Racial Inequality in America: A Look at the Numbers

I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of being sad about it, tired of feeling depressed and anxious and fucked up. I feel like every time I walk out of my goddamn house, I could die today. I’m a six-foot-four Black man. I’m probably some of y’all’s worst nightmare.
– Gary Clark, Jr., Grammy Award-winning musician and songwriterⁱ

In the wake of the recent killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, it is difficult to know what to say in response to the crisis unfolding in our country.

We also believe that silence is not an option and that Black lives matter.

No matter how you look at the data, Black Americans live in a much more precarious and hostile world than white Americans. Here are just a few of the inequities, challenges and even violence that they face daily:

In 2018, the poverty rate among African Americans was 21%, nearly twice the national average (12%).
The median income for Black families is less than 60% that of white families.
Large majority white school districts received $23 billion more in state and local funding than predominantly non-white school districts, despite serving the same number of children (2016).
Black Americans are three times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans and are more likely to be unarmed.
Minneapolis police are seven times more likely to use force against Black people, compared to whites.
An analysis of 100 million traffic stops between 2011 and 2017 showed Black drivers are searched more often, even though they are less likely to be found with illegal items than white drivers.
Black women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.

And that was before COVID-19, which has hit the African American community particularly hard.

Blacks in America are dying of COVID-19 at disproportionately high rates in 32 states. In 21 states, it’s “more than 50% above what would be expected.”
Blacks are more likely to have experienced a job loss due to the pandemic, and less likely to have the financial cushion to withstand it.

Even during a pandemic, racism is as pernicious as ever. COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting the Black community, but we can hardly take the time to sit with that horror as we are reminded, every single day, that there is no context in which Black lives matter.
– Roxane Gay, American writer, professor, editor, and social commentatorⁱⁱ

Given these facts, it is not surprising that surveys consistently find that Black Americans report a fundamental lack of faith in American institutions, based not only on recent events, but on a legacy of inaction in the face of persistent racial bias in policing, economic opportunity, employment, housing, educational equity, and more.

As part of our most recent Willow Poll, we asked respondents to share how confident they felt about various institutions that make up the U.S. justice system. As shown below, the lack of confidence in our justice system among Blacks is striking, especially compared to white Americans.

Blatant differences have long existed in the way police across the country have treated Black and white Americans. A particularly egregious example was New York City’s officially-discontinued but longstanding practice of stop-and-frisk. In 2011, the peak year of the program, 84% of the stops were with Blacks and Latinos, while only 9% were with whites. There was also a racial divide in the use of force during those stops (23% of Black and Latino stops; 16% of white), even though police found weapons on whites nearly twice as often.

While this is only one example, it is certainly not isolated, and the disparity of treatment has resulted in a huge gap between Black and white Americans in terms of trust in the police, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center study.

A 2019 YouGov study shows that Black Americans are more concerned about being victims of deadly police force than of a violent crime.

Consistent with a lack of trust in America’s justice system and policing, Pew Research Center’s “Race in America 2019” survey finds that most Black Americans believe that racism is both systemic and unaddressed in our society:

84% of back respondents believe the “legacy of slavery affects the position of Black people in American society today” to some extent.
78% percent believe the U.S. hasn’t gone far enough in giving Blacks equal rights with whites.
71% of Black respondents believe that race relations are generally bad.

And, from the same study:

50% of Blacks believe it’s unlikely that equal rights will ever be achieved.

WHILE

62% of whites believe we’ve gone far enough toward equality (and 19% of those believe we’ve gone too far).

These are fundamentally different realities, a disparity that has undoubtedly been a heavy drag on the 400-year struggle toward racial justice in the U.S.

The Black community is used to the institutional racism inherent in education, the justice system and jobs. And even though we do all the conventional things to raise public and political awareness—write articulate and insightful pieces in the Atlantic, explain the continued devastation on CNN, support candidates who promise change—the needle hardly budges.
– Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, American basketball legend, activist, actor, and authorⁱⁱⁱ

We cannot continue to ignore the data.

If we want to effect real change, we have to acknowledge the truth, really listen, and then do something about it.

ⁱhttps://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/gary-clark-jr-2020-protests-1009085/
ⁱⁱhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/sunday/trump-george-floyd-coronavirus.html
ⁱⁱⁱhttps://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/02/kareem-abdul-jabbar-on-george-floyd-killing-protests.html

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