Racial Discrimination
This guide provides data and reports that document the prevalence of systemic racial discrimination throughout U.S. institutions and society.
Policing and Police Brutality
- Mapping Police ViolenceMapping Police Violence is a research collaborative collecting comprehensive data on police killings nationwide to quantify the impact of police violence in communities.
- Fatal EncountersThis database contains records of people who’ve been killed through interactions with law enforcement since Jan. 1, 2000.
- NVDRSNational Violent Death Reporting System: Violent death data are currently provided for 34 NVDRS states and the District of Columbia and, therefore, are not nationally representative. From the Report Options page, select "Victim injured by law enforcement officer" in option #3: Relationship of Victim to Suspect.
- California Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board (RIPA)The Board was created by the Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 (RIPA) to shepherd data collection and provide public reports with the ultimate objective to eliminate racial and identity profiling and improve and understand diversity in law enforcement through training, education, and outreach. The Board’s annual reports contain an analysis of the stop data collected under RIPA, which requires nearly all California law enforcement agencies to submit demographic data on all detentions and searches.
- Prison Policy Initiative: Police Stops are Still Marred by Racial DiscriminationThis briefing from the Prison Policy Initiative reports that police stops and use of force are racially discriminatory, with predictable consequences for public trust of the police.
- USAFacts: Addressing Police Reform Must Start with Accurate DataThis article from USAFacts argues that the absence of accessible government data stymies candid discussion about how to drive and measure change.
- OpenJusticeA transparency initiative led by the California Department of Justice that publishes criminal justice data.
Criminal Justice System Discrimination
- The Sentencing ProjectFounded in 1986, The Sentencing Project works for a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addressing unjust racial disparities and practices, and advocating for alternatives to incarceration.
- Death Penalty Information Center: Race and the Death PenaltyThe Death Penalty Information Center is a national non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment. Their research shows that racial bias against defendants of color and in favor of white victims has a strong effect on who is capitally prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed.
- Bureau of Justice StatisticsThe United States' primary source for criminal justice statistics.
- Council on Criminal Justice: Trends in Correctional Control by Race and SexThis report from the Council on Criminal Justice shows that racial disparities declined across corrections populations between 2000 and 2016, but that disparities persist.
- Prison Policy Initiative: Race and Ethnicity Research LibraryA collection of reports and research articles from think tanks and scholars containing data on policing and the criminal justice system.
- Pew Research Center: Black imprisonment rate in the U.S. has fallen by a third since 2006While the rate of imprisonment has decreased in recent years, black Americans remain far more likely than their Hispanic and white counterparts to be in prison. The black imprisonment rate at the end of 2018 was nearly twice the rate among Hispanics (797 per 100,000) and more than five times the rate among whites (268 per 100,000).
- OpenJusticeA transparency initiative led by the California Department of Justice that publishes criminal justice data.
Hate Crimes
- USAFacts: Hate Crime DataUSAFacts is a data-driven portrait of the American population, government finances, and the government’s impact on society.
- Statista: Hate Crimes Against Blacks or African AmericansThis statistic shows the number of victims of hate crimes targeting Blacks or African Americans in the United States in 2018, by crime type. In 2018, there were 908 victims of anti-Black or African American intimidation hate crimes.
- FBI: Hate Crime StatisticsCrimes reported to the FBI involve those motivated by biases based on race, gender, gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. See this table for 2018 data on anti-black hate crime incidents.
- National Crime Victimization Survey: Hate Crime VictimizationPresents National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data on hate crime victimization from 2004 to 2015.
- ADL H.E.A.T. (Hate, Extremism, Anti-Semitism, Terrorism) MapThe Anti-Defamation League (ADL) H.E.A.T. is an interactive and customizable map detailing specific incidents of hate, extremism, antisemitism and terrorism by state and nationwide. This interactive map lets you read details on specific incidents, better understand tactics extremists use, compare activity by type and/or state and access and download raw data.
Housing Discrimination
- National Fair Housing Alliance: Reports and ResearchEvery year, NFHA compiles data from both private, nonprofit fair housing organizations and government agencies across the country to provide an annual snapshot of the nation’s fair housing enforcement activities. The reports also highlight key issues in fair housing.
- HUD: Housing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities (2012)This report presents findings from a study of 28 metropolitan areas to measure the incidence and forms of discrimination experienced by black, Hispanic, and Asian renters and homebuyers.
- Systemic Inequality: Displacement, Exclusion, and Segregation (Center for American Progress)This report examines how government-sponsored displacement, exclusion, and segregation have exacerbated racial inequality in the United States. It first looks at how public policies have systematically removed people of color from their homes. It then considers how federal, state, and local policies have fortified housing discrimination. The final section of the report proposes targeted solutions that would help make the U.S. housing system more equitable.
- Racial Disparities in Home Appreciation (Center for American Progress)Segregation and racial disparities in home appreciation put African Americans at a disadvantage in their ability to build equity and accumulate wealth.
- Renewing Inequality: Family Displacements Through Urban RenewalRenewing Inequality provides access to a comprehensive and unified set of national and local data on the federal Urban Renewal program. This program expanded the role of the federal government in the public and private redevelopment of cities and perpetuated racial and spatial inequalities.
- Segregated SeattleIncludes maps, photos, documents, and newspaper articles that follow the history of segregation in Seattle and King County (Washington) from 1920 until today.
- Mapping Prejudice (Minneapolis, MN)Mapping Prejudice is a project to identify and map racially restrictive real estate deeds and covenants in Minneapolis and its suburbs. Racial covenants were used by real estate developers to prevent people of color from buying or occupying property.
- Mapping Inequality (HOLC maps and redlining)Mapping Inequality provides digital access to the "Security Maps" of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) -- the infamous maps that designated grades based on neighborhood demographics as an indicator of lending risk. These grades were a tool for redlining: making it difficult or impossible for people in certain areas to access mortgage financing and thus become homeowners. Redlining directed public and private capital away from African American and immigrant families. As homeownership was arguably the most significant means of intergenerational wealth building in the United States in the twentieth century, these redlining practices from eight decades ago had long-term effects in creating wealth inequalities that we still see today.
- Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the American CityThis web project accompanies the book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (PennPress, 2008). It presents four interactive series of maps, each touching on a major theme developed in the book: White flight, race and property, municipal zoning, and urban renewal.
- Sundown Towns Database and MapThis is an interactive map showing all sundown town locations (or places of interest if not confirmed sundown) on an overlay of a map of the US.
Banking Discrimination
- NCRC: Disinvestment, Discouragement and Inequity In Small Business LendingThis report from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition reveals a troubling pattern of disinvestment, discouragement and inequitable treatment for black and Hispanic-owned businesses.
- New America: The Racialized Costs of BankingThis report discusses findings from an investigation into the racialized costs and fees associated with entry-level checking accounts from a sample of primarily small and community Main Street banks.
- Pew Research Center: Blacks and Hispanics face extra challenges in getting home loansAn examination of mortgage-market data indicates some of the continuing challenges black and Hispanic homebuyers and would-be homebuyers face. Among other things, they have a much harder time getting approved for conventional mortgages than whites and Asians, and when they are approved they tend to pay higher interest rates.
- Mapping Inequality (HOLC maps and redlining)Mapping Inequality provides digital access to the "Security Maps" of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) -- the infamous maps that designated grades based on neighborhood demographics as an indicator of lending risk. These grades were a tool for redlining: making it difficult or impossible for people in certain areas to access mortgage financing and thus become homeowners. Redlining directed public and private capital away from African American and immigrant families. As homeownership was arguably the most significant means of intergenerational wealth building in the United States in the twentieth century, these redlining practices from eight decades ago had long-term effects in creating wealth inequalities that we still see today.
School Segregation and Educational Discrimination
- Governing Magazine: School Segregation Data for U.S. Metro AreasElevated levels of school segregation between blacks and whites remain prevalent throughout many areas of the country.
- Economic Policy Institute: Schools are still segregated, and black children are paying a priceWell over six decades after the Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” schools to be unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, schools remain heavily segregated by race and ethnicity.
- U.S. News & World Reports: U.S. Education: Still Separate and UnequalThe data show schools are still separate and unequal.
Employment and Workplace Discrimination
- Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity (Center for American Progress)This report examines how government-sanctioned occupational segregation, exploitation, and neglect exacerbated racial inequality in the United States. Eliminating current disparities among Americans will require intentional public policy efforts to dismantle systematic inequality, combat discrimination in the workplace, and expand access to opportunity for all Americans.
- On the Persistence of the Black-White Unemployment Gap (Center for American Progress)This policy brief provides unemployment data and solutions to narrow unemployment gaps between African Americans and whites.
- State of Working America Data LibraryThe State of Working America Data Library provides researchers, media, and the public with easily accessible, up-to-date, and comprehensive historical data on the American labor force. It is compiled from Economic Policy Institute analysis of government data sources. Use it to research wages, inequality, and other economic indicators over time and among demographic groups.
- Economic Policy Institute: The State of the Union for Black WorkersShows why the economy is still not working for all black workers in America.
Wealth Inequality
- Systematic Inequality: How America's Structural Racism Helped Create the Black-White Wealth Gap (Center for American Progress)The already large racial wealth gap between white and black American households grew even wider after the Great Recession. Targeted policies are necessary to reverse this deepening divide.
- Institute for Policy Studies: Dreams DeferredDreams Deferred presents a snapshot of the racial wealth divide in the United States today, looking at the current state of household wealth, income, homeownership, debt, and other economic factors. It also reviews long-term trends that led to this current moment, as well as, the historical policies and contributors to this deepening divide.
- Federal Reserve: Recent Trends in Wealth-Holding by Race and EthnicityThis report from the Federal Reserve shows that the long-standing and substantial wealth disparities between families of different racial and ethnic groups have changed little in the past few years. Wealth losses during the Great Recession, and the magnitude and timing of the recovery, also varied substantially across families grouped by race and ethnicity.
Health Disparities
- The COVID Racial Data TrackerCOVID-19 is affecting people of color the most. The COVID Racial Data Tracker tracks the data in real time. It is a collaboration between the COVID Tracking Project and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.
- Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity (Center for American Progress)The United States is home to stark and persistent racial disparities in health coverage, chronic health conditions, mental health, and mortality. These disparities are not a result of individual or group behavior but decades of systematic inequality in American economic, housing, and health care systems.
- HHS Office of Minority Health: Profile of Black/African AmericansData from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health.
- The Century Foundation: Racism, Inequality, and Health Care for African AmericansThis report examines the state of health care coverage for African Americans and shed a light on important social factors that uniquely impact their health outcomes.