California may be a majority minority state and prides itself on the racial diversity. Diversity does not mean equality. A new analysis of racial disparities shows how far the state has to go to achieve the goal of equal opportunity. The study is called the race counts project. Joining me is a woman who worked on the report, Megan McClaire, director of health equity, Advancement Project. Welcome to the program.Thank you for having me.Let's start by defining two key terms the race counts project uses. Each county in California was rated as either high or low disparity and high or low performance. What does disparity mean?Disparity is looking at how well different groups are doing and compared with each other. If you're looking at graduation rates, we want to see if Latinos are graduate test graduating as any other group.What constitutes performance?You're looking at how well our people are doing and a given county so looking at graduation rates or accounts a ration rates. -- Incarceration rates.There are dozens of them from employment.We looked across 44 different indicators. We broke them into seven areas that include democracy, economic opportunity, crime and justice, access to healthcare, education and housing. Within each of those sets, we were able to provide drinking and performance and disparity.How does the race counts website work? It seems very interruptive.You are able to look at disparity and performance data at the statewide level. You're able to do deeper dives into each of the counties as well as compare them at your choice and also able to look at statewide level data across each of the seven areas.When it comes to ranking in the project, from my understanding of this coming it at number one is not a good thing.Right. You want to be high-performing and ranking number one. Is an area where we want to improve.Marion County is number one and in California.It speaks to prosperity for the few. Were looking at this fact that a rising tide does not lift all boats. If they are being left behind with the advances of the tech boom but some impacts are still being felt around education, criminal justice and housing.How did San Diego county do and terms of racial disparity?San Diego has a higher performance and lower disparity among other counties. Ranked 39th of all the 50 counties and the state. So while San Diego ranks well there are some major disparities to keep an eye on. Organizers lift up a dynamic around San Diego having a broad and middle-class.A measure used of that contributed to the disparity is the percentage of people and each race who live and poverty. What did you find on this measure?Within the economic issue area, we found that it was middle to lower disparity overall. I think when you look at issues, we still see striking differences when it comes to black and Latinos managing managerial jobs. And there twice as likely as whites to live and poverty.We have listeners and Imperial county. How did they fare overall question markI think they have a very different story to tell. It is the third most desperate county in the state. Having low overall performance. Here we find that they are really what's holding down the issues. We need to think about strategies that can improve overall performance.The areas where Imperial county is the most desperate is health care access and housing.A measure that contribute to the measure was whether or not the population was reflected by its elected leaders. What did you find an Imperial county.Despite Latinos representing 81% of the county a population, whites are seven times more likely than Latinos to hold elected offices.That is a disparity right there.Definitely. We need to focus on developing pipelines to increase diversity and ensure that our elected officials represent the people and the issues that they are serving.Overall, what was your organization hoping to accomplish and showing these disparities and all the counties and California?We came to this with the belief that we believe that California is a dramatic point. We are unique and that we have the politics and the powerful alliances and affix the power to really change the conversation and our state. We see that being able to do analysis where we can do a high definition MRI to dig deeper into the surface we will put an eye on the two dynamics among racial groups and counties. By using this compilation of data points, were hoping that we can provide to's -- tools to honing on the greatest areas of racial disparity and bring people together to develop a common course of action.Does your organization have any ideas about some of the policy changes that would be needed at the state level to decrease the disparities?I think we want to lead into the fact that there's not a one size fits all for every county. What we hope this will do is begin to spark a conversation that is centering those that are most impacted by these disparities at the table and it brings decision-makers and community leaders together and ordered to come together to provide solutions that serve all and.Will this data be updated?Yes, we are committed to updating this with regularity. We will do some updates with the newest data as it becomes available and 2018 and be updating it every two your basis.I been speaking with 2011, director of health equity, Advancement Project . You can find the survey online at their website. Thank you very much.Thank you so much for your time.
California may be a majority-minority state and pride itself on its racial diversity, but diversity doesn't mean equality.
A new analysis of racial disparities in California shows just how far the state has to go to achieve the goal of equal opportunity. The study is called the Race Counts project.
Megan McClaire is the director of health equity at the Advancement Project and worked on the study. She joins Midday Edition on Monday to discuss the results of the project.
