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Report: Black Children in New Mexico Suffer Significant Disparities

Commentary: A new KIDS COUNT report out today shows that New Mexico’s Black child population faces more barriers to success than does its White and Asian child populations. New Mexico’s Black children are more likely to be born at a low birthweight and to die in infancy, and Black youth are disproportionately suspended and expelled from school and incarcerated.

The report was jointly released by the New Mexico Office of African American Affairs (NM OAAA) and New Mexico Voices for Children (NM Voices). The release coincides with the NM OAAA’s Black Child Wellness Summit, which is tomorrow, Friday, June 22, 8:30 am to 3 pm at the Albuquerque Sheraton Uptown.

“This report clearly shows that there is still a great deal of work to be done to ensure that New Mexico’s Black children have access to all of the opportunities they need in order to grow up healthy and thrive,” said Yvette Kaufman-Bell, executive director of the NM OAAA. “There are some very disturbing dichotomies here. For example, even though Black and Asian children are more likely to have health insurance than children of any other race or ethnicity, Black children have the highest infant mortality rate and death rate by drug overdose. This shows there are some serious disconnects within our health systems,” she added.

While Asian babies in New Mexico have an infant mortality rate of 4.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, the rate for Black babies is 12.9 per 1,000. The death rate by drug overdose for Asian youth is 3.8 per 10,000 youth ages 0 to 24, but the rate for Black youth is 7.7 per 10,000.

The report does highlight some bright spots for the state’s Black children and families. Black families in New Mexico earn more money and have higher levels of educational attainment than most other racial and ethnic groups of color. Also, Black children in New Mexico fare better than Black children across the nation on several indicators of child well-being.

“While the bright spots are encouraging, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the state is failing Black children in many ways,” said James Jimenez, executive director of NM Voices. “This report provides us a research-based focus on how we better support Black children and families in New Mexico,” he added.

The report, “The Well-Being of Black Children in New Mexico,” which will be discussed by a panel at tomorrow’ssummit, is available online at: https://www.nmvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Black-Child-WellBeing-in-NM-web.pdf