In Sandtown, the Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived and that is the epicenter of the riots and protests, more than half the population is unemployed. Nearly one-third of the residential properties are vacant. Almost one-third of families live below the poverty line.
6 charts that show the huge gap between black and white lives in Baltimore
Libby Nelson was Vox’s editorial director, politics and policy, leading coverage of how government action and inaction shape American life. Libby has more than a decade of policy journalism experience, including at Inside Higher Ed and Politico. She joined Vox in 2014.
There are massive racial disparities in Maryland (and Baltimore in particular) on everything from educational attainment to infant mortality rates to life expectancy. Sandtown is almost entirely black. Residents there are often faring even worse than black residents in the rest of the city. But they’re all part of a larger story about giant gaps between the experience of the city’s white residents and its black ones.
1) There’s a huge disparity in household income
2) Nearly one-third of black Baltimore residents live in poverty
White residents of Baltimore are only one-third as likely to live in poverty as black residents, and less likely than Maryland residents overall.
3) Black residents are less likely to finish high school
In Sandtown, less than two-thirds of the residents have a high school diploma.
4) Infant mortality is higher for Baltimore’s black residents
The high infant mortality rate for Baltimore’s black residents mimics trends in the state as a whole.
5) Baltimore’s white residents can expect to live longer — four years longer
6) Between 2010 and 2014, black people in Maryland were five times more likely to be killed by a police officer
That data is statewide, from an American Civil Liberties Union report on 109 people who were killed in encounters with police. But data from Baltimore suggest that the disparities are even wider in the city: nine black men and two white men were killed by police in 2012, according to the police department’s report.
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