Chapter 15: Nothing Known

70       White Americans are living longer  As of 2022, the average life expectancy for White Americans was 77.5 years, compared with 72.8 years for Black Americans and 67.9 years for Native Americans. Elizabeth Arias et al., “Provisional Life Expectancy Estimates for 2022,” Vital Statistics Rapid Release, no. 31 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, November 2023), dx.doi.org/10.15620/cdc:133703, 2.

70       victims of a quarter of all hate crimes FBI, “All Biases: United States: 1 Year,” in “Hate Crime in the United States Incident Analysis: Bias Types,” Crime Data Explorer, last updated April 2, 2025, accessed August 20, 2025, cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/hate-crime.

70       comprising only about 14 percent  U.S. Census Bureau, “Quick Facts: United States,” accessed July 11, 2025, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI225223.

70       comprise nearly 60 percent  U.S. Census Bureau, “Quick Facts: United States,” www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI225223.

70       7 percent of the victims of hate crimes FBI, “All Biases: United States: 1 Year,” cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/hate-crime.

70       say that White kids are being harmed in schools “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News, March 27, 2017, 6:58–6:59 p.m., 0:10–:014, accessed via Internet Archive, 0:10–:014, archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20170328_010000_Tucker_Carlson_Tonight/start/3540/end/360. This is also prevalent in discussions surrounding Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, which claimed that White students were made to feel “guilt” during history lessons and that therefore they should not be taught Black history. See Florida Senate, “CS/HB 7: Individual Freedom,” FLSenate.gov, April 22, 2022, www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/7/BillText/er/PDF, 21.

70       still the best funded “On the whole, nonwhite districts receive significantly less funding than white districts . . . For every student enrolled, the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district.” EdBuild, “Nonwhite School Districts Get $23 Billion Less Than White Districts Despite Serving the Same Number of Students,” 2019, accessed August 20, 2025, www.edbuildna.org/content/23-billion.

70       still dominates curricula Megan Hester, “Why is Public School Curriculum Still Whites Only?,” NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, 2018, steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/why-public-school-curriculum-still-whites-only-2018; and Sarah Schwartz, “White Characters Still Dominate Kids’ Books and School Texts, Report Finds,” Education Week, December 1, 2021, www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/white-characters-still-dominate-kids-books-and-school-texts-report-finds/2021/12.

70       far less likely . . . to be suspended “Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups,” National Center for Education Statistics, last updated February 2019, nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rda.asp.

70       approximately half of White students . . . compared to . . .  Melissa F. Weiner, “The Demography of Race and Ethnicity in The Netherlands: An Ambiguous History of Tolerance and Conflict,” in The International Handbook of the Demography of Race and Ethnicity, eds. Rogelio Sáenz, David G. Embrick, Néstor P. Rodríguez (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2015), 586. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/910845577.

70       Across Latin America, light-skinned people have . . .  Health of Afro-Descendant People in Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Pan American Health Organization, 2021), iris.paho.org/bitstream/handle/10665.2/55856/9789275124895_eng.pdf, 11.

70       In Argentina, about three-fourths of White mothers . . .  George Wehby et al., “Explaining Ethnic Disparities in Preterm Birth in Argentina and Ecuador,” Global Public Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice 13, no. 8 (2018), pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27875924, 1133–1135.

70–71  have asserted that peoples of color are taking away . . .  See, for example, Shannon Schumacher et al., “Misinformation About Immigrants in the 2024 Presidential Election,” KFF, September 24, 2024, www.kff.org/health-information-and-trust/poll-finding/misinformation-about-immigrants-in-the-2024-presidential-election.

71        White Britons are more likely to be employed  Office for National Statistics, “Ethnicity Facts and Figures—Work, Pay, and Benefits—Unemployment,” November 28, 2023, last updated March 26, 2024, accessed August 20, 2025, www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/unemployment-and-economic-inactivity/unemployment/latest/#by-ethnicity.

71        twice as likely . . . nearly four times more likely—to be unemployed  Weiner, “The Demography of Race and Ethnicity in The Netherlands,” in The International Handbook of the Demography of Race and Ethnicity, 587. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/910845577.

71        26 percent . . . live in the poorest . . . compared to 67 percent of Black people  Health of Afro-Descendant People in Latin America, 9, iris.paho.org/bitstream/handle/10665.2/55856/9789275124895_eng.pdf.

71        15.4 percent . . . earn less than $5.50 a day, compared to nearly one-third of . . .  Thomas Hone, Jonathan Stokes, Anete Trajman, et al., “Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in Multimorbidity and Associated Healthcare Utilisation and Outcomes in Brazil: a cross-sectional analysis of the three million individuals,” BMC Public Health 21 (July 7, 2021), doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11328-0, 1287.

71        about three and a half times higher than . . .  “Wealth Patterns Across Ethnic Groups in New Zealand,” Statistics New Zealand, November 4, 2016, www.stats.govt.nz/reports/wealth-patterns-across-ethnic-groups-in-new-zealand.

71        have the lowest poverty rate of any racial group  Kyle Ross and Justin Dorazio, “The Latest Poverty, Income, and Food Insecurity Data Reveal Continuing Racial Disparities,” Center for American Progress, December 21, 2022, www.americanprogress.org/article/the-latest-poverty-income-and-food-insecurity-data-reveal-continuing-racial-disparities; and “Racial Inequalities in Homelessness, by the Numbers,” National Alliance to End Homelessness, June 1, 2020, endhomelessness.org/resource/racial-inequalities-homelessness-numbers/.

71        the highest median family wealth Benjamin Harris and Sydney Schreiner Wertz, “Racial Differences in Economic Security: The Racial Wealth Gap,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, September 15, 2022, home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/racial-differences-economic-security-racial-wealth-gap.

71        has barely budged over the last three decades  Harris and Wertz, “Racial Differences in Economic Security: The Racial Wealth Gap,” home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/racial-differences-economic-security-racial-wealth-gap.

71        One study found that between 1990 and 2010  Isaac Sasson, “Trends in Life Expectancy and Lifespan Variation by Educational Attainment: United States, 1990–2010,” Demography 53, no. 2 (April 2016), pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26813781, 281.

71        Four studies published during this period found  Erika Blacksher, “Shrinking Poor White Life Spans: Class, Race, and Health Justice,” The American Journal of Bioethics 18, no. 10 (2018), 4. Access the journal article at www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15265161.2018.1513585. John Bound et al., “Measuring Recent Apparent Declines in Longevity: The Role of Increasing Educational Attainment,” Health Affairs (Millwood) 34, no. 12 (December 2015), 2167–2176. Access the journal article at pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26643639/. Jennifer Karas Montez et. al, “Trends in the Educational Gradient of U.S. Adult Mortality from 1986 to 2006 by Race, Gender, and Age Group,” Res Aging 33, no. 2 (March 2011), 145–171. Access the journal article at pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21897495/. S. Jay Olshansky et al., “Differences in Life Expectancy Due to Race and Educational Differences Are Widening, and Many May Not Catch Up,” Health Affairs 31, no. 8 (August 2012). Access the journal article at doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0746. Isaac Sasson, “Trends in Life Expectancy and Lifespan Variation by Educational Attainment: United States, 1990–2010,” Demography 53, no. 2 (April 2016), 281. Access the journal article at pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26813781.

71–72   the top 1 percent owned more wealth than the entire middle class Daniel de Visé, “The Top 1% of American Earners Now Own More Wealth Than the Entire Middle Class,” USA Today, December 6, 2023, www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/12/06/top-1-american-earners-more-wealth-middle-class/71769832007/; and “DFA: Distributional Financial Accounts, Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. Since 1989,” Federal Reserve, accessed August 20, 2025, www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:135;series:Net%20worth;demographic:income;population:1,3,5,7,9,11;units:levels;range:2008.2,2023.2.

72       who make up about half of the population  Fifty-one percent of Americans lived in middle-class households in 2023. Rakesh Kochhar, “The State of the American Middle Class: Who Is in It and Key Trends from 1970 to 2023,” Pew Research Center, May 31, 2024, www.pewresearch.org/2024/05/31/the-state-of-the-american-middle-class/.

72       inequality between the White super-rich and the White middle class White Americans predominate the top 1 percent and the middle class.  Lisa Keister, “The One Percent,” Annual Review of Sociology 40 (2014), 347–367. Access journal article at www.jstor.org/stable/43049539. Rakesh Kochhar and Stella Sechopoulos, “How the American Middle Class Has Changed in the Past Five Decades,” Pew Research Center, April 20, 2022, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/04/20/how-the-american-middle-class-has-changed-in-the-past-five-decades.

72       “The simultaneous collapse of the religious and . . .”  Renaud Camus, You Will Not Replace Us! (Plieux, France: Renaud Camus, 2018), 30–31. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/1091051149.

72       “the great truth that the negro is not equal . . .”  Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone Address, March 21, 1861,” in The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, etc., vol. 1, ed. Frank Moore (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1861), 45. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/2230865.

72–73  “eliminate EEO-1 data collection . . .” Jonathan Berry, “Department of Labor and Related Agencies,” in Mandate for Leadership, static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf, 583.

73        was subsequently nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate . . .  “PN60-5 — Jonathan Berry—Department of Labor,” Congress.gov, accessed October 22, 2025, www.congress.gov/nomination/119th-congress/60/5.