Project
Mapping Black California

Project Team
Paulette Brown-Hinds, Publisher, Black Voice News
Stephanie Williams, Executive Editor, Black Voice News 
Candice Mays, Project Director, Mapping Black California 
Alex Reed, Project Manager, Mapping Black California

Project URL
Mappingblackca.org

Project Reviewer
Ashanté Reese, The University of Texas at Austin

Project Overview

Candice Mays and Alex Reed

Based in the Inland Empire, Mapping Black California (MBC) was launched in 2015. As a project of Black Voice News (BVN), a Black legacy publication reporting on news impacting the Black community for over 50 years, MBC data analysts work in conjunction with BVN journalists to better understand, report, and visualize data on Black Californians and residents of the Inland Empire in particular. The Inland Empire is a region of Southern California comprising Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, bordering Los Angeles County to the west and situated north of San Diego and Imperial Counties. With a demographic makeup of 51.6% Hispanic, 31% White, 8.7% Asian, 7.4% Black, 1.7% AIAN, and 0.3% NHPI, the Metropolitan Statistical Area population of the Inland Empire (Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA MSA) itself is more than 4.2 million people. Leveraging BVN’s reporting platform, MBC utilizes geospatial technology to enhance community news and storytelling aiming to eliminate regional and local systemic inequities by equipping Californians with data-driven knowledge.

Racism hinders health equity and existing data often fails to accurately represent Black communities, obscuring their challenges and needs or omitting them altogether. This erasure prevents policymakers from addressing systemic issues, while individual Black Californians are ill-equipped to advocate for themselves since the numbers don’t accurately support their daily lived experience. The result is silenced voices, discredited experiences, and neglect of marginalized, high-needs communities. While it currently has the third highest Black population behind the Bay Area and Los Angeles County, the Inland Empire is on pace to become second. This fact is not widely known or understood, and Black communities in the Inland Empire are underserved and under-resourced as a result. Beyond our work with BVN, MBC utilizes the trusted channels preestablished by Black-led organizations (BLOs) to connect residents, BLOs, and elected officials with pertinent data. As part of our BLO product development, we have conducted a focus group through the Center for Nonprofit Management and presented frequent demonstrations of our platforms, simultaneously exposing our audience to the work while receiving feedback. 

It can be particularly hard to find accurate data when it comes to Black people. As MBC struggled with our own attempts to produce more data-supported visualizations and reporting, we started asking the question: how might we make data sets, visualizations, and reporting — on racial justice and equity — more accessible to all Black Californian stakeholders and residents? Our process begins with creating clean and organized datasets in Google Drive, which we then upload to ArcGIS Online for analysis and visualization. Esri’s suite of spatial analytics products are considered the best in the industry. ArcGIS Online, specifically, is a portal to several data visualization products that we use to quickly ingest, transform, and output data. Dashboards centralize dozens of indicators into filterable charts, graphs, and maps to overlay multiple datasets and reveal spatial patterns. Visual data joining quickly generates local data reports for planning and strategy centered around which information to prioritize and potential storytelling streams.

In the case of our Racism as a Public Crisis Declarations accountability tool, we are also registering an archive of weblinks, files, and other digital materials via blockchain, creating a permanent point-in-time image of publications made by government entities. Finally, we leverage these visualizations as narrative storytelling assets that are integrated and disseminated via Black Voice News reporting, and ideally generate additional reporting across the state.

Action is how this platform evolves from a content aggregator to an accountability tool. By organizing declarations and their corresponding content by jurisdiction, local journalists who often have limited resources are able to quickly and easily access all information pertaining to their community, which will then facilitate story production and continued attention on declaration progress (or lack thereof). The published work of these journalists will continue the accountability ecosystem’s development by enabling elected officials’ constituents to remain informed about what actions have or have not been taken, thus equipping them with the information needed to make demands. 

Together with BVN, we are building a pipeline of Black GIS professionals in the industry through our partnership with the Ignite Leadership Academy. Awarded first place for Service Project of the Year by Report for America, we have developed a comprehensive 8-week program for girls ages 11-14 that introduces them to STEM subjects, Esri GIS community mapping, and app development. We have educated over 300 participants since inception, and Esri’s Jack Dangermond took note, awarding us with the Esri Making a Difference Award at the 2023 Esri User Conference. 

Project Review

Ashanté Reese

Mapping Black California (MBC) is produced by and for Black Californians with the goal to “provide reliable data and contribute to change efforts.” Founded by Paulette Brown-Hinds, MBC is under the umbrella of Black Voice News (BVN), a southern California newspaper that publishes “in the spirit of the Black Press.” Through data visualization, oral histories, and storytelling, MBC extends that spirit by democratizing data so that Black Californians may use it in their own data-driven quests for justice. 

MBC is presented as a singular project, but the website is designed to showcase subprojects in three categories: “MBC Flagship,” “MBC Consulting,” and “MBC Newsroom.” Though not described on the site, the first appears to be a collection of projects created by MBC team members, the second a collection they consulted on, and the third a collection connected to news articles published by BVN. A brief description of the three categories would help a reader better understand how to navigate the site more broadly and the differences between the projects (for example, were there different data collection methods or are there differences in how they are intended to be used?).

There are five projects listed under “MBC Flagship”: “The Blackest City,” “The Black Equity Fund,” “How Do California Cities Spend Money on Policing?,” ”BLO Directory,” and “Racism as a Public Health Crisis.” Each includes a digital map embedding significant data points to create a place-based visualization. For example, in “The Blackest City,” short oral histories are embedded in a map of Moreno Valley so listeners not only hear individual stories, but also can see where those stories unfolded. This is particularly effective because it supports the goal of making the impact of Black migration to Moreno Valley more visible. The audio clips are short — a minute or less. As I listened, I wondered if there is a repository with longer oral histories and if so, will they eventually be added to the site? 

In this historical moment when public distrust of police is growing and calls for defunding are strengthening, MBC’s “How Do California Cities Spend Money on Policing?” is a timely, important tool — especially for activists. The maps included in this project track spending from 2014-2019 for 476 cities in California, showing when and where spending increased relative to population changes. Each map is accompanied by a short analysis so that anyone — even those without knowledge of statistics — can read and understand. The visualizations along with the analysis makes this one of the most powerful tools in the collection. 

The MBC site is generally navigable, accessible, and timely. As the project continues to grow and there are even more projects under its umbrella, the MBC team may consider creating an index that lives on the homepage so that viewers may easily find the tools they are looking for. Depending on how many key areas the project grows to explore, another option would be to organize the projects under menu headers, such as policing, Black-led organizations, and gentrification. MBC’s goal is, in part, to democratize data. Reconsidering how the site is organized would support that goal. 

MBC is a great tool for visualizing key issues that impact Black people in the state. I can see it being used in classrooms at all levels, but especially high school and lower-level college courses that focus on how to tell stories with data or how to use data to create solutions to complex problems. I also imagine the site to be useful to organizations and activists who are looking for reputable data they can use in their advocacy. And, for those Black Californians who are committed to a For Us By Us lifestyle, the Black-led Organizations (BLO) Directory is a crucial step in the right direction.