Race Equity Data Explorer

This Data Explorer is designed to help the user understand that historic and current policies and practices have reduced opportunity for people who are not white with the hope that this data can contribute to lasting changes. Changes that would increase racial equity – so that fairness and justice will be the norm in Pinellas County.

Data tends to highlight the ways that communities are compromised, showing despair rather than the assets, both human and physical. Seldom do data show all the capability and potency that exists but is not yet visible to everyone and is not yet connected.

The Data Explorer aspires to connect more fully with residents who best know their neighborhoods so that a more complete and accurate picture is made visible – a picture that includes data that also highlight assets rather than just the challenges. The Data Explorer will evolve with the guidance and insight of the residents who are most significantly impacted by race equity.

The overriding assumptions are that IF the wisdom, power, and talents of those who have been pushed to the margins of the economy by historic and current policies and practices were included and connected, the local economy and overall wellbeing would be greater, there would be better health and greater civic engagement and greater trust within the community as a whole.

The Data Explorer hopes to illuminate those topics and issues where changes are needed that can accelerate racial equity. UNITE Pinellas has identified three approaches that are likely to impact equity:

Public Policy

Current inequity was created and is being sustained by Public Policy. This includes both the enduring impacts of past and current policies, and the need for new policies to facilitate increased equity.

Institutional Practices

Institutional practices also perpetuate disparities and inequities. This refers to the way things get done in the field, in the moment, where individual bias – both explicit and implicit – can and often does generate inequity.

Narrative Change

Changing the Narrative – Everyday language, images, and narratives create and underpin what is the conventional ideology about race that reinforce narratives of white privilege, discrimination, and racial disparities so that they are perceived as being normal. The common language is one of “blame,” which entirely ignores the policies and practices that are at the root of inequity.

This version of the Data Explorer will be continuously updated by engaging residents at the center of how change happens. It will strive to include measures of community strengths and to explicitly call out policies and systems that have generated current disparities – all with the purpose of moving the needle on racial equity. The Data Explorer is intended to complement the work of those who for years have consistently addressed racial/income inequities in their day-to-day work and lives. UNITE Pinellas aims to take every opportunity to raise up the realities of equity, and inequity, making it increasingly more visible.

View Data Explorer