Candid conversations on structural racism have encouraged social scientists to recast issues of race, place, and inequality by adopting a new racial equity view. Fortunately, the pivot toward more conscientious research has not been lost on economists committed to improving the human condition. Studies of rural communities have taken center stage in this new interest. At the same time, scholars have added to the volume of empirical studies on rural communities. Many hew to the mainstream path that draws on volumes of static datasets lacking the capacity to model rural America’s true complexity and variation.

However, classic empirical analyses often fail to sufficiently describe the breadth of rural America’s diversity. Rural minority communities sitting at the intersection of racialized and isolated places are of particular concern within this lacuna. Studies of these communities will expand the framework necessary to accommodate their distinct needs. Yet even when economists pursue this aim, practical research overlooks Indigenous communities of color. In the Inclusive Opportunity Project's report, scholars Makada Henry-Nickie and Regina Seo argue researchers should carefully attend to the experiences of rural minority communities. They explicitly include Indigenous groups, traditional groups such as Native Americans, and those less visible like the Gullah/Geechee because their interests are only partly reflected in today’s federal rural policy framework.

View the Inclusive Opportunity Project's gallery to learn more about leaders in Jasper County, South Carolina; Lea County, New Mexico; the Gullah/Geechee community; Ward County, Texas; and the Pueblos and reservations of New Mexico.

View the Inclusive Opportunity Project website at www.brookings.edu/essay/the-inclusive-opportunity-project/ to learn more.

We would like to thank Dave Cooper for his photography featured in the empirical report, Lea County, Jasper County, Ward County, and Gullah/Geechee case studies. We would also like to thank Mateo Perez for his photography featured in the Pueblos and Reservations of New Mexico case study.