SDSN USA Releases Newest Report on Unequal Delivery of the SDGs Across Racial and Ethnic Groups in the United States

On Wednesday, May 5th, SDSN USA launched its newest report In the Red: the US Failure to Deliver on a Promise of Racial Equality , measuring how US states are delivering sustainability across different racial and ethnic groups. The event launch included an overview of the project, detailing the report’s findings and methodology, followed by a panel discussion, providing context for the data from experts in the field, along with remarks by Dr. Wayne Frederick and Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

The In the Red Racial Inequality Index expands on SDSN USA’s recent report, Never More Urgent , which explored the policy choices underlying racial inequality in the US. This project builds upon this work, analyzing how well the US is delivering the SDGs at the state and city level. These efforts are among the first to empirically describe the connection between racial equality and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the US.

SDSN President Jeffrey Sachs opened the webinar by providing background on the SDGs and how they can be used as a valuable tool to recommit to, and systemically measure, progress on human rights. Acting as a report card for progress on the SDGs and indicators, In the Red can help measure how the United States is doing, how it can improve, and where we need to hold our government accountable. With In the Red , the SDGs are tracked both by state and by race and ethnicity, providing important metrics about where there are gaps in delivery of the SDGs. As is mentioned in the report, “because gaps in how states deliver the SDGs to racial communities are so large, unless the inequality itself is addressed, the SDGs will not be achieved”. Dr. Wayne Frederick, President of Howard University, also provided remarks about the report, which is a collaboration between Howard University and SDSN.

Alainna Lynch, Senior Research Manager at SDSN and lead author of the report and interactive data dashboard , provided In the Red attendees with an overview of the findings and methodology. The index was created by combining the methodology developed for the SDSN Global SDG Index with the principles from the transformative “ Leave No One Behind ” Agenda, which requires cities, states, and national governments to end discrimination and exclusion by repairing harms and delivering the SDGs to the least-served communities first. As Ms. Lynch stated in her presentation, “the Leave No One Behind Agenda is not meant to pit communities against each other, but rather to remind us how much everyone has to gain by building and advocating for sustainable communities that serve us all,” a sentiment echoed by the panelists later in the program.

Results show that on average, white communities have outcomes approximately three times better than the least served racial community. Black and Indigenous communities are most often left behind in the US, although availability of data varies widely. The index also highlights the lack of consistently updated, racially disaggregated data in the US.

In order to provide context for the report’s findings and to explore possible recommendations and implications of this work, a panel of experts with backgrounds across the private, educational, and nonprofit sectors joined to share their initial thoughts on the index and how the data relates to and impacts their work. Dr. Helen Bond, SDSN USA Co-chair, Howard University Professor, and an author of the report, moderated the discussion, which included Judith Aidoo-Saltus, CEO of Caswell Capital Partners, LLC, Dr. Michael McAfee, President and CEO of PolicyLink, and Gerald Torres, Professor of Environmental Justice and Professor of Law at Yale Law School. A recording of the event is available on YouTube.

Jeffrey Sachs concluded the event with a message about where SDSN goes from here and how we can build on the findings of In the Red . He encouraged network members and stakeholders to join SDSN in raising their voices to embolden the Biden administration to adopt the SDGs as a priority for this country, and using the SDGs as time bound objectives for 2030 to help to ensure that every part of American society is a beneficiary to programs focusing on social justice and social equity, leaving no one behind. As panelists mentioned in their discussion, this dataset is a starting point, but the challenges presented by the data won’t be solved without a reimagining of the systems that led to this moment. Dr. McAfee urged attendees to not just see the data, but to “see the humanity of the people that are embodied in the data”.

If you would like to engage with the network on this and future work related to the integration of diversity, equity, and justice into the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, please consider joining for the first meeting of the Working Group on Diversity, Equity, and Justice for Sustainability . The working group will be chaired by Dr. Helen Bond and Claudia Romo Edelman, Founder of We Are All Human, on June 1 at 12:00 PM ET ( register here ). All are welcome. For inquiries, please contact usa@unsdsn.org.

You are encouraged to explore the findings and share this data tool within your organization. You can find the In the Red Index here: https://us-inequality.sdgindex.org and can view the full report here: https://www.sdsnusa.org/publication/inthered .