Issues: Racial Inequality
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I. Introduction (15m)
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II. Reporting (70m)
- Issues: COVID 19
- Issues: Education
- Issues: Family Care
- Issues: Changing Cities
- Issues: Rural Communities
- Issues: Housing
- Issues: The Justice System
- Issues: Racial Inequality
- Issues: Immigrant Communities
- Issues: Disability & Inequality
- How Much Evidence?
- Data Sources on Economic Mobility
- Context and Definitions
BACKGROUND
Long standing systemic and institutional racism has created a well-documented wealth gap between the United States’ racial and ethnic groups. As one study puts it, in the U.S. the median white family has 41 times more wealth than the median Black family and 22 times more wealth than the median Latino family. The COVID-19 pandemic has only intensified these disparities, with Black and Latino populations becoming infected with the coronavirus nearly three times as often as white populations. This has led to higher deaths for those communities as the country enters a recession. At the same time, job losses and wage cuts have hit Hispanic and Black Americans hardest.
WHAT ARE THE RESPONSES?
Some cities have sought to fight the wealth gap by supporting minority-owned businesses through grant and loan programs, entrepreneurship training, and workforce readiness. Community organizations have rallied around some of the same goals through grassroots movements. Other efforts have sought to redistribute wealth by incentivizing the development of mixed income buildings and neighborhoods that put high- and low-income taxpayers in the same pool.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR:
Because poverty is the result of systemic factors that are compounded by race, any analysis of solutions to economic hardship requires an understanding of systemic racism. Reporters should ask: historically, what led to the problem this response is trying to solve? Were its proposed solutions developed with the communities being targeted, or without them? One should also be sure to look for responses and solutions that originate with the community in question before they have been taken up by local government.