North Carolina is among top states for ‘racial progress,’ study says. Here’s why
North Carolina is among the top states for “racial progress” but lags further behind in racial integration, a new study finds.
The Tar Heel State ranks 8th in the country in a study that compared health, education and other factors over time, according to the personal finance website WalletHub. The ranking for “racial progress” is a measure of the “gaps between whites and blacks” in those different aspects of life.
Racial progress was “determined by subtracting the values attributed to whites and blacks for a given metric, using the oldest available data and the most recent,” according to the study released Tuesday. “Based on the result, we calculated the percentage of progress for that specific metric in the analyzed period.”
But North Carolina gets a lower ranking on another list: “racial integration.” WalletHub gave the state a No. 17 spot in that part of its study, which used more recent data.
The results of the study — which only compared data for blacks and whites — come as some have argued there is still work to do.
Though many black people in the United States have access to resources, not all have wealth, according to an article the N.C. Justice Center published online in February. Also, black households usually take home less money than white households, the center found in 2018, estimating that black households take home about $20,000 less than their white counterparts on average.
And while white families in the U.S. had a median net worth of $171,000 in 2016, according to the Federal Reserve, black families only had a median net worth that year of $17,600. That means the net worth of black families was “less than 15 percent that of white families.”
To make its lists, WalletHub says it analyzed poverty, schooling and other factors.
So how was North Carolina named a top place for “racial progress?”
The state scored in the top 10 in categories that examined measures including jobs, wealth and medical conditions through the lens of race, WalletHub results show. The company says it released the data to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“This report examines the differences between only blacks and whites in light of the high-profile police-brutality incidents that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement,” WalletHub says.
The data comes as the nation is becoming increasingly diverse, with more white people dying than being born in North Carolina and the U.S. as a whole, News & Observer reported in 2018.
Overall, Wyoming was the top state for “racial progress” while Iowa took the last spot, WalletHub results show.
This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 4:41 PM.
