While California is often regarded as one large, liberal utopia, the Golden State does not always shine when it comes to racial equity, according to Advancement Project California, a civil rights group. The group has created Race Counts, an interactive web tool that analyzes the unequal burdens shouldered throughout the state. This project looks at seven key quality-of-life measures—economic opportunity, healthcare access, education, housing, democracy, crime and justice, and healthy built environments—and shows how minority communities fare on each.
Race Counts maps out these variables in each of California’s 58 counties. Click into Monterey County, for example, and you will learn that African American youth who live there are three times more likely to face truancy arrests than their white counterparts. In Fresno County, white residents are employed in managerial positions at double the rate of black and Asian residents and triple the rate of Latinos and Native Americans. Black residents are 15 times more likely to be incarcerated than white residents in Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley.
