly," said Dalton Conley, a sociology professor at New York University and the author of "Being Black, Living in the Red."

"It doesn't mean it's any less powerful just because it's indirect," he said.