State Plates
The Minnesota Income Plate
In Minnesota, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Minnesota in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Minnesota's own distribution figures — 495,000 Black residents, 7 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In Minnesota, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Median household income is the most widely used single measure of a population's economic position, and for Black households in the United States the Census Bureau's annual income report places the figure at $56,490. Minnesota's rows, read against the national midpoint, state the standing of its households.
For Minnesota, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. Household income counts the combined money income of everyone aged 15 and over living in the home — wages, salaries, self-employment income, Social Security, pensions, interest, and cash benefits — before taxes. The plate sets the national midpoint beside Minnesota's households and invites the two-sided reading.
For Minnesota, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. The national median household income in the same report is $77,719. Against that benchmark, the Black median of $56,490 is about 73 cents on the dollar. On one side the national midpoint, on the other the households of Minnesota — that is the comparison this plate invites.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Minnesota; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Minnesota, the plate makes no state income estimate of its own — it sets the state's population, counted exactly, beside the national income record, measured exactly, which is the honest first step of any income geography.
The Population Behind the Plate
In Minnesota, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Minnesota holds about 495,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in twelve of its people, with Black alone at about 399,000, or 7 percent. Minnesota's Black population is a study in juxtaposition: an old, small native-born community centered in the Twin Cities; the largest Somali community in the United States, built by refugee resettlement since the 1990s; and outcome indicators that rank, in study after study, among the widest Black-white gaps in the nation despite the state's overall prosperity rankings. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Minnesota.
In Minnesota, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. A state that ranks at or near the top in overall income, education, and health records Black outcomes that rank near the bottom in several national comparisons: Black homeownership in the Twin Cities in the mid-twenties percent range — among the lowest of any metro in this reference — against a state White rate in the high seventies; Black median household income at roughly half the state's overall figure; educational proficiency gaps in the state assessment data among the nation's widest. The midpoint is the reference; Minnesota's own rows give the standing of its households.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Minnesota's among them. Read against the population counted on the distribution plate, the national median describes the economic center of gravity of the community that Minnesota's 495,000 Black residents belong to. Holding the structure still while the numbers move is the gazetteer's work — the only way an atlas stays honest across editions, for Minnesota as for every entry.
What follows is the plate the atlas files as The Minnesota Income Plate. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 7%; Black share, alone or in combination: 8.7%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 495,000. Here, on the plate for Minnesota, the figures are the argument; the text only keeps them in order.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of Minnesota: Black residents, alone or in combination: 495,000; United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report: $56,490. The measures above and these together fix the population of Minnesota as this plate describes it — its size, its share, its standing nationally — and the text that surrounds them interprets them without rounding or extension beyond the source.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 7% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 8.7% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 495,000 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report | $56,490 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income per $1 of the national median | 73 Cents |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement); American Community Survey. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.