State Plates
The Texas Income Plate
In Texas, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Texas in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Texas's own distribution figures — 4 million Black residents, 13 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
The income figures take their local meaning in Texas, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. 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. Not to rank Texas but to locate it — that, in an atlas, is the use of a benchmark.
In Texas, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table 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. Against the national midpoint, the rows below say how Texas's households stand.
For Texas, 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. The comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national midpoint on one side, Texas's households on the other.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Texas; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Texas, 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
The income figures take their local meaning in Texas, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Black Texans are concentrated, as the state's population generally is, along the urban triangle formed by Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, and San Antonio, with Austin at its center. Only as it sharpens the local record does the general one matter here — and the local record is Texas's, in the table.
In Texas, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Two cautions from this reference's general method apply with force in Texas. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Texas.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Texas'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 Texas's 4 million 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 Texas as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In Texas, the income geography of Black America changes at the speed of households — of graduations, hires, diagnoses, incorporations, and moves — and the federal surveys that measure it publish on their own calendars. What does not change between releases is the structure this plate records: a counted population in Texas, a measured national pattern, and the standing invitation to read the two together, state by state, until the whole country has been read that way. That is the work of this section of the atlas, and the Texas Income plate is one page of it.
Filed in this series as The Texas Income Plate, the plate below states the published record for its subject and reads it closely. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 13%; Black share, alone or in combination: 13.8%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 4 Million. Here, on the plate for Texas, that is the whole of the plate's claim, and it is enough for a reference.
The record behind this plate of Texas is published, not estimated by this atlas: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement); American Community Survey. Where the table carries a national benchmark row for Texas, the row is labeled with the basis it is published on — the same measure, the same basis, two geographies.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 13% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 13.8% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 4 Million |
| 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.