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Equity is our race, culture, ethnicity, and identity blog. The blog focuses on coverage important to Illinois and its improvement. Evidence of performance of public policies and their impact will be reported and analyzed. We encourage you to engage in commenting and discussing the coverage of equity and diversity:Maureen Foertsch McKinney and Rachel Otwell curate this blog that will provide follow-up to full-length stories, links to other reports of interest, statistics, and conversations with you about the issues and stories.

Congressional ethnic, racial diversity at a record high

Pew Research Center

The newly seated 114th Congress is the most ethically diverse in the nation’s history, but the numbers are still far from proportionate to the country’s population. The information comes from an analysis from the Pew Research Center that was released yesterday.

Non-whites account for 17 percent of the Congress seated earlier this month — but that trails far behind the share of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, which accounts for 38 percent of the total population.

When looking specifically at new members, they account for 15 percent of Congress. 

In Illinois, five of 18 representatives are black, Hispanic or Asian: Bobby Rush, Robin Kelly, Danny Davis, Luis Gutierrez  and Tammy Duckworth. All are Democrats and from the Chicago or its suburbs. Both senators — Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk — are white. Those numbers are no different than the 113th congressional delegation from Illinois.

As Pew notes, the nation has grown more diversified at a faster pace than Congress.

This Congress also has a record number of women: 108 — 88 in the House and 20 in Senate, according to Pew.

But the number of women in state legislatures  in 2015,  24 percent, has dropped slightly, according to Rutger’s Center for American Women and Politics.

Maureen Foertsch McKinney is news editor and equity and justice beat reporter for NPR Illinois, where she has been on the staff since 2014 after Illinois Issues magazine’s merger with the station. She joined the magazine’s staff in 1998 as projects editor and became managing editor in 2003. Prior to coming to the University of Illinois Springfield, she was an education reporter and copy editor at three local newspapers, including the suburban Chicago Daily Herald, She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Eastern Illinois University and a master’s degree in English from UIS.
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