- Allison Liuzzi, you're a research manager at Wilder Research, based here in Minnesota.

Thanks for joining me to talk about racial disparities, and just how we measure those here in Minnesota.

- Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

It's my pleasure.

- Of course, so just to get into things, what is racial disparity, or what is a racial disparity by Wilder's definition, by your definition?

- Sure, sure, well, we work with data at Wilder Research, and when we're looking at data, a racial disparity exists when we see unequal outcomes between races and ethnicities.

The data we work with at Wilder Research most often shows that on average white people tend to have better quality of life outcomes than people who are black, indigenous, or people of color.

And again, that's on average, and we see this across a range of quality of life measures, including health, education, housing, transportation, workforce, and employment.

- So can you speak more to what the major racial disparities are in Minnesota?

- Sure, yeah.

Well, we know in Minnesota we have very large and persistent racial disparities.

Some of the disparities that have received the most attention include things like poverty, income, and employment, housing, home ownership.

And so, when we look at the data on those, we really see large gaps between different races and ethnicities.

For example, poverty rates statewide are 9%.

We see poverty rates that are three times higher among our American Indian and black residents, at 30% and 27% respectively.

One of the largest gaps that we see in the data is in home ownership.

While 72% of all Minnesotans own their home, only 25% of black householders own their home.

That is a large and persistent gap that's been really stubborn over time.

But what we know is that, you know, even though some of these indicators get more attention, disparities by race, we can track them back to before birth.

We know that things like maternal well-being lead to differences in low birth weight among babies that we see by race, you know, as early as birth.

We can track these disparities on into early childhood and on into school years.

And so, these disparities are large, they're persistent, and something that we continue to need to address here in Minnesota.

Even some of our most recent data that has come out during the pandemic demonstrates that certain races and ethnicities have experienced the outcomes of the pandemic in different ways.

And so, we've seen much higher rates of unemployment claims among American Indian and black residents, much higher levels of food insecurity among some of our black and Hispanic residents.

And so, we see those disparities sort of come out of other circumstances, like the pandemic, as well.

- And why is it that we measure these different sectors, these different disparities that you mentioned, whether it's home ownership, poverty, educational attainment, I believe you may have mentioned?

Why do we measure those sectors specifically when it comes to talking about quality of life for BIPOC residents here?

- Yeah, those are some of the areas that relate most closely to quality of life.

So your income allows you to purchase the things that you need.

Having stable housing ensures that you are safe and secure, and have steady access to the things you need, like healthcare, and schools, and work.

And so, the measures that we track at Wilder Research on our project Minnesota Compass came from speaking to more than 1,000 advisors over more than a decade to say what do we need to know about quality of life in the state, and what's most important to know about the things that influence our residents?

And so, these measures that we track that I'm talking about come out of that expert guidance.

- And when it comes to those measures, are they trending in a certain direction in terms of either is that disparity becoming worse in some cases, is it getting better?

- In most cases, the gaps that we see, especially between white residents and residents who are black, indigenous, and people of color have remained really stagnant.

They've stayed the same over time.

They tend to be very stubborn.

There are lots of initiatives working to close some of those gaps, or disparities that we see.

We have seen some incremental process, or progress on some indicators, one being employment.

At least pre-pandemic, we were seeing rising levels of employment among black residents and people of color, but really questionable whether those gains have held during the pandemic, 'cause as I mentioned, unemployment has really skyrocketed, especially among American Indian and black residents.

And also, even when employment rises, we need to dig deeper.

Are these good jobs that people are taking?

Do they provide wages that help people pay their bills?

Do they provide benefits like paid leave?

Are they close to home or close to transit?

So real questions about quality, even when we see movement in eliminating some of these disparities.

- And you mentioned that a lot of those disparities, a lot of those factors have been stagnant.

How long have they been in that state?

- Yeah, when we look back, the data that we have, you know, we've been tracking for multiple decades, and a lot of these indicators have remained relatively stagnant over those decades.

So a lot of work to be done to really dig into that historic disparity, and address it on into the future.

- And why would you say that data is so important for societal progress?

- Yeah, well, I'm a researcher, and so I'm biased.

(Allison laughs) But data tells us where we've been.

I mean, you just asked the question about, you know, how far back do things go?

We can tell from the data that we have where we've been.

We can say exactly where we are, and what the trend has been pointing to, and we can plot a course forward.

It's really important in our data to even dig deeper, and see where there are disparities, or differences by race, by geography, by income, where those things overlap, looking at all of those at once.

So I, you know, like I said, I'm biased, but I feel very strongly that data has to be a part of the conversation in terms of moving us forward.

Now, that said it has to be good data.

It has to be reliable.

It has to be trustworthy.

It has to be meaningful.

We need to be speaking about communities as they speak about themselves.

And so, in what ways can we obtain data in ways that help communities?

So making sure that the data we use is really reliable and meaningful is important.

- Hmm, and that maybe as you start to use that data, or as policymakers, people start to use it, perhaps it can fight against that stagnancy we've seen over the last couple of decades here?

- Absolutely, yeah, and the way that we understand data is really putting it into the hands of people to equip them with tools, more tools they need to build the communities and the conditions that they wanna see.

So really an important tool, or component of those efforts.

- Hmm.

We had a wellness question here specifically talking about despair.

So by definition, despair is correlated with talking about a loss of hope, or a loss of kind of, you know, just a loss of hope in those senses, or when we're talking about the word.

So with that being kind of the core meaning of the word, is there importance behind when we say the word disparity, knowing that despair itself is translated to a loss of hope?

- Yeah, it's such a, it's a really good bonus question, and you know, I've been thinking about sort of this concept of despair, and how the data that we're talking about fits into that.

And it's very easy to despair when you see racial disparities and how stubborn they've been, and how they can really impede progress.

And we always have to remember, you know, I'm a numbers person, but behind all of those numbers are people.

These are parents and grandparents.

They're people we love.

They're children who need us to care for them.

They're our neighbors, they're our colleagues at work.

So when we talk about these numbers, we're talking about people in our communities, and we're talking about certain groups of people who are more likely to experience negative outcomes.

And it would be very easy to despair or lose hope by looking at these numbers and thinking about the people behind these numbers, but equally as important to remember that there is a direction we can move, and we have a shared interest in moving in that direction.

You know, if we eliminate the disparities that we see by race in Minnesota, a lot of our analysis points to tens of thousands more people who are employed in our labor force, hundreds of thousands more people, or fewer people who are below the poverty line, millions more in personal income, household income, and tax revenues.

So a real shared interest in looking at these disparities, examining them closely, and then moving to action that actually narrows the gaps we see.