Race Matters

Particularly since the election of President Barack Obama, you may hear that the United States is a "post-racial" society. Now that a non-white American has served in the nation's highest office, the argument goes, race no longer matters. Certainly, our nation has come a long way since the days when Black Americans were enslaved, or the genocide of Native Americans. Today, most of us would agree with the words of American Anthropology's founder, Franz Boas: "If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present."

We learned in class that "race" is a cultural category, with no biological reality. Does this mean that race doesn't matter? Short answer: no. Race has no biological reality, but it has significant social reality, and that social reality plays out in very important ways throughout our lives and throughout our nation. Below is a small sampling of the many ways that race affects a person's experiences, opportunities, income, and even life expectancy.

Housing

One of the most fundamental racial differences in the U.S. is in housing. Although we often think of segregation as a phenomenon that ended in the 1960s, most of the U.S. remains heavily segregated. Below is a map of St. Louis, Missouri, based on the 2010 U.S. Census. Each dot represents a single person, broken down by race/ethnicity. Blue dots are white Americans, green dots are Black Americans, red dots are Asian Americans, and orange dots are Latino Americans. Note how deeply segregated St. Louis's neighborhoods are:

Lest you think this is a phenomenon found only in more southern states, here's a map, made with the same methods, of Minneapolis/St. Paul, the 40th most segregated city in the country:

Does it matter where people live? Well, yes, it does. The graph below, from Patrick Sharkey's book Stuck in Place, shows neighborhood demographics of White and Black Americans in the United States (again, this is today, not in the 1960s). Black Americans are far more likely to live in areas with high poverty rates, even when they themselves are not poor (most Black Americans are middle class). This is the legacy of segregation. Having poor neighbors isn't necessarily a problem in itself, but poorer neighborhoods tend to also have underfunded schools, fewer employment options, fewer extra-curricular opportunities for children, fewer healthy grocery and restaurants options, insecure access to health care, and higher crime rates. The picture isn't all bad: poorer neighborhoods also have high levels of community activism, strong kinship/friendship networks, higher engagement in charity and volunteerism, and strong church communities. Nonetheless, housing segregation is at the heart of many racial disparities in this country.

Education

Underfunded schools lead to significant differences in the education experiences of students who attend "majority-minority" schools vs. those who attend mostly white schools. Data gathered by the U.S. Department of Education since 2009 shows that, across the country, mostly white schools (90% or more of students are white) spend on average $744.00 more per student per year than schools that are mostly students of color (90% or more of students are Black, Latino, Asian, or Native American). Much of this difference is a reflection of segregation. Many schools are funded through local taxes, and since, as was shown above, segregation tends to keep children of color in poorer neighborhoods, the tax base for majority-minority school districts is lower.

Even when the state steps in with funding for poorer school districts, this disparity does not go away. In 2015, David Mosenkis, a data scientist, looked at state funding differences between 500 school districts in Pennsylvania. The graph below shows the average amount of money per student given by the state to each school district, broken out by the poverty percentile (that is, what percentage of children in the school live in poverty.) More state funding goes to schools in poorer neighborhoods than to higher-income districts. (The education of children in higher-income districts is supplemented by local taxes, so the per-person spending there is much higher.) What Mosenkis showed is that state funding is shunted toward those school districts with fewer students of color (the yellow bars, where at least 92% of students are white), no matter what the level of poverty. If a district has higher numbers of Black or Latino students (the brown bars), then on average they receive less state funding than primarily White districts -- regardless of whether the school district is poor or rich.

There is no simple relationship between per capita education spending and education outcomes, but education outcomes vary by race in the United States. According to the U.S. Census bureau in 2015, high school and college graduation rates are higher for non-Hispanic whites (93% and 36%, respectively) than for African-Americans (87% and 23%) or Latinos (67% and 16%). (Native American graduation rates were not reported.) With the end of federally-mandated school desegregation programs, school segregation has significantly increased in the United States in the last twenty years.

Income

Access to education opportunities matters, but even when Americans of different races have the same level of education attainment, they don't benefit equally. The graph below shows the average income of Minnesotans from the 2010 census, broken down by race and education level. Black and Native workers without a high school degree make half the income of White or Latino workers at the same education level. Black, American Indian, and Asian workers with their high school diplomas make, on average, less than a White worker without their high school diploma. Many White workers with high school diplomas make more money than Black, American Indian, and Asian workers with Bachelors degrees. For Black, American Indian, and Hispanic workers, the columns are compressed, meaning that educational attainment benefits them less, on average, than it does White or Asian workers. However, because having low educational attainment carriers a higher penalty for non-White workers, educational attainment is conversely even more important.

Disparities in income by race are significant, but the biggest disparities are in wealth (that is, one's total worth in savings, investments, property, and goods). In 2013, the median wealth of White families was $134,000, compared to $91,000 for Asian families. $14,000 for Hispanic families, and $11,000 for Black families. (The data, which came from the Federal Reserve Bank, did not include Native families). Wealth tends to develop over generations, so past oppression can still be seen in current wealth differences. In previous generations, people of color were excluded from programs that allowed white families to develop wealth. For example, in the early and mid-20th century, many white families gained wealth by buying homes through federally-funded mortgages, and white veterans got college degrees through the GI bill. Most Black families and Black soldiers, however, were not allowed to use these programs. More recently, racial disparities in sub-prime mortgage lending meant that more families of color saw their wealth eroded by the recession of 2007. As the graph below shows, almost 60% of White families are in the upper half of wealth distribution in the U.S., while only 23% of Black families can say the same. These numbers are virtually unchanged since 1989.

Conclusions

It's important to recognize that disparities in housing, education, and income (as well as in health, life expectancy, incarceration rate, likelihood of encountering violence, exposure to environmental pollution, etc., etc.) exist regardless of the personal biases of Americans. I send my children to a majority-white school. Although I feel strongly about erasing racial disparities in this country, my tax dollars and educational investments continue to perpetuate a system in which white children receive more school funding than children of color. Many racial disparities are the legacy of past legal and social systems that prevented people of color from obtaining the American Dream. Even when those legal systems were changed, the disparities didn't automatically disappear. Maintaining the status quo will continue to perpetuate racial disparities well into the future.