Just as the elite and others gathered in Washington, D.C. to break ground for the construction of the long-awaited King Memorial, the Census Bureau released a report that says racial disparities in income, education and home ownership persist and, by some measurements, are growing.

The data from the American Community Survey, the bureau's new annual survey of three million households nationwide, reveals that median income for Black households has stayed at about 60 percent of the income for White households since 1980.  In dollar terms, the gap has grown from $18,123 to $19,683.

Black adults have narrowed the gap with White adults in earning high school diplomas, but the gap has widened for college degrees. Thirty percent of White adults had at least a bachelor's degree in 2005, while 17 percent of black adults and 12 percent of Hispanic adults had degrees.

In 2002, the Census Bureau also reported that the 1.1 million Asian-owned businesses earned $326 billion in revenue.  The 1.2 million Black-owned firms earned less than $88 billion. (See "The Secret of Us: How Black Business Survive" in the current print issue of POH).