5/84Percentage of black baseball players in leadership positions (catcher, shortstop, second base): 15
6/85Percentage of black high-school graduates under 25 who are unemployed: 26.8
Percentage of white high-school dropouts under 25 who are unemployed: 26.2
6/85Amount South Africa spends to educate the average white student each year (in rand): 1,385
8/85Percentage of families in New York City with annual incomes over $50,000 that are black: 7
In South Africa: 4
12/86Rank of drugs among the most pressing city problems cited by Washington, D.C., blacks: 1
Rank of traffic among the problems cited by Washington, D.C., whites: 1
2/86Percentage of the babies born to unmarried white women under 25 that are given up for adoption: 8
5/86Percentage increase in the number of middle-class black families in the United States since 1970: 17
10/87Percentage of black Republicans who are under 30: 49
Percentage today: 46
9/87Percentage increase, since 1986, in the number of fashion pages in Vogue and Elle featuring black models: 64
3/88Percentage of black voters who consider George Bush the “craziest” candidate: 13
3/88Percentage of the top sixty Republican presidential campaign aides who are black or Hispanic: 0
6/88Average increase in an NBA team’s season attendance when a black player is replaced by a comparable white: 10,000
10/89Number of states in which there are at least as many registered black voters as registered white voters: 6
1/90Percentage of all blacks who voted in the 1984 presidential election who were first-time voters: 11
12/90Percentage of blacks in the New York City area who would have to move for the races there to be evenly distributed: 80
4/90Percentage of all billboards in white neighborhoods in Baltimore that advertise alcohol and tobacco: 20
1/91Percentage of black New Yorkers who believe it is possible that AIDS is a plot to kill blacks: 30
10/91Percentage of blacks who say that race “should never be a factor” in choosing a justice of the Supreme Court: 60
11/91Change, since 1979, in the average annual earnings of a black woman with only a high school diploma: +$279
11/91Number of times the phrase “happens to be black” has appeared in the New York Times since January 1990: 17
2/92Percentage of all employed black American men with a college degree who earned poverty-level wages in 1979: 9.5
Percentage today: 14.8
5/92Chances that a white American earning less than $28,000 per year will be denied a mortgage: 1 in 4.3
Chances that a black American earning more than $42,000 per year will be denied a mortgage: 1 in 4.7
6/92Percentage of black students in the Northeast attending public schools whose enrollment is 95 percent nonwhite: 43
8/92Number of the 32 sitting federal appellate judges appointed by President Bush who are black: 0
9/92Number of the 10 TV shows watched most often by blacks that are among the 10 watched most often by whites: 0
1/93Additional electoral votes Bill Clinton would have won if blacks in the South had voted at 1988 levels: 39
5/93Average distance between two conversing people that black Americans consider comfortable, in inches: 22
6/93Number of black men, per 100,000, incarcerated in South Africa: 681
12/94Chances that a black suspect pictured on a network TV evening news program will be shown in police custody: 1 in 3
7/94Percentage of African-Americans who say that whites are “insensitive to other people”: 76
Percentage who say that Asian-Americans are “unscrupulously crafty and devious in business”: 42
9/94Chances that a black federal judge appointed since 1977 was appointed by Bill Clinton: 3 in 4
10/95Number of states in which a black college graduate’s average income is at least 90 percent of a white college graduate’s: 4
3/95Chances that a black House staffer worked for a Republican last year: 1 in 11
3/95Ratio of the number of black teenagers citing violence as their school’s biggest problem to those citing racism: 6:1
6/95Number of the 272 U.S. prisoners executed since 1976 who were white men convicted of killing a black man: 1
9/95Chances that a black resident of South Dakota is in prison: 1 in 10
1/96Percentage of L.A. police officers who are black: 15
Percentage of L.A. residents who are: 14
1/96Chances that a black American adult attended Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963: 1 in 60
1/96Change since 1989 in the percentage of black men between 16 and 24 who say they are inclined to join the military: -19
10/96Percentage change since 1992 in the number of black delegates at the Republican National Convention: -51
12/96Chance that an American executed since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty was a white who killed a black: 1 in 100
2/96Blocks from Lincoln’s tomb that a notice was posted last year warning cabdrivers not to pick up black males: 14
Estimated number of days later that the Lincoln Yellow Cab Company agreed to “monitor” its bulletin board: 48
5/96Average percentage by which white Americans overestimate the Latino, Asian-, and African-American populations: 100
Average percentage by which members of these groups overestimate their own populations: 100
6/96Percentage of racial epithets published in the New York Times last year that consisted of the word “nigger”: 57
9/96Percentage of white NFL head coaches whose teams have made the playoffs in the last seven seasons: 46
11/97Percentage of white Americans who say that they would vote for Colin Powell over Al Gore for president: 53
4/97Percentage of black teenagers who say it is “extremely important” to learn U.S. history and geography in high school: 59
Estimated number there today: 2,500
9/97Percentage change in black students admitted to Berkeley Law School since California banned affirmative action: -81
9/97Number of the 14 black students that the school admitted this year who have decided not to attend: 14
6/98Rank of ER among prime-time TV shows that are most popular with African-American viewers: 19
6/98Percentage of African-Americans who wish Bill Clinton could run for a third term: 74
5/99Number of times that a white man has been executed for killing a black man in Texas since 1860: 0
11/00Estimated number of hours of labor performed by African-American slaves between 1619 and 1865: 222,505,049
Estimated value of that labor, compounded at 6 percent interest through 1993: $97,100,000,000,000
2/01Chances that a young black man living in Los Angeles’s Watts neighborhood is unemployed or in prison: 7 in 10
8/01Chances that a Mississippi African American opposes removing the state flag’s Confederate emblem: 3 in 10
8/01Duration in decades of an Alabama study that allowed hundreds of syphilitic African Americans to go untreated: 4
Number of decades between the end of the study and the Alabama legislature’s expression of “regret” over it in May: 3
9/01Percentage of African-American children in the South attending majority-white schools in 1976 and 1996, respectively: 38, 35
9/01Maximum fine in 1829 for teaching an African American living in Georgia to read or write: $500
8/02Average amount by which the price a black American pays for a new car exceeds that paid by a white for the same model: $420
4/03Percentage of applications from alumni’s children accepted by Middlebury College in 1990 and 2002: 70, 45
Percentage of applications from non-alumni African Americans accepted in those years: 57, 57
4/04Median income of black U.S. families as a percentage of white families’ in 1968 and 2002, respectively: 60, 58
4/04Year in which Citigroup formed a company called Buconero, Italian for “black hole,” to help Parmalat conceal debt: 1999
4/04Factor by which Florida’s white defendants are more likely than blacks to get a plea bargain blocking felony conviction: 1.5
5/04Factor by which the unemployment rate of African-American college graduates exceeds that of white graduates: 1.9
5/04Average percentage of African-American men age 16 to 64 in New York City who were employed each month last year: 52
10/05Months that a Louisiana state judge was suspended for wearing an Afro wig and blackface to a Halloween party last year: 6
2/05Number of black U.S. senators during the entire 1800s, the entire 1900s, and today, respectively: 2, 2, 1
3/05Percentage of Britons who say their neighborhood would disapprove if more Iraqi immigrants moved in: 64
Percentage who say this about black immigrants from Africa: 43
5/05Percentage change since 1920 in the number of white and black U.S. farmers, respectively: -62, -97
8/05Number of New Orleans bars visited this spring by an undercover team investigating racial discrimination: 40
9/05Months after his 2004 defeat that Ralph Nader said the Democratic Party had made him feel “like a nigger ”: 7
9/05Average percentage of students in New York State’s majority-white school districts who graduate in four years: 79
11/06Minimum decibel level, on average, at which African Americans in a recent study could hear a high-pitched sound: 21
3/06Chance that the family of an African-American child is too poor to qualify for the full U.S. child tax credit: 1 in 2
7/06Rank of atheists among minorities whom Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry: 1
Rank of Muslims and African Americans, respectively: 2, 3
8/06Chance that a member of an all-white jury decides a black defendant’s guilt before deliberating, in a recent study: 1 in 2
9/06Average income of an African American today, expressed as a percentage of the average income of a white American: 74
Average income of an American child of Mexican immigrants, expressed in the same terms: 71
1/07Factor by which African Americans are more likely than white Americans to believe their votes will not be tallied: 3.5
11/07Portion of whites and African Americans, respectively, who say that immigrants take American jobs: 1/4, 1/3
Percentage of African Americans who have not: 20
11/07Number of the top ten TV shows watched by African Americans in 1997 that were also among the top ten shows overall: 1
Number today: 8
11/07Percentage of all race-hate crimes in L.A. in which the victims are Latino and the perpetrators African-American: 18
Percentage that are the reverse: 41
4/07Factor by which the overall death rate for U.S. blacks aged 15 to 64 exceeds the rate for blacks in state prisons: 2
5/07Percentage of Americans in February who said they would be unlikely to vote for a candidate who has been divorced twice: 26
Percentage who said they would be unlikely to vote for a 72-year-old: 58
Percentage who said they would be unlikely to vote for an African American or a smoker, respectively: 6, 21
11/08Total value of federal small-business contracts obtained by Blackwater between 2005 and 2007: $110,000,000
5/08Percentage of the population of Los Angeles County in 1990 and 2006, respectively, that was African American: 14, 9
5/08Chances that an African American thinks his or her “life will improve” in the future: 9 in 20
Chances that a white American thinks conditions will improve for African Americans in the future: 11 in 20