The Chamber For a Greater Chapel Hill and Carrboro held its annual State of the Community Report last week. In it, the chamber revealed how Orange County is faring amid the coronavirus pandemic, growing at a slower rate and still struggling to address racial equity.
Presented during a virtual event hosted at The Graduate Hotel on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, the chamber revealed Orange County is the healthiest county in North Carolina when examining length of life and access to clinical care. In addition, it’s also the top county in wealth per capita and Average Adjusted Gross Income.
President and CEO of the Chamber Aaron Nelson recently spoke with 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck about the presentation. He said despite those rankings, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted some of the county’s shortcomings of racial inequity to health resources.
“Orange County’s 12 percent Black population has 15 percent of the COVID-19 cases,” said Nelson, “so the infection rate is similar to their population. But they’re 42 percent of the deaths in the county. If we take a look at the Hispanic [community,] they’re 8 percent of the population, but 33 percent of the infection rate.”
Nelson said similar issues can be found when examining education within Orange County. Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools ranks as a top school district in North Carolina.
“And while that is good news,” said Nelson, “the disappointing news is that a substantial gap still does remain and more work must be done. All children are not reading on grade level, all children are not being successful in science, on the ACT tests, on the SAT tests.”
One area the Chamber president focused on in the report is the county’s growth. Orange County saw its slowest rate of growth during the 2010s since the 1930s and less in comparison to neighboring counties like Chatham County. But some of the populations that have grown the most are Black, Latinx and Asian populations within the county.
Nelson said this diversity is good, but some residents’ sense of too much growth can stunt opportunities for new residents. He said he believes the statistics do not fit with many long-time residents’ views of Orange County’s growth.
“They feel like because of traffic and other reasons,” Nelson explained, “we must be growing very quickly, but we’re growing at less than 1 percent per year. Taller buildings are probably more about land use choices and the more traffic is probably about more people driving from Chatham County to Durham through Orange County than [our] growth.”
Overall, Nelson said while he expects the community will rebound well from the COVID-19 pandemic and has many marks to be proud of, there is still significant work to be done when addressing Orange County’s shortcomings when examining racial equity.
“We are a very successful community,” he said. “But incredible and disturbing racial disparities exist.”
A breakdown of the 2020 State of the Community Report can be found on The Chamber For a Greater Chapel Hill and Carrboro’s website.
Photo via the Town of Chapel Hill.
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