Losing Ground: An I-News Special Project

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Losing Ground presents a disturbing yet compelling portrait of a state where black and Latino residents are falling further and further behind their white counterparts. That state is Colorado.


I-News journalists analyzed six decades of reports from the U.S. Census Bureau to track the state’s poverty rates, family income, high school and college graduation rates and home ownership. The analysis uncovered surprising trends in racial and ethnic disparities. Minority gains made during the era of the civil rights movement eroded with time.

Colorado evolved from a state that was by most measures more equitable than the national average in the first decades covered by the analysis to one that is less so now.

 Health data and justice figures examined as part of the analysis also show disparities.



Major civil rights efforts for women, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and people with disabilities have occurred in Colorado.

After the civil rights movements of the 1960s, Colorado was one of the more equitable places in the nation for minorities. That began to change, however, in the 1980s and 1990s. To understand where Colorado is headed in the future, it’s important to understand both the past and the present.

The story you read here is the reality in Colorado today. But the state’s residents don’t have to resign themselves to a future of every-widening disparities. There are steps that can be taken – individually and as a matter of public policy – that experts agree can begin to turn the trend in the other direction. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick, but it can be done.

The four stories, told through text, video, photos and graphics, comprise this series about the issue of inequity that, according to most experts, pose a significant future hurdle for a state in which minorities are a rising population.

Read the rest of the project

Losing Ground “Colorado’s Minorities” from I-News on Vimeo.

By Burt Hubbard and Ann Carnahan Espinola

By some of the most important measures of social progress, black and Latino residents of Colorado have lost ground compared to white residents in the decades since the civil rights movement.

Minority gains made during the 1960s and 1970s have eroded with time, an I-News Network analysis of six decades of demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau found.

MLK Day Parade

Civil rights activists march with political leaders marking Martin Luther King Day in 1990. (Photo courtesy The Denver Public Library)

In other categories, the gaps between whites and minorities have steadily widened since 1960.
The analysis focused on family income, poverty rates, high school and college graduation and home ownership. Health data and justice records examined also revealed disparities.

Read more….


Part 2: Family Disintegration

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Angel Castro’s days teeter between determination and desperation. She is 28, impoverished, scarred from a chaotic childhood and adolescence, raising two young children alone.

Angel Castro and her family, son Aaron, 3, and daughter Alexis, 17 months in their Englewood, Colo., apartment on October 1, 2012.(Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network)

Angel Castro and her family, son Aaron, 3, and daughter Alexis, 17 months in their Englewood, Colo., apartment on October 1, 2012. (Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network)

She lives in a subsidized apartment in Englewood, scrambles to arrange child care that she can afford, and races to catch the bus to a part-time job that paid her $452 for one recent month.

To know the circumstances of Castro’s life is to understand something of the odds against her. Still, as she attends to her dark-haired, bright-eyed Aaron, 3, and Alexis, 17 months, she speaks with a voice that musters hope.

“I try to be the best mom I can,” she says. “I want to give my kids a chance at a healthy lifestyle. I want them to go to school, get good grades, be able to go to college and have a good future.”

In analyzing the widening gaps between minority groups and whites in Colorado on key measures of social progress, there are harsh realities behind the numbers. One is that among homes with children living in poverty, 68 percent are headed by just one parent, typically the mother.
Single parenthood is a bigger indicator of poverty than race, according to six decades of U.S. Census Bureau data analyzed by I-News Network. Combined as it often is with curtailed educational and employment opportunities, the rise of the single-parent family is a major factor in the widening disparities between blacks, Latinos and white state residents since the decades surrounding the civil rights movement.

Read more…

Part 3: Changing Economy

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Losing Ground – Changing Economy from I-News on Vimeo.

In the 1960s, the giant CF&I steel plant on the southern end of Pueblo was the economic driving engine and racial equalizer for Colorado’s southernmost major city.

Sign advertising CF&I in 1960.

Sign advertising CF&I in 1962.


Former Pueblo City Council President Ray Aguilera, in his early 20s during the mill’s last heyday as a large-scale employer, recalls wives dropping their husbands – Latinos, Italians Slovenians – at the tunnel entrance leading under the roadway to the 7,000 lucrative jobs on the other side. The work often did not require college degrees or even high school diplomas.

“Why would anybody want to go college when you can go out to the mill and make (today’s equivalent of) $60,000, $70,000 a year,” Aguilera said.

The towering steel mill stacks and their billowing clouds of smoke were symbols of a unique prosperity, one in which the smelter was a melting pot in more ways than one.
Read more…

Part 4: Health Disparities

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I-News Losing Ground Health Disparities from I-News on Vimeo.

Dr. Carolyn Chen, of Cinica Family Health Services in Denver, discussing health care disparities.

Lucero Barrios is Latina and a new mother – circumstances that place her squarely in a group of people affected by a shocking reality in Colorado: A Hispanic baby born in this state is 63 percent more likely than a white baby to die in the first year of life.

Losing Ground Infant Mortality Rates
And Latinos aren’t alone – the disparity is even more stark for Colorado’s African Americans, who experience an infant mortality rate three times that of Caucasians.

Lucero Barrios’ daughter, Monserrat, is shown at the family’s north Denver home.(Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network)

Lucero Barrios’ daughter, Monserrat, is shown at the family’s north Denver home. (Joe Mahoney/The I-News Network)


The infant mortality gap is just one measurement by which the state’s largest groups of ethnic and racial minorities trail whites, and it is an anomaly unto itself. Colorado’s infant mortality rate is lower than the national average for whites and significantly higher than the national average for Latinos and blacks. And an I – News examination of more than a decade of health data found those disparities are widening.

Barrios’ daughter, Monserrat, is healthy – a big brown – eyed girl whose favorite book features animals that make sounds when her mother pushes a button on the page.

“It was something I never thought would happen to me at a young age,” Barrios said of becoming pregnant.

Read more…

Losing Ground: The Voices

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Community leaders, politicians and academics offer their views on racial and ethnic disparities in Colorado and what might be done to address them.
LOSING GROUND THE VOICES ROW

“We have the highest illegitimate birth rate in the state of Colorado. We produce in the neighborhood of 300 to 400 illegitimate kids every year. We have babies raising babies.”

- Ray Aguilera, longtime Pueblo resident and former president of the Pueblo City Council

Read the more than 40 interviews conducted for the Losing Ground project.

Losing Ground: The Voices

Civil Rights Era Timeline

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Losing Ground Charts

Latino and black residents of Colorado are falling further behind the state’s white residents in some of the most important measures of social progress. An I-News Network analysis of six decades of U.S. Census data shows that the gaps between the three communities narrowed somewhat during the years surrounding the civil rights movement, but have widened in the decades since.


  • Jon G

    I do notice that you do not include Native American/Alaskan Natives or Asian/Pacific Islanders in your demographics.  Why is that, your own cultural bias? I wish I could have gone to college, but as one of these minorities there were no ‘slots’ held open for me.

  • Slittau

    Is there something stopping you from going to college now?  On-line courses abouond.  Try CCA.edu 

  • Bigdirt

    DUH?- – - as long as the focus is on ‘getting theirs’ instead of individual achievement these so-called leech-like minorities will continue to decline.  No easy way to fulfilling lives when people think nothing is FAIR. 

  • ColoVoice

    Thanks for this excellent reporting. Instead of trying to assign blame — a province routinely claimed by our elected officials, alas — you have pulled together relevant and troubling facts, and explained how we got here. I hope that all members of the Colorado Legislature, as well as other key elected and appointed officials, will study this report. You have given them a blueprint for action. Can they surpass their special-interest supporters and come together for the good of the state and our people? The recent record isn’t very good. But the stakes never have been higher. Which pathway will we choose? Continued (even accelerated) accusations, brickbats, finger-pointing, petty jealousies, doctrinaire and cliched positions? Or a genuine effort to make our state a leader?