There’s plenty of evidence that race and class can affect the wellbeing of children and adults in many ways. However, it’s hard to know exactly how these connections work, especially because race and class often overlap. A recent study, described by The Washington Post, attempted to detangle the two by comparing incarceration rates by both race and class (as measured by wealth). The national results showed that black children who grew up in wealthy households were still more likely to have been incarcerated than poor white children. The same pattern held for Hispanic children, suggesting that disparate incarceration rates across races are not solely due to wealth-related factors. The graph below shows incarceration rates for different racial groups by wealth.
Although race and class are often deeply intertwined, this study suggests, as a researcher of the study said, that “Race trumps class, at least when it comes to incarceration.”
By Karissa Propson
