BLACK LIVES MATTER

Vigil for Action

Why Are We Here? 

Black Americans often run up against obstacles that are built into our society. We call this "systemic racism."  It exists in voting, health care, housing, education, employment, criminal justice, banking, food availability, sports, retail trade, public safety, even the environment. 

The numbers don’t lie.
All of the issues that affect African-Americans nationwide resonate locally. Have a look at just a few statistics that may shock you. 

Wealth “Black families' median and mean wealth is less than 15 percent that of White families.” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 9/28/2020

Housing “Seventy-four percent of neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s remain low-income to this day, and 64% remain majority-minority. Meanwhile, policies from the New Deal to the G.I. Bill to the Federal Housing Administration of the 1950s and 1960s directly invested in white homeownership while purposely excluding Black Americans.” 

Mitchell, Bruce, Ph. D., and Juan Franco. "HOLC “redlining” Maps: The Persistent Structure of Segregation and Economic Inequality." National Community Reinvestment Coalition. March 20, 2018. Perry, Andre M., Jonathan Rothwell, and David Harshbarger. "The Devaluation of Assets in Black Neighborhoods." Brookings. November 27, 2018.

“…the gap between Black and White homeownership in Virginia is now larger than it was in 1960: Only 48% of Black Virginians own homes, compared to 73% of non-Hispanic White Virginians.”  U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 ACS 5-year average.

Criminal Justice “Blacks make up about 13 percent of the population but 23 percent of those fatally shot by police since 2015. For shootings of unarmed people, blacks were 36 percent of those killed.”  Police Shootings Database, 2015-2020, The Washington Post.

Education Black students are more than four times as likely as white students to attend schools where 80% or fewer of the teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements. U. S. Department of Education, Education Brief #4, 2014

Environment "African Americans are exposed to 38% more air pollution than white people, and are 75% more likely to live near toxic pollution than the rest of the American population." 
Fumes Across the Fence Line, a 2017 report by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Clean Air Task Force, which was referenced in the Chemical and Engineering News, August 24, 2020.

Health Care “In America, Black mothers are 3-4 times more likely to die during or after childbirth and Black infants are more than twice as likely to die as white infants.” "Pregnancy-Related Deaths." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2019 "Infant Mortality." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2018