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IN THIS ISSUE

Racial Disparities

Sen. Barack Obama’s recent speech on race traced today’s racial inequalities to a history of discrimination, neighborhood segregation, barriers to homeownership, and blocked opportunities for economic advancement. That history, the candidate said, has resulted in a persistent wealth and income gap between blacks and whites and concentrations of poverty in primarily black neighborhoods.

Urban Institute researchers have studied racial discrimination and segregation as well as the resulting disparities—in education, housing, employment, income, and health care—that reinforce and build upon one another. Our experts can provide facts and perspectives for the complex conversation about race in America.

KEY FACTS

• Housing discrimination against blacks persists today, although it dropped significantly during the 1990s. For example, in 2000, black homebuyers experienced discrimination 17 percent of the time they asked about homes advertised for sale, down from 29 percent in 1989. And black renters faced discrimination in 22 percent of their inquiries, down from 26 percent a decade earlier.
• Blacks are much more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods. In the Washington, D.C., region, for example, blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods in 2003.
• Minority neighborhoods, even in the suburbs, generally have lower house values than comparable white neighborhoods, which means a lower property tax base to fund public schools and more limited opportunities for wealth accumulation from rising home values.
• Residential segregation distances minority jobseekers from areas of employment growth and opportunity. Although many minorities now live in the suburbs, these generally are not the neighborhoods that offer the most promising job prospects.
• In Washington, D.C., blacks were considerably more likely to get a subprime home purchase loan than whites (15.4 percent vs. 1.8 percent) in 2004. Rates for subprime refinancing loans were also higher for blacks than whites (17.3 percent vs. 3.2 percent).
• In 2006, the national median household income was $48,201. Broken down by race, the median income was $52,423 for whites and $31,969 for blacks.

Additional analysis is available in UI reports:

• Discrimination in Metropolitan Housing Markets—Margery Austin Turner, Stephen L. Ross, George Galster, and John Yinger
• Racial Disparities and the New Federalism—Margery Austin Turner and Marla McDaniel
• The Labor Market and Young Black Men: Updating Moynihan’s Perspective—Harry Holzer
• Black Males Left Behind—Ronald B. Mincy
• Do Assets Change the Racial Profile of Poverty among Older Adults?—Barbara Butrica

Decision Points '08 is published weekly by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan social and economic research organization.
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