States are hardly even in unemployment rates but the gaps by county and municipal are a lot higher. Unemployment is undoubtedly a massive factor in bankruptcy, so a place like Detroit, 82% black and 30% official unemployment, with 50% jobless being the normal value given, is probably going to generate a really lopsided curve even excluding all other factors.

As for national, apparently Hispanics are the least likely to file for bankruptcy and blacks are most likely, and the vast majority of filers are unemployed, and blacks were only slightly more likely to file for bankruptcy than whites, now this is from 2008 filings, but it speaks to racial trends... not too well really, since its comparing bankruptcy filings to actual population and of course bankruptcy generally takes place when one has become poorer, not when one is and was poor. But it shows that, pre-recession anyway, there was no massive tendency of any given race to file for bankruptcy, not that could account for 30:1 ratios or anything approaching it. My SWAG then would be that if the current rates are heavily slanted, then you'd be wanting to look for the culprit in regional unemployment rates in relation to racial composition or maybe sub-prime loans by the same, and that in all likelihood you've got some other factor in play on your own sample, possibly a fair amount of coincidence, I'm not sure how Trustees are allocated in terms of turf, I'm region 9 and that's Ohio and Michigan, which I'd bet is a, uh, high-density one for filings, but that would probably be a major factor, however it works, doesn't appear to be a lot of trustworthy and current data on it, quick scans turn up info that sets off my tamper-sense, including the one I yanked data from and I can usually smell rotten data analysis a mile away. I also don't know anyone who does bankruptcy regularly to ask for their own impressions to see if they match your own.