We live in what Jessica Welburn calls the “paradox of the post-civil rights era.”
Welburn, an associate professor of sociology and African-American studies at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, has noticed the hopeful signs: More blacks since the 1960s attend college, have moved into the middle class and can afford their own homes.
But high unemployment and incarceration rates, lagging health indicators and a widening wealth gap compared with whites also remain a harsh reality for blacks in Iowa and across the nation.
“Even in the areas we kind of look to for progress,” Welburn said, “there’s a lot more of a complicated picture than people originally thought.”
Iowa is home to 101,368 African-Americans, or 3.3 percent of the population. But blacks are expected to become 5.5 percent of our state by 2040. These issues won’t go away.
With race relations, America seems to be in “a phase where there’s a false belief that things were equalized, and they were not,” Welburn said
Nagging racial disparities are a statistical reality that help frame the issues that the Register’s “Black Iowa: Still Unequal?” series will explore in the months ahead. Some examples:
• FAMILY LIFE: The very structure of black and white families in Iowa can be starkly different. Married families represent only about a quarter of African-American households in Iowa, compared with more than half of white households. A single mom lives with her kids in 20 percent of black Iowa households, compared with about 5 percent of white households.
• POVERTY: Thirty-nine percent of black families in Iowa with children under 18 live below the poverty level, compared with 13.9 percent for the state overall.
Food stamps are received by 42 percent of black households, compared with 11 percent of white households.
• HOUSING: More blacks are renters (73.4 percent) than Iowans in general (29.2 percent).
• JOBS AND INCOME: The median income for black Iowa households is $27,406 compared with $52,652 for whites.
Even before the recession, blacks endured an unemployment rate two or more times higher than whites — as high as 20 percent in 2005. The 2013 comparative statistics show an 11.6 percent unemployment rate for blacks, compared with 4.8 percent overall.
• HEALTH: Shortly before the Affordable Care Act kicked in, only 44 percent of black Iowans had private health insurance, compared with 77 percent of white Iowans.
An overwhelming percentage of white Iowa children, 91 percent, had a health status of “excellent” or “very good” in a 2013 University of Iowa Public Policy Center study, compared with just 76 percent of black children.
• EDUCATION: Five percent of students in Iowa’s K-12 classrooms are African-American, yet 14 percent of all school dropouts are black. And this figure has worsened in a little more than a decade: Only 8 percent of dropouts were black in the 2002-2003 school year.
Fewer black students are at grade level than their white or Hispanic classmates, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress scores. By this measure, black students in Iowa also fare worse than the national average — 56 percent of them are below grade level in Iowa, compared with half of black students nationally.
Black students’ graduation rates have edged up through the decades, from just 64 percent in 1996 to 75 percent in 2002 and 79 percent last year. But they still lag behind Iowa’s overall graduation rate of 91 percent.
There are just 15 percent of black Iowans age 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree, compared with 26 percent overall.
• INCARCERATION: Iowa most stands out from national norms — and not in a positive way — in key criminal justice statistics.
A USA Today analysis of census data combined with FBI and U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics found that blacks were arrested nearly 10 times as often as other races in Iowa. Bettendorf (9.9 times) and Cedar Falls (9.7) had the highest disparities.
Iowa in 2007, the most recent data available, ranked worst in the nation in the ratio of blacks in prison, according to the Sentencing Project, based in Washington, D.C.
Blacks represent more than a quarter of Iowa’s prison population.
A study released in 2013 by the ACLU showed that blacks in Iowa were about eight times more likely than whites to be arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana, even though both groups used the drug at about the same rate. That disparity was the worst in the nation.
Chief Justice Mark Cady of the Iowa Supreme Court in his State of the Judiciary address at the start of the year called for Iowa to lead the way in reducing theses disparities. He noted that 9.4 percent of Iowa’s adult black men are incarcerated — the third-highest percentage in the nation.
There has been a push for Iowa to join the “ban the box” movements — removing questions about criminal records from the first stage of job applications to give candidates a chance to show their qualifications before disclosing their criminal history.
Despite some of these grim statistics, Welburn also struck a hopeful tone. Although driven by one crisis after another, this past year has seen a renewed focus on entrenched racial disparities in modern America. Intense, sustained news coverage “has enabled the discussion to have more of a national audience,” she said.
“The severity of the events and the persistence of activists, protesters, community leaders and others of not letting the stories go away, not letting people lose sight of the loss of life,” Welburn said, “has enabled some of these issues to be brought to the forefront.”
Kathy Bolten, Matthew Patane, Mackenzie Ryan and Grant Rodgers contributed to this report. Sources: U.S. Census 2011-2013 3-Year Community Survey, State Data Center, Iowa Condition of Education Report.
African-American population in Iowa
Top 5 counties
1. Polk, 29,212
2. Scott, 12,571
3. Black Hawk, 11,769
4. Linn, 9,270
5. Johnson, 7,670
Over half the growth of the African-American population (57.6 percent) from 2000 to 2013 was in just four counties: Polk, Linn, Johnson and Scott.
Top 5 cities
1. Des Moines, 21,102
2. Davenport, 11,399
3. Waterloo, 10,648
4. Cedar Rapids, 7,975
5. Iowa City, 3,824
Other facts at a glance
• AGE: The median age of Iowa’s African-Americans was 25.8 as of 2013. The median age for the state was 38.1. In that same year, 9.2 percent of the black population was under age 5, compared with 6.3 percent of preschoolers for the whole state.
• WORKFORCE: More of Iowa’s African-Americans work in service occupations than whites (26 percent to 16 percent) and in production, transportation and material (23 percent to 16 percent). Fewer blacks work in management, business, sciences and arts than whites (25 percent to 35 percent).
• BUSINESS OWNERSHIP: African-Americans owned 2,190 businesses in 2007, a 98 percent increase since 1992.
• VETERANS: 3,320 African-Americans in Iowa were veterans of the U.S. armed forces, as of 2013.
Sources: State Data Center of Iowa, 2011-2013 American Community Survey
Conversations video series
Conversations among friends and family — advice we give our children, discussion about life’s hard lessons — are sometimes much different than those we have with outsiders.
Register visual journalists Michael Zamora and Zach Boyden-Holmes will bring you glimpses of such authentic conversations related to Iowa’s black experience.
Watch as Kris Jones, a Waterloo father, talks with his youngest son about race and growing up. Go to DesMoinesRegister.com/BlackIowaConversations.
If you’d like to take part in our Conversations series, in which two people share perspectives or a personal story, contact multimedia strategist Kelli Brown at kkbrown@dmreg.com, 515-284-8123, or on Twitter @kellikaybrown.
More ways to participate
WRITE: We invite Iowans from all walks of life to submit columns sharing their personal experiences or perspectives on the black experience in Iowa. Contact Lynn Hicks, opinion/lead engagement editor, if you’re interested in writing a column: lhicks@dmreg.com, 515-284-8290, or on Twitter @LynnHicks.
DISCUSS: Share your comments about the project in the comments section with each story online. Or come to a forum to discuss these issues with experts and your neighbors. You’ll hear more about the forums as the project unfolds.
