San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Racial economic gap slims at snail’s pace
The growth of cuttingedge tech giants like Meta, Apple and Google helped fuel the meteoric rise of affluence in California during the first two decades of the new millennium. The state even raised the minimum wage multiple times, to $13 by 2020 from $5.75 in 2000. As personal income grew, politically, California further established itself as a Democratic stronghold and a state more amenable than most to racial justice-focused policies.
But a study of the years between 2000 and 2020 said one thing about California was largely immune to change: racial inequality and the hardships faced by Black Californians.
The Black Policy Project at UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies published the study this month. The report tracked changes in Black Californians’ socioeconomic standing between 2000 and 2020, before the onset of the pandemic, using an “Equality Index.” The index uses scores to “compare the degree to which Black people experience equal conditions with other ethnic groups,” with white people serving as the baseline group with a score of 1.0.
The overall equality index score for Black Californians in the report was 0.69, which means that across all socioeconomic variables, Black residents’ outcomes were 69% of what White people’s outcomes were.
Whites, Asians, Latinos and Indigenous Californians all had higher overall scores.
The Black Policy Project’s report builds on a similar report published in 2007, which California’s Legislative Black Caucus sponsored to get a sense of how Black Californians were living in the year 2000. The report also used the “Equality Index.”
In 2000, Black folks’ overall score was 0.66 — just three hundreths of a point below what it was in 2020.
The slow pace of improvement over two decades, according to the report, means it would take “nearly 248 years” for Black Californians to close the socioeconomic gap between white people and to live the American dream white Californians know well.
Notably, both 2000 and 2020 reports showed Asian Californians as having equal or better socioeconomic outcomes compared with white Californians. Asians had a 1.01 overall index score in 2000 and 1.14 in 2020. But the index uses white people as the baseline group, because white people don’t have to deal with the racial barriers in life. If racial barriers didn’t exist, the outcomes for white people should be attainable for Black people, the report states.
Sadly, racial inequality appears ingrained in California’s very fabric. So, the reasons Black folks scored so low in the 2020 report are as multifaceted as they are familiar.
The average household income in California is $92,100 for whites, $105,000 for Asians and $64,000 for Latinos — while only $56,800 for Black Californians, according to the report. As of 2020, Black people had the lowest California homeownership rates of any group at 31.9%, including a shockingly low 12% in San Francisco, while white people had the highest overall at 56%. Every other group besides Black people had a rate above 40%.
Black folks had the highest unemployment rate for any group in the report at 6.4% as of 2020, and Black people were the only group to have a jobless rate above 5%. The unemployment rate was 5% for Indigenous people, 4.5% for Latinos, 3.7% for whites and 3.2% for Asians.
Some of the other alarming data from the report: Black people had the highest infant mortality rate of any group in California; Black folks had the highest felony arrest rates and the longest average jail sentences, and for the first time in decades, the Black Californian population decreased — to 2.1 million in 2020 from 2.2 million in 2000.
“These racial gaps exist because of the deep entrenchment of exclusion, historically, and the inability of, at least as this report shows, for Black Californians to be able to connect with institutions that improve mobility and enhance economic resources that tie into housing and health and all these other things mentioned in the report,” Michael Stoll, the director of the Black Policy Project, told me.
The report isn’t without its limitations. The data shows there is racial inequality in California, which is important to know, but the study doesn’t explain why the scores are different for different races. Also, it only looks at groups as a whole and doesn’t take into account nuanced differences within ethnic groups.
Still, the data speaks to the need for revolutionary interventions targeting the state’s Black residents, and there are options on the table, Chris Lodgson from the community advocacy group Coalition for a Just and Equitable California, told me.
“This report is just more proof for why rep-nd arations aren’t just owed but necessary in California,” said Lodgson, who helps lead CJEC’s efforts in achieving reparations in California.
Lodgson says there are reasons to be hopeful, even though the state’s efforts lately to make reparations aren’t very well organized. Different Black lawmakers are introducing different sets of bills, and many of them are weak attempts to carry out the ambitious reparations plans put forward by the state’s reparations task force last summer, after the body spent two years researching the topic.
Senate Bill 1403, which proposes to establish a state agency in charge of overseeing and administering reparations in California, is a vital step in making it a reality in California. On April 9, the California Senate Judiciary Committee voted 8-1 to advance it to the Committee on Governmental Organization for another hearing later this month.
“Black Californians need help. And we have a lot of proof that what we’ve been doing as a state simply isn’t working,” Lodgson said.
The evidence that Black people’s socioeconomic status barely improved between 2000 and 2020, and California’s inaction on reparations, is an incontestable failure in a state that loves touting its liberal thinking and dedication to racial equality.
California has to take revolutionary steps toward uplifting Black communities, and it must happen soon — Black residents can’t afford to wait another 20 years for change. The first two decades of the 2000s have shown us that without bold action from state leaders, change will never come.
“This report is just more proof for why reparations aren’t just owed but necessary in California.” Chris Lodgson of Coalition for a Just and Equitable
California