Segregation, racism stifle economic mobility for many in the Black community

For nearly a decade, researchers with Opportunity Insights, a nonprofit think tank based at Harvard University, have studied economic mobility to identify factors that lead to greater outcomes for children and to find potential remedies for obstacles that get in the way.

“The incomes of Hispanic and Asian Americans are approaching those of white Americans over generations; those of Black Americans and American Indians are not,” the group notes on its website. “Differences in family characteristics — parental marriage rates, education, wealth — and differences in ability explain very little of the black-white intergenerational gap.”

The group says universal basic income programs, minimum wage increases and other efforts affecting a single generation “can help narrow racial gaps at a given point in time. However, they are less likely to narrow racial disparities in the long run.”

The group proposes addressing environmental conditions that can be changed. Mentoring programs for Black boys was one example the group listed. But there were several others that caught my eye like: “efforts to reduce racial bias among whites, interventions to reduce discrimination in criminal justice, and efforts to facilitate greater interaction across racial groups.”

I wonder how plausible those remedies are in a place like Chicago, the nation’s perennial leader among big cities in racial segregation of Black residents. In every decennial census since 1980, according to data from Brown University, Chicago has topped the list among the most populous 25 American cities in segregation measures of Black residents with their Asian, Latino and white counterparts.

While those figures measure the lack of proximity between Black residents and members of those other groups, I’ve always viewed segregation measurements as a proxy for racial bias — both conscious and unconscious.

If you’re uncomfortable living among Black people or sending your children to schools with many Black children, you’re probably not likely to trust Black people or hire them. If you’re uncomfortable traveling to Black communities, you’re probably not going to shop there or open a business there. And that lack of social and economic interaction are among the factors driving inequitable economic mobility.

In addition to being the most segregated big city in America, Chicago may also be the worst big city for Black economic mobility, according to my analysis of data from The Opportunity Atlas, an online tool from Opportunity Insights and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The tool provides economic mobility figures — essentially the household income at age 35 for individuals born between 1978 and 1983 — by parent income, and child gender, race and ethnicity for more than 70,000 census tracts across the country.

Among Chicago census tracts, the median household income for low-income Black children at age 35 was just 40%, 50% and 60% of the median household income figures for low-income Asian, white and Latino children at age 35, respectively, according to my analysis. Those percentages were ranked 45th, 50th and 50th, respectively, among similar figures for the nation’s 50 largest cities.

But bias and discrimination aren’t just racial, they’re also spatial.

While low-income Black children witnessed lower economic growth than the children of other groups, economic mobility was lower for children of all racial or ethnic groups in census tracts with high percentages of Black residents compared to children in census tracts with low percentages of Black residents.

The analysis showed a negative correlation among Chicago’s census tracts between the economic mobility figures of low-income Asian, Black, Latino and white children with the share of Black population. Essentially, across the city’s census tracts, as the percentage of Black population increased, the household income at age 35 decreased for low-income children of all racial or ethnic groups, particularly Black and Latino children.

Conversely, the analysis showed positive correlations for economic mobility of all low-income children with the percentages of Asian and white residents — household income at age 35 increased for low-income children of all groups as the percentages of Asian and white residents increased.

Most parents want the best for their children. They want their kids to earn more money, own a bigger house, see more of the world and live a better life than they have. Parents will save, sacrifice and even splurge, in some cases, to make their kids’ dreams come true.

But some things are beyond their control, like how their communities are perceived and how their children are judged. For some, those perceptions work in their favor, and for others it’s just the opposite.

The data don’t mean that Black children and Black communities can’t achieve economic success — there’s plenty of Black excellence abound to prove that it can be done. But the stereotyping of Black people and Black communities have real consequences, and the persistence of those beliefs only makes an already uphill climb even harder.

Alden Loury is data projects editor for WBEZ and writes a column for the Sun-Times.