White Courtesy Telephone

Crowdsourcing a Good Conversation About Race

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When news broke recently about the UC Berkeley “racist bake sale,” a colleague of mine, responding to clumsy media coverage of the event, tweeted, “Another bad conversation about race.”

But what would a good conversation about race look like?  How many of us have been lucky enough to participate in one?

I’ve taken part in my share of stinkers.  I’ve also experienced a number of conversations—all of them facilitated by younger people in the nonprofit field, coincidently—that transcended the tensions, the cowed silences, and the embarrassing references to best friends who are black (or Latino, or Asian, …).

For the sake of concreteness, imagine a diverse group of people who have come together to address the racial inequities in their community.  Imagine that there are conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, Mac and PC users among them.

What, in your view, would be the understandings and principles that would make for a good discussion about racial inequity?  I’ve started a list:

The conversation would be action-oriented.  Each time we met, there would be homework for each of the individuals and organizations involved.  The entire discussion would be in service of taking concrete steps to eliminate inequities.  Participants would hold themselves accountable to nothing less than this end.

The discussion would be grounded in data and in the lived experience of discrimination.  Many discussions that touch on race are long on speculation and short on concreteness.  For me the ideal discussion would be informed by the kind of nuanced sociological analysis that takes full account of the structural, cultural, and other factors that contribute to intergenerational poverty.  It would be grounded in the best academic research available and in a deep knowledge of history.

Missteps would be charged to the head not to the heart.  Sooner or later, somebody will say some boneheaded thing that will trip somebody’s wire.  Perhaps a white person will call a black person “articulate” (implying that the speaker is articulate—for a black person).  Perhaps a black participant will paint the white community with too broad a brush.  I’ve seen the atmosphere of many diversity trainings poisoned by well-meaning people who succumbed to the temptation to provide an offending speaker with a lesson in politically correct speech.  My advice: Let it go (for the moment) and move on to find common ground.

Find ways to surface and address, in a positive way, the mistaken notions and assumptions you know are lurking in the minds of participants.  To take one example, I know from speaking with many white people that some wonder why black leaders don’t do more to discourage single-parent families.*  Better, in my opinion, to find a way to put these doubts on the table and address them constructively, than let them continue to cast a cloud over the proceedings. And again, grounding the conversation in real data and analysis can help a group get past these hurdles.

Be far more eager to learn than to teach.

What’s missing from this list?  Please share your own experiences in the “Comments” section below.

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For an excellent discussion of this issue, read chapter 4, “The Fragmentation of the Poor Black Family,” from William Julius Wilson’s newest book,  More Than Just Race.

 

The Other Persistent Myth About Hurricane Katrina

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As we approach the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I’m struck by two enduring misconceptions about the storm that I frequently encounter when I travel outside the Gulf South.

One of these is very familiar to my fellow New Orleanians: It’s the idea that what happened to the city during the time of Katrina was a “natural disaster.” As any schoolchild in the Lower Ninth Ward can tell you, fifty-three breaches in the federally constructed system of levees is anything but natural, especially when we consider that the storm failed to score a direct hit on the city, skirting it rather to the east.

The second misconception is equally troubling.  To understand it, we need to review some uncomfortable facts:

• 69 percent of black children can’t read at grade level in the 4th grade, compared with 29 percent of white children.  (That 29 percent of white children can’t read at grade level in the 4th grade is itself barbarous.)
• 1.46 million black men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions.
• One in three black men between the ages of 20 and 29 is under correctional supervision or control.
• 45 percent of black children live below the federal poverty line (a bar that’s set embarrassingly low).
• The net worth of black families is $6,100; the net worth of white families is $67,000.
• Of black males born this year, 29 percent can expect to spend some time behind bars.  One in 14 black children has a parent in jail or in prison.  One in 20 black men is incarcerated, compared with one in 155 white men.  For every three black men in college, there are four in prison.*

Matched pair testing and other studies continue to demonstrate the pervasiveness of racism in hiring practices, in housing, in educational settings, and in other domains.

These are national statistics, not statistics for New Orleans proper.  Which brings me to the second great misconception about Katrina.

Outside of Louisiana I frequently encounter the notion that the inequities surfaced by Katrina were endemic to the South and that it took a disaster like Katrina to expose them.  This is wrong on both counts.

What happened was that a category 5 hurricane blew ashore and laid bare what was already in plain sight not only in New Orleans, but in many cities across the United States and indeed across the world. All we had to do was look and see.

Despite all the investments in the Gulf South since Katrina, despite all our hand-wringing and breast-beating, these inequities persist to this day.

Many New Orleanians are rightly committed to rebuilding “better than before.”  But what will this mean when it comes to our commitment to our most vulnerable neighbors?  Will a little bit of progress here and there lull us, as it’s done before, into accepting overwhelming inequities?

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* These statistics and others may be found at morehousemaleinitiave.com.

Interview With Wayne Bennett, Author of The Field Negro

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Wayne Bennett’s blog, The Field Negro, explores race in America in an unexpected way. His writing mixes cultural polemics with humor to provoke conversation and insight about one of our country’s most fraught subjects. He’s always a good read. The following interview was conducted by e-mail …

1. You write a blog called “The Field Negro.” That’s a provocative name for a blog. Why did you choose it?

I chose it because of one of my favorite speeches of all time: The Malcolm X speech to the SNCC workers in Alabama in 1965. This is where he outlined the dichotomy between the house and field Negroes in America, and why, as a result, it is hard for black folks to unify around particular causes.

I wanted to identify with the field Negroes in my writing because that’s how I view myself in the ongoing debate. Someone who works hard and represents the masses.

Besides, I wanted a title that makes people uncomfortable.

2. Do you ever get called out for what you write on your blog? What’s the one thing that, in retrospect, you most regret having written? What was the post that generated the most controversy?

I get called out all the time. I get more nasty e-mails than you could ever imagine.

I rarely regret anything I write, but if you put a gun to my head I would have to say calling Condy Rice “the bad perm lady.” After the Don Imus incident where he called the Rutgers basketball players “nappy headed hoes” and I ripped him for it, I realized what a hypocrite I was, because I was in essence doing the same thing to Secretary Rice.

It’s hard to say which post generated the most controversy. I have had a few. My post about white people and their pets pissed off a lot of white folks. And my post about the 12% rule for black folks pissed off a lot of black people. I always get a lot of heat for supporting the Jewish people on various issues as well.

3. [The foundation I work at] administered a poll to [the members of a] giving circle …, and one of their questions was this:

In the long run, the most effective way to address a region’s racial inequities is to (choose only one):

1. engage the entire community in discussions about race and white privilege
2. address systemic issues (e.g., laws, policies, etc.) that lead to unequal outcomes
3. empower low-income communities politically (through voter registration drives, etc.)
4. bring more low-income people into the middle class through literacy and skills training, small business development programs, and improving public education
5. just wait another 50 years until younger, less bigoted generations assume positions of responsibility and power

How would you answer this question and why?

I love numbers 3 & 4. Education. Education. Education. It is the greatest equalizer in America. I would also push for more political involvement among underserved communities—if it’s one thing a politician fears is numbers at the ballot box—and financial education for poor people. It is very important that we learn how to save and manage our money.

4. As regards conversations (and actions) in the public sphere touching on matters of race and ethnicity, what trends have you seen over the past ten years?

It’s getting better, but folks in the majority are still afraid to talk openly about race and ethnicity. The mainstream media won’t touch it because they know that it makes most folks in America uncomfortable. The only time we talk about it (race) is when we have to. (See the Henry Louis Gates incident at Harvard which led to Obama’s “teachable moment.”) And when it infringes on the political debate such as the case with immigration reform.

5. What do you regard as the most definitive work (book or article) for anybody wishing to understand race in America?

Oh my, where do I start? There are so many great ones … I have a couple: Why Black People Tend To Shout by Ralph Wiley. The Racial Contract by Charles Mills. The Arrogance Of Race by George Fredrickson. The Mis-Education Of The Negro by [Carter G.] Woodson, and All God’s Children by Fox Butterfield. From the conservative side I would recommend Shelby Steele’s The Content Of Our Character. There are more, but those jump out at me.

Oh, and how could I forget? You have to read The Field Negro.

6. In your view, how important a force has Hip Hop been in bridging racial divides? What are the cultural and other forces that you believe have the most promise in helping to unite us?

Hip Hop, in a way, has helped to bridge the racial divide. Especially among young people. They are our future, and young white kids from the burbs are trying to relate to young black kids from urban areas. Which, to me, is a good thing. Music and the arts is probably the best way to bridge the racial divide without actually getting down and talking to each other. But this comes with a caveat from me. Unfortunately these kumbaya moments can be somewhat superficial. We still have to explore our differences and try to understand each other on a deeper level and in more meaningful ways to have true racial harmony in America.

7. What can we look for in The Field Negro in the coming months? What other blogs would you recommend to our [readers]?

I am just going to keep writing about what I see every day and how I feel regardless of who it offends. I hate to say it, but I really don't have time to read a lot of other blogs. Still, there are other bloggers who I admire. Rippa from the Intersection Of Madness & Reality comes to mind, and I love all the bloggers in the Afrosphere. They all work so hard and put so much energy into their blogs.

 

Notes on R*ce

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I.

We’ve had seven generations pass since the Emancipation Proclamation, but only two since the end of Jim Crow and one since the last protest over the court-mandated desegregation of Boston’s public schools.  It’s been a little more than a year since the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York published its report on the discrimination and occupational segregation that pervade the industry.  Given the importance of the restaurant industry to so many of our local economies, the study’s findings should give us pause.

Researchers sent equally-credentialed pairs of testers—one member of each pair white, the other a person of color—to apply for server positions in 138 fine-dining Manhattan restaurants.  The study showed that:

Testers of color were only 54.5% as likely as white testers to get a job offer, and were less likely than white testers to receive a job interview in the first place. …

The work experience of white testers was twice as likely to be accepted without probing.

White testers with slight European accents were 23.1% more likely to be hired than white testers with no accent. However, testers of color with accents were treated no differently than testers of color without accents.

Researchers also used 2000 US Census data to compare the earnings of white workers and workers of color employed in front-of-the-house positions.  Even after controlling for job experience, education, and command of English, the study found that workers of color “pay a ‘race tax’ in the form of 11.6 % lower earnings than they would have if they had the same qualifications but were white.”

And this is not an isolated result.  Decades of matched pair and other studies have provided evidence of racial bias in the workplace and other domains.*

II.

The Opportunity Agenda recently released a publication titled Ten Lessons for Talking About Racial Equity in the Age of Obama.  In it the author writes:

Experience from around the country shows that discussing racial inequity and promoting racial justice are particularly challenging today.  Some Americans have long been skeptical about the continued existence of racial discrimination and unequal opportunity.  But with the historic election of an African American president, that skepticism is more widespread and more vocal than ever.

Ironically, at a time when many expected the national conversation to shift, race has become the issue that dare not speak its name.  I’ve noticed the change: a palpable reluctance of late to engage the topic in polite company, as if ignoring the elephant in the dining room will keep him from upsetting the table we’ve laid for ourselves and for our visions of a “post-racial” America; as if talking ever did that much anyway.  In my adopted city of New Orleans, brilliant young leaders of color are engaging the issue in new ways, more by doing than by talking.  We have a new mayor who understands how race has affected and continues to affect our region.  New generations are being born who are playing together, gaming together, singing the latest Hip Hop anthem together.

Is this the way out?  For one generation after another to rise up until it’s completely unremarkable that a black man should be president of the United States?   Will these demographic shifts translate finally into equitable outcomes, or will we need to press the issue until the sun goes cold?

Part of our reluctance might come from exhaustion, from decades of living with the effects of segregation and racial antipathy.  We feel powerless to eliminate a disease that has so far resisted cure.  Overt racism, implicit racial bias, white privilege, structural racism: the pathogen long ago developed new strains and underwent a kind of social metastasis.  We can change unfair policies, for example, but how do we shift attitudes and habits of mind?  The problem with the stuff inside our heads, of course, is that its ill effects don’t stay confined to that space.  The problem more generally is that both misery and good fortune are selective about whom they visit and in what neighborhoods they choose to reside.

III.

I’ve been grateful for those times in my life when the universal has triumphed over the particular, when some ray of light has penetrated the typical fog of my petty thoughts and plans.

I remember when my partner and I visited Manhattan shortly after the 9-11 attacks. Late at night, en route to Ground Zero, we stopped to spend a quiet hour in a Midtown coffee shop.  I was surprised at how readily we opened our hearts to one another and to others we met. We were buoyed at the time by an oceanic feeling of oneness with our neighbors.  Religion, race, age, gender—these seemed to melt away in the face of an overwhelming tragedy.  Outside the coffee shop and still a long way from Ground Zero, there was a smell in the air of something burning. We turned south and soon saw the devastated buildings that lined the site of the Twin Towers.  A strange light surrounded the crews who worked in the pits.  We saw the bobbing of cranes. From a distance, there was something very human about their movements, stooped as they were, feeling for life in the ground.

The saber rattling began several weeks after that.  Our divisions reasserted themselves and deepened.  It was then we realized we were in danger of losing something important: the conviction that men and women of good will needed to reach across their differences to find one another in the rubble.

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* See, for example, J. Bussey and J. Trasvina, “Racial Preferences: The Treatment of White and African American Job Applicants by Temporary Employment Agencies in California” (Berkeley, Calif.: Discrimination Research Center, December 2003); D. Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” American Journal of Sociology, 108, No. 5 (2003), 937-75.

 

The Rules of the Game

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The July 13, 2007 edition of the Wall Street Journal Online reported on a new video game called Karma Tycoon designed to teach kids about “fiscal responsibility and social entrepreneurship.”*  Web-based youth organization Do Something and JPMorgan Chase teamed up to bring us a game in which

The more good you do … the more Karma you get!  The more Karma you get, the more grants your not-for-profit is eligible for .... the more money you get, the more good you can do!  The more good you do … the more Karma you get!  The more Karma you have, the bigger of a Karma Tycoon you will be!!

Noimsayin?  Good, good.  Stay with me.  According to Do Something CEO Nancy Lublin, “Karma Tycoon is like a vitamin in a Twinkie.”

Twinkalicious!

Coming out at the end of this month is a new arcade-style game for inner-city kids that teaches them the rules of American civic life.  Playfully called Bootstraps by its creators, the main screen is tilted to suggest an uneven playing field.  On level one (“Mettle Detectors”), players use their joysticks to avoid falling fragments of decaying school buildings.  Intermediate levels challenge kids with monsters like the enchantress Mainstream Medea who attempts to demoralize players by flashing images of “illegals” and “welfare queens.”  Heavily armored Rightwingthink Tanks chase players down tracks that require them to execute dangerous, life-sapping, maneuvers called “Bell Curves.”  The game ends when a player reaches level ten with a few Dignity Points intact.

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* “‘Tis Not Simple to Give Gifts” by Christian C. Sahner

Class-Talk in the Third Sector

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Via Gift Hub : The American Ruling Class, a new documentary from Harper’s magazine editor Lewis Lapham, will air July 30 and 31 on the Sundance Channel.  What follows is a reworking of an earlier post on the subject.

Discussions of socioeconomic class are rare and fleeting in the nonprofit sector.*  This is a great shame.  Thirty years ago, the powerful images and texts of American Pictures taught me the meaning of the word “underclass.”  I didn’t hear the word used again with any frequency until Hurricane Katrina blew ashore.

Nobody talks about the underclass anymore.

Foundations are fortunate to do their work largely independent of government and corporations (including the media).  They have a good chance of introducing the topic of class and sustaining the conversation.  Yet despite continuing reminders about the myth of class mobility in this country, and an oft-stated concern for low-income communities, there are significant barriers to engaging the topic:

1.  Race, not class, structures the primary American narrative of oppression   In their book Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s,  Omi and Winant write that

Historically speaking, the call for “class” unity across racial lines has amounted in practice to an argument that non-whites give up their racially based demands in favor of “class” unity on white terms.  This will not be achieved by appeals to “class unity” or by reliance on “bargaining power theory,” which merely offer an abstraction to minorities confronted by racial inequities in the workplace.

Likewise in the nonprofit world, class-talk is sometimes seen as a distraction from issues that are more clearly rooted in racial antipathy.

2.  Class-talk produces in some a mental cramp   Paul Kingston and his intellectual heirs have argued that American society is essentially classless.  These authors don’t deny that sociologists, political scientists, and others can usefully divide the American public into various income categories.  What they deny is the notion that the members of these categories share “life-defining experiences” that license our referring to them as members of a distinct, coherent class.  Make of this kind of argument what you will.  It reminds me of Bill Clinton’s narrow definition of “sexual relations.”

3.  Class-talk is impolite   Few topics will more quickly cast a pall over middle class dinner parties than the history of class struggle in the United States.  In 2003, the President effectively silenced the critics of his tax cuts by accusing them of fomenting “class warfare.”

How do we incorporate class-talk into nonprofit work in a way that doesn’t elide hundreds of years of racial oppression?  How do we bring the lived experience of the poor and working poor into institutions governed by middle class values and norms?  How do we dispel the myth that America is essentially a classless society?

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* Based on recent data from the White Courtesy Telephone Department of Armchair Sociology that conducted a mental survey on this subject approximately 45 minutes ago.

The Maddening Calm: Talking Around Social Change

There’s an urgency in the deliberation of social activists that’s often missing from conversations among those of us who work at foundations.

Social activists breathe fire.  At their best, they’re deeply knowledgeable about the manner in which historical accident, human nature, and ideology have interacted to produce oppressor and oppressed.  There’s plenty of impassioned debate; the causes and the people they champion have an immediate presence.

The atmosphere changes when foundation folks gather to address social problems.  Often, in my experience, there’s a maddening calm.  We’re likely to replace fire by a polite and strangely apolitical bonhomie.  You’ll find many former activists among us, brimming with good ideas and good intentions, striving in our own way to make some kind of difference in the world.

But there’s been a subtle shift.

When somebody in the foundation circle puts the issue of race on the table, to take one example, it’s sometimes treated like Aunt Betty’s Mayonnaise Surprise—one of those potluck dishes everybody comments on but few dare sample.  Those of us in this circle have learned to preserve the outward calm, and we pass over in silence those subjects that would often add the greatest value to our philanthropic interventions.

I pray that I may live to see the day when these two benevolent circles—activists and philanthropoids—converge.  In the meantime, we foundation folks have a lot to learn from our more incandescent cousins.

What activists tend to do well is ask the question, How did we get to this state of affairs in the first place?  The best social activists make it a point to understand the history, the basic assumptions, the habits of mind, the structures, the policies and the laws that led to the creation of social inequalities.  They ask: What are the mechanisms by which these inequalities are sustained?  What has been the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery, colonialism, and other forms of oppression?

Asking these questions is not an idle exercise.  If we fail to ask them before we engage in any kind of philanthropic activity—and, in my view, we fail to ask them roughly 99 percent of the time—we’re simply proposing a kind of triage on society’s wounded that will do good for some, but keep intact the flow of victims.