Data to Study Racial Inequity: Raw Data Sources

Sources of data for studying racism and racial disparities in wealth, opportunity, and privilege; as well as to explore the Black and African American experience.

Caveat

Some of the resources listed here contain documents or text rather than statistical data. Please be aware that researchers must investigate whether a vendor allows text-mining. Do not scrape data from databases to which the University subscribes without first checking with a librarian. See more information in our Text & Data Mining guide, too.

Asian-Amer. Experience

Black/Afr.-Amer. Experience

Education

Environment

Health

Hispanic Amer. Experience

History & Social Issues

Housing

Immigrants

Indigenous Amer. Experience

Laws/Safety of

Multi-Disciplinary

Trafficking in Enslaved Persons

Violence Against

Youth

Analyzing/Accessing Data from Off-Campus

Raw Data Sources by Topic

Asian-American Experience

See also, Violence Against

Indigenous Newspapers in North America
**Limited to UNC affiliates** Indigenous people's newspapers from across the U.S. and Canada published between 1828 and 2016.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Ethnic NewsWatch
**Limited to UNC affiliates** A full-text collection of newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. This collection of articles, editorials, columns, reviews, etc. provides a broad diversity of perspectives and viewpoints.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1960 - present
North American Indian Thought and Culture
**Limited to UNC affiliates** Brings together more than 100,000 pages of autobiographies, biographies, Indian publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files. These documents offer a perspective into the attitudes of native peoples toward the earliest European settlers and the resultant transformations that took place, first as trade was established and later as displacement forced tribes into unfamiliar territories.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.

Laws/Safety of

American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism
**Limited to UNC affiliates** Caveat: Because these materials were written and compiled by the FBI which viewed AIM as an extremist group, users may encounter biased perspectives and language.

FBI documentation on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest, as well as documentation on the 1973 Wounded Knee standoff. Informant reports and materials collected by the Extremist Intelligence Section of the FBI provide insight into the motives, actions, and leadership of AIM and the development of Native American radicalism.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.

University Libraries' On The Books Project: Jim Crow Laws in the NC General Statutes
Openly available. A collections as data and machine learning project of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries with the goal of discovering Jim Crow and racially-based legislation signed into law in North Carolina between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement (1866/67-1967).
Open Policing Project (Stanford)
Openly available. "On a typical day in the United States, police officers make more than 50,000 traffic stops. Our team is gathering, analyzing, and releasing records from millions of traffic stops by law enforcement agencies across the country [although not all states are included]. Our goal is to help researchers, journalists, and policymakers investigate and improve interactions between police and the public."
Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) Series
**Limited to UNC affiliates or ICPSR members** "[A] large-scale, interdisciplinary study of how families, schools, and neighborhoods affect child and adolescent development. It was designed to advance the understanding of the developmental pathways of both positive and negative human social behaviors. In particular, the project examined the causes and pathways of juvenile delinquency, adult crime, substance abuse, and violence."
Scott (2020) found “…microaggressions and criminal justice injustices independently predict offending”, and “injustices from the police, and the larger criminal justice system, are significant strains for marginalized Latinxs.” “…repeated injustice leads to criminogenic coping strategies to deal with feelings of frustration, disrespect, and anger. Thus, discriminatory practices and lack of cultural understanding make the police presence increase criminogenic behavior instead of control it. (p. 32)”
Scott, D.I. (2020). The New Juan Crow? Unpacking the Links Between Discrimination and Crime for Latinxs. Race & Justice, 10(1), pp. 20-42. https://doi.org/10.1177/2153368717721613

Slavery in America and the world : history, culture & law.
**Limited to UNC affiliates** Collection brings together a multitude of essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery. Cases go into the 20th century, because long after slavery was ended, there were still court cases based on issues emanating from slavery.
Access: Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.

Slavery

Slavery and the Law
Features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Slavery and the Law
**Limited to UNC affiliates** Features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Law and Order in the 19th Century
**Limited to UNC affiliates** Documents the international and domestic traffic in slaves in Britain’s New World colonies and the United States, providing important primary source material on the business aspect of the slave trade. Also includes a series of letters received by the Attorney General on law and order in nineteenth century America covering the slave trade, general slavery matters including runaway slaves and rights of slaves, and other legal issues.
Access:Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.

Multi-Disciplinary

American National Election Studies (ANES)
Openly available. Data back to 1948 about elections, candidates, U.S. political beliefs, and the issues Americans care about, many tabulated by race.
Current Population Survey (full historical extent via NBER)
Openly available. The Current Population Survey is one of the longest running surveys in the U.S., dating back to post-WWII. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) holds the full extent of available historical years. "...estimates of relative poverty reveal that millions more Black and Latino individuals are poor than with the official measure—even after adjusting for benefit underreporting. By 2013–2017, Black and Latino individuals remain about twice as likely to be poor as White individuals."

Baker, R. S., Brady, D., Parolin, Z., & Williams, D. T. (2022). The Enduring Significance of Ethno-Racial Inequalities in Poverty in the U.S., 1993–2017. Population Research and Policy Review, 41(3), 1049-1083. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-021-09679-y.

ICPSR
**Some data limited to UNC affiliates or ICPSR members** Many studies deposited here include race as a variable.
See the UNC Libraries' ICPSR Guide for instructions for authenticating your (self-created) ICPSR account when not on campus.
-Consider Zaw, K., Hamilton, D. & Darity, W. (2016). Race, Wealth and Incarceration: Results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth." Race and Social Problems. 8(1).
These data are available from ICPSR.
-Also of possible interest: Los Angeles County Social Survey, 1992 (LACSS) (ICPSR 36599), collected public opinion data about race (among other things) before and after the acquittal of police officers who beat Rodney King and the riots that followed the acquittals.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: Varies

ICPSR's Resource Center for Minority Data
**Some data limited to UNC affiliates** A project to assemble existing data on minority communities and the experience of and relationships among individuals in these communities. Note link in the box at the bottom of the page to our local guide about ICPSR, including directions for authenticating your account to be able to download datasets.
ICPSR's Open Data Flint
Openly available. A collaboration between U-M Flint, U-M Ann Arbor, MSU and community partners that serves as a central location for housing Flint-based data gathered from academic institutions, local organizations, and federal agencies on a wide variety of topics (not just water/health). This is an openly available resource.

Roper Center's iPoll
**Some data limited to UNC affiliates** One of the oldest archives of public opinion polls in the world, Roper offers many surveys that include race as a variable, as well as many polls that specifically surveyed African Americans and polls targeted to racial topics. These polls are being highlighted related to the Black Lives Matter movement and will be shared freely with non-Roper-members by request.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 1935 -
Social Explorer
**Limited to UNC affiliates** U.S. Census data provide a rich variety of topics, from income to educational attainment to housing characteristics, which may be analyzed by race. While the Census Bureau oversamples to ensure accurate estimates of minorities, journalist Hansi Lo Wang notes, "The 2020 census continued a longstanding trend of undercounting Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, while overcounting people who identified as white and not Latino..." (All Things Considered, National Public Radio, March 11, 2022)
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.

Trafficking in Enslaved Persons

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
Openly available. Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time.
Access: No restrictions.
Coverage: 1936-1938
Caribbean Newspapers, Series 1, 1718-1876
**LImited to UNC affiliates** Fully searchable, primary-source collection of over 130 18th- and 19th-century newspapers from twenty-two Caribbean islands. Primarily English language, but a number of Danish, French, and Spanish-language titles are included. Essential for researching colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce and relations, New World slavery, and related topics.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Language: Various
Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries
**Limited to UNC affiliates** This collection presents complete collections in the entire documentary record of American slavery, focusing on the industrial uses of slave labor. The materials selected include company records; business and personal correspondence; documents pertaining to the purchase, hire, medical care, and provisioning of slave laborers; descriptions of production processes; and journals recounting costs and income. The work ledgers in these collections record slave earnings and expenditures and provide extraordinary insight into slave life. The collections document slavery in such enterprises as gold, silver, copper, and lead mining; iron manufacturing, machine shop work, lumbering, quarrying, brickmaking, tobacco manufacturing, shipbuilding, and heavy construction; and building of railroads and canals.
Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Openly available. Provides data on over 35,000 slave ship voyages which forcibly carried over 10 million Africans to the Americas from the early 16th to the mid-19th centuries. You can search for particular voyages, use the African name database of 67,000 names, view and even create maps, retrieve numerical data, read explanatory essays, and find and use lesson plans.
Access: No restrictions.

Violence Against

United States National Lynching Data, 1883-1941
Openly available. Dataset forming the basis of the article, Seguin, Charles, and Rigby, David. "National Crimes: A New National Data Set of Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941." Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World (2019-05-06) https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2378023119841780. Data distributed by CISER, Cornell University.
Violence Against American Indian and Alaska Native Women and Men: 2010 Findings from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) (ICPSR 36140)
**Limited to UNC affiliates or ICPSR members** This study examines the prevalence of violence against American Indian and Alaska Native women and men, using a large nationally representative sample from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS). More specifically, it provides estimates of sexual violence, physical violence by intimate partners, stalking, and psychological aggression by intimate partners. It also provides estimates of interracial and intraracial victimizations and briefly examines the impact of violence.
Washington Post police shootings data on GitHub
Openly available. In 2015, the Washington Post "began tracking every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty" and "more than a dozen [of its] details — including the race of the deceased, the circumstances of the shooting, whether the person was armed and whether the person was experiencing a mental-health crisis — by culling local news reports, law enforcement websites and social media, and by monitoring independent databases such as Killed by Police and Fatal Encounters. The Post conducted additional reporting in many cases." Methodology also available.

Youth

Black Youth Project

Openly available. Based at the University of Chicago, the Black Youth Project examines the attitudes, resources, and culture of the young, urban black millennial, exploring how these factors and others influence their decision-making, norms, and behavior in critical domains such as sex, health, and politics. Arguably more than any other subgroup of Americans, African American youth reflect the challenges of inclusion and empowerment in the post–civil rights period. At the core of this project will be an exploration of what young black Americans think about the political, cultural, and sexual choices and challenges confronting them and their peer group. We are especially interested in understanding what new factors help to shape or contribute to the social and political attitudes and behaviors of African American youth. Includes:

GenForward 
Democracy Remixed Memo Series (memos and fact sheets), and
Black Youth Culture Survey

Barriers to Psychological Help Seeking in Asian American Youth: A Qualitative Exploration in Schools, New York, 2015-2016 (ICPSR 38414)
**Limited to UNC affiliates or ICPSR members** In contrast to the model-minority myth, which conceptualizes Asian American youth as more educationally successful, respectful of teachers, hardworking, and cooperative that other ethnic minority youth (Chang and Sue, 2003), research has demonstrated that Asian American youth are at an increased risk for depression and suicide than their White or Black counterparts (Sen, 2004). ... Despite such needs, Asian Americans underutilize traditional mental health services (Abe-Kim et al., 2007). ... Using exploratory focus groups, this qualitative study sought to explore perceptions of barriers to seeking school-based mental health services among first- and second-generation Asian youth of immigrant origin (33 participants in 7 focus groups). The specific research questions were: What are the sources of stress that may contribute to mental health concerns among Asian and Asian American youth, and what are their perceptions of barriers to mental health service use?

Analyzing/Accessing Data from Off Campus

ITS Virtual Computing Lab
**Limited to UNC affiliates** Campus-provided lab for free, remote access to many software for data analysis and visualization.
Tableau
Data visualization software. Free version available to students but requires that you publish your data online (not useful for sensitive or protected data).
University Libraries' ICPSR guide
See instructions in Who Can Access the Data section for authenticating your (self-created) ICPSR account when not on campus.

Other Sources

Check out these other multi-disciplinary compilations of data sources.

IASSIST's Anti-Racism Resources
Offers a list of hard-to-find data sources; guides for finding additional data; essays about various countries' attitudes toward collecting race data; and more.
Resource Center for Minority Data's Anti-Racism Data Reuse Guide
"This guide was established as an effort to address and acknowledge structural and institutional racism within research systems and data practices. The materials provided in this guide are meant to help change norms and practices of data use at ICPSR by supplementing and educating all members of the scientific community interested in incorporating anti-racist and equitable data practice into their research efforts."

Data to Study Racial Inequity: Raw Data Sources

Caveat

Caveat

Contents

Raw Data Sources by Topic

Analyzing/Accessing Data from Off Campus

Other Sources