Using median income as a proxy for financial status is a very imperfect practice. Measuring the middle of an income distribution—median income—of a particular city often masks the earning and labor disparities of particular groups that are not employed by the dominant industries in a market. That’s especially the case for Black families when popular publications put out various lists for the wealthiest places to live. Not everyone benefits from a thriving economy. That’s why colleagues of mine within the Brookings Metro program encourage more robust measures of economic health that include growth, inclusion, and prosperity.4 However, detailing strength among Black populations within Black cities offers a vantage point to opportunities that may lead to investments.
FIGURE I-1. BLACK-MAJORITY CITIES WITH MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME ABOVE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE ($57,652) IN 2017
SOURCE: American Community Survey U.S. Census Bureau estimates.
I examined home prices in these neighborhoods and found that many of the homes were of similar quality and had similar neighborhood amenities as those in similarly situated White neighborhoods. However, they were priced significantly less—the basis for my devaluation studies. One might say homeowners in Black neighborhoods received a discount. However, those same communities are hemorrhaging vital tax revenues and equity merely because of the concentration of Black people. The price difference excited me because it was clear that homes in Black neighborhoods were not the problem society portends them to be—they were devalued. Instead of centering White neighborhoods as a standard to be reached, I sought Black assets and found a path toward a solution that didn’t involve fixing Black people. We can pursue solving for devaluation.
When acclaimed author Toni Morrison was asked in a 1998 interview whether she would begin to feature White characters more prominently in her work, she responded, “You can’t understand how powerfully racist that question is, can you? Because you could never ask a White author, ‘When are you going to write about Black people?’ … Even the inquiry comes from a position of being in the center.” Morrison continued, “There are no pluses for me. Being an African-American writer is sort of like being a Russian writer, who writes about Russia, in Russian, for Russians. And the fact that it gets translated and read by other people is a benefit. It’s a plus. But he’s not obliged to ever consider writing about French people or Americans or anybody.”5
A critical disadvantage in public policy research with the use of White centering in disparity research is that it distracts our attention from finding potential solutions that can positively impact the Black community. It keeps a focus on having Black people strive for benchmarks made impossible through racism. My examinations of Black people among Black-majority cities is a deliberate attempt to look for variations, evidence that may be signs of positive resistance, adaptation, and struggle that similarly situated people can learn from and use. It’s also about my learning how to tell our story.
Ultimately, the point of view of the researcher determines what group becomes the standard against which all others are measured. All researchers are filled with cultural norms and traditions that are inextricably linked to the racial setting, which ultimately influences our frameworks, methods, and findings. And it’s impossible to remove our childhood experiences from our point of view. Our segregated histories influence the subtle perspectives of our work. Research can never be neutral, above the fray. All research is imbued with the norms and values of the person conducting it. Inclusion is in my family history and subsequently inseparable from my scholarship. That is to say, there is nothing dispassionate about research. This truth is especially true when it comes to privilege and racial bias. I once heard author and scholar Brittany Cooper say, “Ain’t shit about White supremacy rigorous.”6 In other words, Whiteness gets in the way of quality. This is why truly rigorous research actively addresses our biases, particularly around racial prejudice.
Think tanks and universities must see diversifying the stable of researchers as a proactive solution to hedge against bias and to add value to Black communities. While there is no guarantee that Black, Latino, Asian, or Indigenous researchers will challenge the orthodoxy they were trained in, they are more likely to have insights into how the methods and findings may or may not serve the community the person lives in or is from. When the Public Health Service began studying, in 1932, the progression of syphilis—the Tuskegee Experiment—by giving hundreds of Black men the disease without their consent, it’s a severe understatement to say they could have used some Black researchers (from any hood). That study went on for forty years.
Investment in researchers from underrepresented groups is an investment in rigor. It’s also an ethical and moral investment. However, the methods and perspectives researchers are trained to use must also change if we are going to add value to communities that have been robbed of vital resources by racism.
All researchers need to learn how to center a community or group other than White people. The default position of Whiteness leads to horribly inaccurate and predictable interpretations of results: namely, that Blacks need to catch up. We need to focus more on real sources of disparities. The evidence that racism is directed at Black people to impede their social and economic progress keeps growing (and growing), but the focus on disparity and individual behaviors persists.
For instance, 2018 research from the Quality of Opportunity Project, a research undertaking led by noted economist Raj Chetty, shows that even wealthy Black men who live in tony neighborhoods are more likely than their White male counterparts to have sons who will grow up to be poor.7 The researchers controlled for many factors, including the family’s socioeconomic background, neighborhood, education, and wealth, among other things, and still disparities existed. The New York Times created a stunning data visualization based on the study that showed how Black children in wealthy families become adults in lower income brackets.8 The graphics also represent how different racial groups that started out rich end up poor; even here, more Black children end up poor than kids of other races. Many are calling this research groundbreaking.9
The charts presented in the Times’ reporting also highlighted White men’s elevated position in society. Instead of focusing on the negative impact of racism on Black boys, the headline of that story could have read, “Racism enables Whites to maintain wealth.” Yet the reporting on the study and most of the feedback inexplicably placed the scrutiny on Black men. So I was partly wrong. There are instances when we should center White people: when we spotlight racism and privilege.
Of all the reactions to the amazing charts in the Times article, you didn’t hear much about White male power. Economist Arindrajit Dube summarized this in a tweet: “If you overlay the @nhendren82 (+coauthors) percentile-percentile plots, it suggests the exceptional mobility is for White men. This point should be discussed more when hypothesizing explanations for these patterns.”10 Dube is saying we need to scrutinize White privilege. What society needs is more evidence of how racism works—for the benefit of White people. Expose that. Put that in the headline.
Research that merely lays out racial disparities without acknowledging the role of racism ignores the sources of inequality. It ultimately leaves little option but to blame Black people for hurting themselves. It fuels fears that inferior populations are ruining cities. Worse, the only people empowered by these data are the