WILMINGTON — Conversations about racism and racial justice often have to navigate a difficult landscape: emotions run high, myths and misconceptions run rampant, and it’s sometimes difficult for those talking to see outside their own lived experience.
One way to approach this tricky terrain is through the lens of data.
The basic explanation of the issue goes like this: systemic racism (or ‘institutional’ or ‘structural’ racism) is the result of centuries of prejudice and racist laws and policies, starting with chattel slavery and running through Jim Crow, redlining, and into modern-day discrimination. It isn’t just the isolated acts of individual bigots, it’s ‘baked into’ society.
But what does that look like? For some, systemic racism is represented by the individual experience: the way a Black person feels when they’re pulled over for an expired tag or sitting down for a job interview. But to get a bigger picture, it helps to have data — a lot of data.
That data isn’t hard to come by, the story of systemic racism is written in public records and open archives. But it is hard to collate and transform that data into something intelligible.
Crunching the numbers
That’s the project that the Cape Fear Collective (CFC) has been undertaking. Born in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, CFC has focused in large part on how data management can help identify and address tricky, multi-faceted social problems. Crunching numbers takes time and processing power, and the region’s non-profits, government departments, and media outlets don’t always have enough of either.
This month. CFC launched a beta version of what it calls a ‘Racial Equity Dashboard.’ It’s a work-in-progress, but it is already helping to turn the raw data on systemic racism into something you can wrap your head around.
The dashboard tackles four main topics, for now: Affordable housing, public health, civic representation, and the historical narrative that connects past prejudice to the modern structure of racism.
Affordable housing
Affordable housing is one of the most serious crises in the Cape Fear region, but the data shows how minority populations are sometimes disproportionately hurt by soaring housing costs and evaporating affordable options. In the six-county region studied by CFC, that’s true for Columbus, New Hanover, and Onslow counties, where the highest levels of housing burden are also the densest populations of Black and minority residents.
Public health
There’s been plenty of discussion — although perhaps still not enough — about the way Covid-19 has impacted the Black and Hispanic communities more than white communities. But that’s not the only public health issue that is shaped by systemic racism.
Another major issue that CFC is working on mapping is pregnancy risks. Over the last two generations, the pregnancy-related mortality rate in the United States has been going up — a troubling trend that, again, disproportionately impacts mothers of color.
Civic representation
There a lot of factors that skew voter representation: gerrymandering, voter suppression, civic apathy, and party politics all play a role — and each deserves its own deep dive.
But a good place to start is with the facts and, on this issue, that means the data on voter representation. CFC’s dashboard doesn’t get into why both elected offices and federal censuses fail to represent Black residents — but the data, transformed into graphs that lay out the situation, show that there’s definitely a disconnect.
Historical narrative
The value of data is to get the big picture — a wide-angle, deep-focus look at things. It also helps to get the long view of things.
Take, for example, the history of Confederate monuments.
A common misconception — and, sometimes, a deliberately perpetuated myth — is that Wilmington’s two Confederate monuments are a product of Civil War-era history. But that’s not true. They were erected in 1911 and 1924, as the last Confederate veterans were dying and the ‘Lost Cause’ movement was having a resurgence.
The timeline helps put Wilmington’s monuments — and those all around the state — in the broader historical context of the Black experience in the United States.
Learn more
CFC’s Racial Equity Dashboard is free to access, so you can explore for yourself here. You can also provide feedback, including thoughts on future iterations of the Dashboard and other social issues that could use a fresh approach through the lens of data.
You can mail comments to: data@capefearcollective.org
And, if there’s something on the dashboard that you’d like to see a deeper dive into, let Port City Daily know at info@portcitydaily.com
Send comments and tips to Benjamin Schachtman at ben@localdailymedia.com, @pcdben on Twitter, and (910) 538-2001.
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