Please Note: Throughout this section, you’ll notice certain words or phrases are highlighted to provide links to provide further education and understanding of specific topics. All opinions and thoughts presented in these resources are those of the author(s) and do not constitute the opinions of the Foundation. We recommend you perform your own additional research or speak with known experts regarding these topics. If you know of additional resources or publications that would be helpful to share as part of this effort, please email impact@foundationformetrowest.org.

Addressing racial inequity is essential to improving quality of life for all and requires attention on the national, state, and local level. For our region, we examine a wide range of indicators that highlight racial and ethnic disparities in our population, spanning Health, Education, Economic Security and other areas.

While the racial disparity data exists on a state and national level, it is important to understand how these indicators impact neighbors in the MetroWest region. Each indicator is illuminating and significant on its own. Examining all the indicators in this section as a whole, however, tells a broader narrative about the effects of systemic racism, many of the foundations of which can be traced back to the history of slavery in the United States. Though slavery has long been abolished, systems and policies across the United States have been built with the oppression of people of color in mind, including the denial of opportunities, resources, and needs highlighted in the data from education and housing to healthcare and more.

These policies and systems, which have had compounding negative effects on people of color throughout generations, include housing policies such as redlining, employment discrimination, unequal access to financial services and capital, education systems that fail to equitably serve all populations, inadequate health care delivery, unjust policies and practices in policing and criminal justice leading to a gap in incarceration rates, and many others that inhibited opportunities for people of color to transfer wealth from generation to generation.

As a result of historic and current policies and systems that have put people of color at a disadvantage, we see large disparities in the indicators included in this section, which range from rates of infant mortality and adult education levels to poverty and incarceration. We invite you to explore the data in this section in the context of the structural and systemic racism that underlies these disparities.