Research & Studies

Only 25 films out of the top 100 highest-earning movies in 2024 featured a nonwhite lead or co-lead actor. These 25 films feature a combined 26 protagonists, 10 of whom are Black.

A study led by Adenique Lisse, a Ph.D. student at the University of Connecticut, has found a correlation between Black girls hair dissatisfaction and an increased likelihood of depression that was not found among White and Latina girls.

"Ensuring all Texas students have the opportunity to succeed will directly strengthen our workforce and economy," write the report's authors. "While it’s too early to assess the impact of SB 17, continuous monitoring of student outcomes is critical to improving efficiency and maximizing the potential of our future workforce."

In an examination of six different kinds of school discipline and punishment, three comparison groups, and 16 subpopulations, a new study has found that "no matter how you slice it, Black students are overrepresented among those punished and excluded."

Since 2013, the share of Black faculty and staff at the University of California and California State University systems has slightly decreased, while their representation at California Community Colleges has experienced a small increase.

Over the course of the twenty-first century, the Black population in the United States has grown by 33 percent to a total of 48.3 million. In 2023, 27 percent of Black American adults have completed at least a bachelor's degree.

"To achieve a workforce that reflects the diversity of the U.S. population, academic medicine must transform its culture and the practices that surround faculty appointments and promotions," write the study authors, who found White male medical professors are more likely than their peers from nearly every other racial or gender group to receive a promotion.

Postpartum women from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups who report experiences with racial microaggressions during pregnancy or delivery and who live in communities with historically high levels of structural racism are significantly more likely to experience high blood pressure.

"Immigrant status appears to transform the racialized hierarchies in residential patterns, thus challenging sociological notions of a monolithic Blackness," writes study author Dr. Nima Dahir, assistant professor at Ohio State University.

More than a quarter of the 119th U.S. Congress is non-White. There are currently 66 Black voting members across the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, an increase from the 60 Black Americans who served in the 118th Congress.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2022 less than 195,000 of the 5.9 million employer firms in the United States in 2022 were owned by Black Americans.

In 2024, the share of Black applicants to U.S. medical schools increased by 2.8 percent from 2023. However, the share of Black medical school matriculants decreased by 11.6 percent. Notably, there has been year-over-year progress in overall Black medical school representation, which has risen to from 7.9 percent in 2017 to 10.3 percent in 2024.

Black and White teachers in New York City are less likely to quit or transfer to another school if their school has a principal and a higher proportion of teachers of their same race.

A team of scholars led by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta has found Black athletes are five times as likely as White athletes to experience a heart attack or die from sudden cardiac complications.

According to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, the percentage of students who began college in the fall of 2018 and earned a credential within six years rose to 61.1 percent. For Black students who enrolled in 2018, 43.8 percent had earned a degree or other credential within six years. This is more than 17 percentage points below the overall rate. And the racial gap has increased in recent years.

A new study by scholars at the medical schools of New York University and Yale University finds that African American or Black students were less likely than their White counterparts to feel that medical school training contributed to their development as a person and physician.

Of African Americas who had firm employment commitments by the time they received their doctorate in 2023, 25.3 had jobs in the corporate world compared to 36.1 percent of Whites who had job commitments by the time they were awarded their doctorate. For both Blacks and Whites, doctoral graduates are becoming increasingly more likely to take high-paying jobs in the private sector rather that staying in the academic world.

A new study from scholars at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Alabama, has found racial achievement gaps grow more quickly in districts where Black and Hispanic students attend higher-poverty schools than their White peers.

The National Bureau of Economic Research has examined the long-term effects on educational attainment and economic outcomes for Black and Hispanic students in Texas, California, Washington, and Florida - the first four states to ban affirmative action in higher education admissions decisions.

A new report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development shows that in January 2024, nearly 228,000 of the 771,000 homeless population was African American. Thus, Black Americans made up 29.5 percent of all those classified as homeless.