Data to Study Racial Inequity: Data Sources with Exploration Interfaces

Openly available. Provides access to a variety of related datasets: court cases, juvenile [jail] populations, victims, arrests, residential placement, etc. Most datasets (though not all) include race as a variable. Researchers may be interested in exploring the proportion of Black and African American children considered "delinquent" in relation to the proportion of Blacks and African Americans in the general population. Since "delinquency" often begins with "misbehavior" in and suspensions from school, and 79% of public school teachers* are white, racial bias, even if unconscious, inevitably creeps into such judgements (*in the 2017-2018 school year according to the NCES' Digest of Education Statistics). Consider also, Fabelo, T., et al. "Breaking school rules: A statewide study of how discipline relates to student’s success and juvenile justice involvement." (2011).

Openly available. "Which neighborhoods in America offer children the best chance to rise out of poverty? The Opportunity Atlas answers this question using anonymous data following 20 million Americans from childhood to their mid-30s. Now you can trace the roots of today's affluence and poverty back to the neighborhoods where people grew up. See where and for whom opportunity has been missing, and develop local solutions to help more children rise out of poverty." Author and director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, Ibram X. Kendi discusses the achievement gap as really being the opportunity gap: those with lower incomes have fewer resources that would afford them opportunities--better-funded schools, tutors, private classes, even mentors--that would help them learn to perform at a higher level. (Kendi, I., How to Be an Antiracist. New York: One World, 2019. pp.100-103.)

Openly available. "Achievement gaps occur when one group of students (e.g., students grouped by race/ethnicity, gender) outperforms another group and the difference in average scores for the two groups is statistically significant (i.e., larger than the margin of error). NCES explored the achievement gaps between Black and White, and Hispanic and White, students using NAEP data to illuminate patterns and changes in these gaps over time, and identify factors that might underlie such gaps."

Note: Director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University and author, Ibram X. Kendi, discusses the achievement gap as really being the opportunity gap: those with lower incomes have fewer resources that would afford them opportunities to achieve better. (See more detail in The Opportunity Atlas entry in the Children theme section.) Likewise, the National Education Association notes the disproportional representation of culturally and ethnically diverse children identified as needing special education when what they really need is more opportunities to fill a gap between their experience and what white teachers expect.

Openly available. Provide information about school- and district-level data on a variety of topics including student performance and academic growth, and school and student characteristics, among others. Cover all North Carolina public schools, including charter and alternative schools.

Openly available. Non-profit journalism organization, ProPublica, published a trove of education data in 2018 on more than 96,000 public schools across the country. Here’s how to use the database to examine local schools.

Openly available. Biennial (i.e., every other school year) survey required by the U.S. Department of Education’s (Department) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) since 1968. "[T]he 2015–16...data from a universe of all public local educational agencies (LEAs) and schools, including long-term secure juvenile justice facilities, charter schools, alternative schools, and schools serving students with disabilities."

Openly available. Public resource that provides access to nearly 20 collections of public-use data covering U.S. births, deaths, cancer diagnoses, tuberculosis cases, vaccinations, environmental exposures, and population estimates, among many other topics.

Openly available. A collaboration between the COVID Tracking Project and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research gathering the most complete and up-to-date race and ethnicity data on COVID-19 in the United States. (Complete dataset is also available.)

Openly available. Statistical Reports & Tools are different options within the Data, Tools & Statistics section.

Openly available. Provides customized reports of health data based on user-specified selection of variables (e.g. age, race, county).

Openly available. An interactive, online database that provides fatal and nonfatal injury, violent death, and cost of injury data.

Openly available. The Current Population Survey is one of the longest running surveys in the U.S., dating back to post-WWII. The Census Bureau's /mdat/ tool provides history just to 2014--see Raw Data Sources for more extensive 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.

Openly available. A long-running public opinion survey offering data about every facet of life.

Openly available. Using data from National Prisoner Statistics, allows users to examine national and jurisdictional prisoner data for both federal and state correctional authorities. You can view year-end populations, admissions, and releases by legal jurisdiction, physical custody in private facilities and local jails, imprisonment rate, citizenship status, prison capacity, juvenile or adult age group, race, sex and other prisoner characteristics. (Note: a general link is offered since so many other databases are available from BJS, although not all of them present data by race.) Munoz et al. (2004) found: "In addition to being charged with more serious offenses than their White counterparts, a significantly higher proportion of Latinos/as (23.8%) are charged with two or more misdemeanor offenses. Together, this translates into a significantly higher proportion of Latinos/as (18.1%) receiving a fine and/or some other sentence. The data thus far support hypothesized contentions that Latinos/as would be more at risk than Whites in misdemeanor processing and sentencing." (Munoz, E. A., McMorris, B. J., & DeLisi, M. J. [2004]. Misdemeanor Criminal Justice: Contextualizing Effects of Latino Ethnicity, Gender, and Immigrant Status. Race, Gender & Class, 11(4), 112, Results section.)