White Courtesy Telephone

Philanthropy’s Response to Katrina: A Ten-Year Perspective

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 An edited version of this post was published by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) in the Summer 2015 edition of its Responsive Philanthropy newsletter.

A CITY OF TWO TALES

Local responses to the upcoming commemoration of Hurricane Katrina have been decidedly mixed. Some who lived through the storm and its aftermath are anxious. They expect many of the images and stories in the media to be painful. They have their own memories of homes and neighborhoods destroyed and loved ones lost. Some harbor a grief that has never cycled through its stages or been properly resolved.

Others see an opportunity to show the city in its glad rags, having come so far in so many ways from the destruction that millions witnessed on their television sets. Ironically, a new levee system makes New Orleans one of the best-protected coastal cities in the United States. There’s a strong ecosystem for entrepreneurs. The city is open for business.

Certainly one of the casualties of the storm will be a nuanced account of what happened in the ten years after Katrina made landfall. As Thomas Kuhn famously remarked, there are no theory-neutral observations. Each of us will see these events through the filter of our own worldviews, our “theories” of how to interpret the mundane and the extraordinary. Our assessment of the progress New Orleans has made since 2005 will be shaped (some might say “distorted”) by our own agendas. As the tenth anniversary of Katrina approaches, many of the stories served to us will be in the style of Dickens, brimming with rogues and children in rags. Others will be triumphalist tales with titles like, “The Five Things Successful People Do After An Unprecedented Catastrophe.”

Let the reader beware. My own prejudices and obsessions will become apparent soon enough.

THE PHILANTHROPIC RESPONSE TO KATRINA

The official Katrina@10 observances will rightly commemorate the individuals who lost their lives and livelihoods in the storm. During these somber occasions we’ll mourn the citizens who left the region and never returned, and we’ll count our own lucky stars. We’ll also take the opportunity to thank once again the individuals, families, foundations, church groups, businesses, and others who contributed so much to the reconstruction and rebirth of New Orleans. There are still thousands of volunteers who return year after year to put up houses or paint ramshackle schools. I’m still moved when I see them, walking back to their hotels from their labors. The locals toot their horns at them and wave in appreciation.

I’ve been a frequent critic of the philanthropic sector. I’ve poked fun at pompous CEOs and bloviating program officers. In the spirit of self-improvement, we can legitimately raise the question of whether or not, in response to Katrina, organized philanthropy did the right things in the right measure. We can justifiably ask what $3 billion in private contributions accomplished for New Orleans’ most vulnerable citizens. I’m happy for the field to engage these questions, but prefer that this happen some other time, perhaps, in some other essay.

More pressing, I believe, is the question of why, when current realities are as harrowing as anything we might have witnessed ten years ago, we lavish so much attention on the past. If a normally constituted human being had eight fingers instead of ten, we’d have finished our commemorations two years ago and have a good head start on forgetting, once again, the lessons of 2005.

A TALE OF TWO ZIP CODES

Rather than drag the reader through the entire chamber of horrors, let me focus on a representative statistic,* published three short years ago in a report titled, Place Matters for Health in Orleans Parish:** “Life expectancy in the poorest zip code in the city is 54.5 years, or 25.5-years lower than life expectancy in the zip code with the least amount of poverty in the city, where it is 80.”

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which of these ZIP codes is predominantly black and which is predominantly white.

And I invite the reader to slow his or her headlong rush through this article and allow that one statistic to sink in a bit. Twenty-five and a half years. The difference in life expectancy between males and females in the United States is currently about five years. This should be enough to get our attention. Perhaps like me you’ve wondered why this difference in life expectancy hasn’t generated more hand-wringing, more conference panels, more calls to action. A ten-year difference in life expectancy would be nothing short of a national scandal. A fifteen-year difference would be unthinkable.

But twenty-five and a half years? Here we have a kind of Katrina unaccompanied by torrents of rain. Here’s an implacable flood driving the poor in our city to deaths that are obscenely premature.

The Negro spiritual bids us to

Wade in the water
Wade in the water, children
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water

What an image for a city that still experiences the trauma of too much water! What an act of faith our obedience requires, for we’re told that it’s God’s angel who troubles the water, and it’s this act that brings healing to those who wade in.

What kind of healing do we need to feel the full weight of that solitary number: twenty-five and a half? What can foundations do to help trouble the water a bit, to quicken our pulses at the idea that our neighbors might be dying twenty-five years before we do?

Ten years ago, I watched events in New Orleans unfold from a safe distance. I was living in Washington, DC, at the time and my fellow Washingtonians and I clucked our tongues at the images on our TV screens. Some of us remarked that ‘there for the grace of God goes Washington, D.C.’ We shared a sense that black lives appeared to matter as little in our nation’s capital as they did in the American South.

Is there perhaps some way that philanthropy can help us remember the present more vividly than we recall the past?

A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

If you work at a foundation, if you have the privilege of funding the good people who help us remember the present, please know that much is expected of us. A higher consciousness, a greater sense of urgency, a more robust response to current suffering and injustice.

Years ago, I sat with a group of academics, one of whom described the research he had just conducted on the role of philanthropy in the Civil Rights Movement. His primary conclusion was that foundations had initially been circumspect and very slow on the draw.# They came around eventually, as they did with many progressive movements, when all the difficult work had already been done. And even then, they played a minor role.

I, the self-appointed spokesman for organized philanthropy, was indignant. I knew personally of many foundations that had taken risks to advance the cause of social justice. Here in front of me was yet another uninformed foundation-basher. But still his thesis gnawed at me, and the more I tried to negate it, the more clearly I saw how the exceptions proved the rule.

The Movement for Gender Equality, Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring—we let them spend their rage and bury their dead. After that, we convened them and funded those who knew how to speak to their betters. This was photo op philanthropy, the kind that smiles for the camera as it places one foot on a trophy that others had the courage to bag. Perhaps this will happen with the Black Lives Matter movement. Perhaps it too will devolve into an endless series of convenings in cold hotel meeting rooms, a polite request to stop the killing, an infographic or two.

The foundation response to Katrina was very different. It was not at all photo op philanthropy but rather something sacred. It might not have been perfectly strategic (whatever that means), but it came very much from the heart and therefore had its own kind of perfection. I know the overwhelming majority of my fellow New Orleanians share my gratitude for the generosity of so many.

The problems with organized philanthropy—the work of foundations and the like—are more systemic; they extend far beyond our attempts to respond to any one disaster. These problems explain why it’s the Pope, rather than a foundation president, who’s deemed by Fox News to be the most dangerous person on the planet. Understanding this slight to our field should presently be occupying the greatest minds in philanthropy.

For now, dear reader: If you’re moved to do so, make your pilgrimage to New Orleans this summer. Give us an opportunity to thank you again. We can mourn together for the dead. And, most importantly, arm in arm, we can find a way to honor the dignity of those who are thankfully still with us.

 

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* For a broader picture of “Inclusion” in the New Orleans metro area, see The New Orleans Index at Ten: Measuring Greater New Orleans’ Progress Toward Prosperity, available from the Data Center website.

** Prepared by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Orleans Parish Place Matters Team in conjunction with the Center on Human Needs, Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Network for Geospatial Health Research. The full report is available at http://www.orleansplacematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/CHER-Final-text.pdf.

# There were some notable exceptions. Cf. http://ncrp.org/campaigns-research-policy/36-campaigns-research-a-policy/1081-freedom-funders-philanthropy-and-civil-rights-movement. 

Just Out: Wage Theft Comic Book

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Interfaith Worker Justice is a national organization that engages faith communities to support and advance the rights of workers.  The organization has just produced an accessible “wage theft” comic book, in both English and Spanish, that helps bring this issue to life.

You can download or order copies of the comic book by clicking here.

 

Cooks Gone Wild!

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Leslie Lilly is the immediate past President and CEO of the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties.  Her professional career spans more than twenty-five years in the charitable sector, primarily in the American South and Appalachia. In this guest post, Ms. Lilly breaks with White Courtesy Telephone tradition by appearing intelligent and balanced.  —Eds.

There is a price to pay for willful ignorance sustained at someone else’s expense.  Paula Deen will have a long time to consider what she might have done better or differently, or perhaps stopped doing altogether, in the aftermath of the bad kitchen behaviors that are now public record.  Her fans as well as her detractors are in full-throated defense or condemnation, depending at which end of the table they have chosen to sit.  

The public uproar started when Deen went on video for a court deposition.  A former employee in one of her restaurants filed a lawsuit accusing Deen of employment discrimination.  The deposition had the same flavor as a cook show episode, albeit a very different topic.  Deen was her flamboyant self; her cup of folksiness ran over as she described at length her racial attitudes.  It was quite a performance.  She owned up to her naughtiness at having used the “N” word, expressing her regret and sorrow and that she never meant to hurt anyone.  She was sorry, sorry, sorry.  She loves black people.  

Well, all hell broke loose.  There have been more television interviews, more apologies, explanations and tears.  Yet the more Deen talks and tries to negotiate her way out of this briar patch, the more excruciating her anguished protests of repentance become.  She’s been seared like a steak by the public shaming.  The charitable-minded have come forth and counseled against an excess of blame, i.e., “those without guilt should cast the first stone.”  These outpourings of humility must account for Deen’s latest cookbook rocketing to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list.  So when will we be done?  

Some say, because she is not a young woman, we should forgive her white, “old school,” Southern way of talking about race.  She has suffered a painful comeuppance, including the loss of millions in product endorsements; and though misguided, her comments weren’t intentionally nasty, just like utterances we’ve heard from other nice people we know.  Why, heck, some of them are even our relatives!  Meanwhile, others who - listened to what she said, saw hoop skirts and Massa’s plantation resurrected before their horrified eyes.  These are the people who do not think it would be fun is re-live the 19th Century, especially in the South.  To them, Deen’s racial attitudes were simply offensive.

Deen is a savvy entrepreneur who has successfully capitalized on Southern culture and culinary heritage by making “Southern” the heart of her brand; so she isn’t just dishing up fried chicken and collard greens when she is promoting her business.  She is selling a version of an “authentic” South for which she is the star spokesperson. When you go out on that limb, you own it.  When she says Southern white folk are less prejudiced toward black people than others she is too polite to name, she does so with the credibility of someone divulging a family secret as if it’s the gospel truth to her millions of trusted fans.  She defends her racial attitudes, saying all Southern white people have this “special” relationship with black folk because their shared history is deeply and commonly rooted in the South.  This white chauvinism conveniently ignores the pain and suffering endured by blacks as Southern slaves. Deen’s great-great-great-great grandfather was a slaveholder.  Had this “special” relationship been internalized in Deen’s narrative, a more racially sensitive perspective might have emerged to also change her behaviors.  It would have helped had they also been enlightened by her modern reference to the two hundred years of struggle by African-Americans to achieve racial equity in this country.  It is terribly painful to witness someone so deeply out of touch with the arc of their own Southern history; and who has given so little thought to the harm it does to infect others with old deceits.  

The civil rights movement ended Jim Crow, the segregation in our public schools, and won the right to vote for millions of disenfranchised African-Americans.  This past June, the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act; the George Zimmerman trial got started; and a hard-fought battle for a comprehensive immigration bill took place in the U.S. Senate.  We are not living in a post-racial society.  Deen’s fall from grace is a reminder of how easy it is to lose your way when your brain disconnects from its moral compass; or, in another painful episode of same, given the gravity of the Zimmerman trial, is it ever appropriate to tell a knock-knock joke when lives are lost and at stake?

Related articles

Paula Deen, an American Story

I'm black, and I forgive Paula Deen

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.

 

The First-Ever Virtual Giving Circle

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On November 15th, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, in collaboration with four community partners,* will launch the first-ever, 100% online giving circle.  Dubbed “The Neutral Ground,” members of this giving circle will explore issues relating to race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation—and their intersections.

The twenty-five giving circle members will contribute $200 each, and these contributions will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the Greater New Orleans Foundation to create a pooled fund of $10,000 from which giving circle members will award grants.

Members will meet, engage in intergroup dialogue, and discuss potential grantees on The Neutral Ground website. (To see a mockup of the site, click here.)  Topics explored will likely include immigration, gay/straight issues, the special multicultural character of New Orleans, black/brown issues, and race in the age of Barack Obama.

Non-New Orleanians and New Orleanians in the diaspora are welcome to participate!  If you’re interested in joining the giving circle, please e-mail [email protected].  The time commitment is November 15, 2010, through Cinco de Mayo, 2011.  This is a virtual giving circle, so members will meet online rather than in person.  Members of the public are welcome to participate in the online discussions.

For those of you wondering about the name of the initiative, in New Orleans the “neutral ground” is the broad strip of grass dividing the opposing lanes of any street or avenue.  The Neutral Ground giving circle is based on an idea originally conceived by Diana Campoamor, President of Hispanics in Philanthropy.

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* The Human Rights Campaign (New Orleans chapter), Puentes, VAYLA, and the Urban League.  Full disclosure: The author of this post is the President & CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

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.

 

Equity and Philanthropy

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Editor’s note: Guest blogger Chris Cardona worked for eight years in philanthropic affinity groups and is chair of the advisory board for the NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund, a new giving circle that supports NYC-based social entrepreneurs in developing innovative solutions to persistent social problems.  In this post, he riffs on the effects of diversifying the ranks of professional philanthropoids …

“Equity and philanthropy” was the theme of a convening for emerging leaders of color in philanthropy hosted last week by the AIM Alliance, a partnership of three philanthropic-studies academic programs in Arizona, Indiana, and Michigan.  I walked away with mixed feelings.  My colleagues are doing important work, and more and more academic centers are taking the challenge of forming philanthropic skills.  But this discussion remains in its infancy.  We are far from understanding the causal connection between greater representation of diverse groups in philanthropy and more grantmaking dollars flowing (or not) to these nonprofits.

For example, the numbers tell us that the representation of diverse communities on the staffs of foundations has risen since the early 80s, though not on pace with their growth in the population. The level of giving to diverse communities has remained stagnant at levels far below proportionality.

Representation of diverse communities increases, giving to them does not. Doesn’t look good, eh?

But here’s the thing: The growth in representation among people of color has been concentrated at the program and support levels.  At the CEO and trustee levels, it’s largely business as usual (with the important exception of white women making inroads as CEOs).  So people of color continue to be underrepresented in the key decision-making roles.

It’s involvement in decision-making that we need to be pushing on.  From diversity we move to equity: the point is not just to have more diverse people in philanthropy, but for more grant dollars to flow to diverse communities. And from equity we move to democracy: the point is not just for more grant dollars to flow to diverse communities, but for members of these communities, the direct beneficiaries, to be involved in the process of decision-making. That’s democratizing philanthropy, and it’s where advocates for diversity can have the most long-term impact.

Black Courtesy, White Courtesy: The Great ARNOVA Race Debate

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Editor’s note: Two weeks ago an ARNOVA member set off a campfire of controversy by warmly recommending the White Courtesy Telephone blog to his colleagues.  For those of you unfamiliar with the group, ARNOVA is an association of extremely intelligent people who study the nonprofit sector.  WCT investigative reporter Rachel Tension was able to obtain a transcript of the highly charged ARNOVA discussion, parts of which are reproduced below.  (We changed the participants’ names because we were too lazy to ask their permission to use their real names.)  In Washington, DC, it’s dog eat dog.  In academia, it’s the opposite, so we were frankly hesitant to approach the subject without some professional assistance.  We invited WCT semiotician-on-retainer, Monique Nescafé, to help interpret the transcript for us.  Dr. Nescafé’s work for the past several years has focused on neomaterialist narratives in the novels of Jennie Adams.  This is her first guest post with WCT …

I am so very happy to be invited to write for the White Telephone of Courtesy, and especially to comment on the post-capitalist discourse of ARNOVA members.  They say the American mind is closed.  No, my friends, he is wide open, like the pore of some gigantic sweat gland.

Consider this small exchange:

Alas, … I find the name [White Courtesy Telephone] unfortunate. It may indeed be useful but the title is off-putting.
—Betty

I am in the process of considering the title for my upcoming book, so I have titles on my mind.  Can you clarify what it is about the title of the White Courtesy Telephone blog that makes it off-putting? …
—Dorothy

I think the title of “white courtesy” gives the impression that there is something else possible like “black courtesy”—i.e. that there are disparate courtesies for different groups. Or even worse—that there is no other courtesy other than white courtesy.  I have been involved in discussions with other groups who would therefore find the title offensive. Unless of course you mean it ironically (like we don’t have white courtesy).  At the very least, I do not actually understand what “white courtesy” means.
—Betty

In her brilliant rejoinder,  Betty lays bare the racial insensitivity of the White Courtesy Telephone editors.  This is not in dispute: these editors often make light of subjects that would be better treated with reverential silence.  I applaud Betty.  Her act of problematization, of affirming a posttextual paradigm of reality—the impression of a racialized there-for-me—is, in my view, an intellectual tour de force.

How does she do it?  She describes herself as being in a superposition of affective eigenstates: while it’s true that she feels “put off,” she simultaneously postpones her feelings of offense as she considers an ironic reading of “white courtesy.”  She is put off, but she is not quite yet put off.  (A monk asks Dongshan Shouchu, “What is Buddha?” Dongshan answers, “Three pounds of flax.”)  And although Betty does not actually understand what “white courtesy” means, she complains about the phrase anyway.  If confusion is the first step to knowledge, then Betty is clearly very knowledgeable.

Betty also brilliantly presences the elided contextuality of the ARNOVA discourse by referring to “other groups” that would find the blog’s name offensive.  This kind of offense-by-proxy is the mark of a generous individual, willing to be offended not only for herself but on behalf of others as well.

And so, what is it ultimately that puts the “white” in White Courtesy Telephone?  Another ARNOVA commentator chimes in:

… we know words make a difference, so what I’m interested in is: why did the creators of white courtesy telephone pick that name, rather than, say, ‘black courtesy telephone,’ or just plain old ‘courtesy telephone’?

Was it in order to prompt this very discussion?

Or do white courtesy telephones have a special connotation not shared with courtesy telephones of other colours?

I may be exposing my ignorance here—but that’s because I’m ignorant.
—Nigel

Did Monsieur Ruesga, when he chose the name White Courtesy Telephone, choose it in order to “prompt this very discussion”?  It is possible, n’est-ce pas?  He might very well have anticipated the ARNOVA exchange as a sommelier anticipates a Montrachet 1978 from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.  How delicious, to inquire after coloured telephones through the fog of a fine wine.  While these coloured telephones may have a special significance, we will henceforth, in deference to our subject, refer to them as telephones of colour.

Children in Detention

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The mood in House 5 is somber.  Eight children ranging in age from 14 to 17, three of them girls, sit patiently as a young lawyer reviews their rights.  Several days or weeks earlier, the children, unaccompanied by family members, had been arrested at different parts of the U.S.–Mexico border attempting the dangerous crossing.  They were fleeing the poverty of their home countries.  They had come for work or to be reunited with their parents.

“How many of you are from El Salvador?” the lawyer asks them in Spanish.  Four children raise their hands.  “How many from Guatemala?”  Three more hands go up.

One young boy who looks a little taller and fairer than the others explains as best he can that he’s Romani—a Gypsy—but also speaks a little Romanian.  The advocate assures him he’ll be briefed later that day in his own language.  The boy neither smiles nor frowns, but folds his arms and looks past the pink and blue curtains into the brightly lit courtyard outside the window.  His eyes focus on a distant point as he struggles to piece together the meanings of the few words of Spanish he can recognize.

*          *          *

The children’s detention center in Phoenix is a series of squat, cinder block buildings with an adjoining soccer field and a small swimming pool, surrounded by a large metal fence.  The facility is managed by Southwest Key Programs, an Austin-based nonprofit.  Staff members, most of them women, do their best to care for the 130 children in their charge.

One of the most striking aspects of this facility is the complete absence of any Mexican children.  According to Aryah Somers, a staff attorney with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, there’s a “gentleman’s agreement” between Mexico and the United States that all Mexican nationals apprehended at the border will be immediately returned to Mexico.  According to reports, it’s common for unaccompanied children to be dropped off in Mexican border towns in the middle of the night and left to fend for themselves.

Before coming to this facility, non-Mexican children might have spent days or even weeks in border jails.  Children have reported being deliberately mistreated while in Border Patrol custody.  According to the Florence Project, these children

are handcuffed, forced to sleep on the floor without blankets or pillows, denied medical treatment, and verbally and physically abused.  Children report that they are given only one piece of bread in the morning and a small taco at night, and then punished when they say they are hungry and ask for more food.

It’s worth noting here that only two countries—the United States and Somalia—have failed to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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Robert Putnam’s “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century”

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1.  In case you haven’t heard all the hoopla, sociologist Robert Putnam, most famous for his book Bowling Alone, has published a new article arguing that “In the short to medium run, … immigration and ethnic diversity challenge social solidarity and inhibit social capital.”

2.  It’s an excellent article; a thought-provoking read. Apart from a dicey section on the multivariate analysis of data to control for the effect of certain variables, the study is accessible to non-experts like me.  Don’t make the same mistake as 98 percent of the people who are currently dismissing Putnam’s results: read the article for yourself.

3.  An aside: More interesting than Putnam’s article, in my view, has been the sociology of its reception. There’s a palpable hesitancy, in polite liberal circles, to bring up the subject.  First, it’s never his article, but rather somebody’s gloss on it that my colleagues suggest I read.  Second, no person of conscience broaches the subject of Putnam’s article unless, in the same breath, he also recommends a book or article that purports to advance a countervailing thesis.  Putnam’s work is clearly radioactive.

4.  Never fear the truth, whatever it might be.

5.  Putnam’s article might ultimately rival Christine Letts’s “Virtuous Capital” for the volume of eyebrow-raising commentary it will generate—much of it, I predict, involving a great deal of hand-wringing.

6.  Liberals are in some ways hoist on their own petard: Putnam uses variation in ethnic/racial category as a proxy for “diversity.”  This is what I sometimes refer to as the Whitman’s Sampler Model of diversity, an impoverished notion that enables well-meaning liberals to declare victory when they have “one of these, one of these, and one of those” on their staff or on their board.

7.  Putnam’s results will play handily to those conservatives who believe that self-segregation works with, rather than against, “the grain of human nature.”  We hear this kind of argument in apologetics for “a conservatism comfortable with materialist self-interest.”  These same conservatives will likely pass over in silence those sections of the article that review the many benefits of increased immigration and diversity: greater creativity; better, faster problem-solving; and more rapid economic growth, among others.  Putnam never argues that diversity is, on balance, a bad thing.

8.  Putnam’s results discredit the idea that greater diversity is correlated with increased inter-ethnic hostility.  He stresses that “[d]iversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation.”  To put it another way, “In more diverse settings, Americans distrust not merely people who do not look like them, but even people who do.”

9.  Putnam points out that:

All our empirical analysis to this point has involved ‘comparative statics’—that is, we have compared people living in places with different ethnic mixes at one point in time—namely different American communities in the year 2000. Although our evidence does suggest that it is the level of diversity that matters, not the rate of change, we have not yet considered any ‘dynamic’ evidence about the effects of immigration and diversity over long periods of time within a single place (whether a single community or the nation as a whole). Exploring the dynamics, as opposed to the comparative statics, of diversity and social capital requires entirely different methods, and my research group has only begun to explore those avenues.

What would these further studies likely reveal?

10.  Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, Putnam doesn’t argue that we can’t learn to respond to ethnic and racial diversity better than we currently do.  We’re not fated forever to respond irrationally to fear of the “other,” however much recent history has inclined us to this view.

Refreshing Candor From An Immigrant Rights Advocate

We asked Q—, a national immigrant rights advocate, to describe the current environment in her field.*  Here’s her surprising answer …

“The immigrant rights movement is going through an overwhelming, tense, and confused time, which is hopefully setting the stage for changes that have been needed for a long time.

“The down side:

“A lot of people didn’t like the immigration reform legislation in the Senate this year.  But now the only thing that might have been a solution is gone, and both political parties are saying they won’t pursue anything comprehensive and humane for at least the next several years.  And that means the lives of immigrants are likely to get a lot worse before they start to get better.

“We’re facing the entrenchment and elaboration of a separate and unequal legal system for immigrants that doesn’t provide checks and balances necessary for ensuring that the government follows the law.

“We’re facing a lack of hope among Americans—including immigration activists—that the federal government can fix anything, let alone anything as complicated as immigration policy.

“We’re facing an overwhelming number of anti-immigrant measures introduced in cities and states.  According to the National Conference of State Legislatures,

As of July 2, 2007, no fewer than 1404 pieces of legislation related to immigrants and immigration had been introduced among the 50 state legislatures.  From January to July 2nd 2007, 170 bills became law in 41 states ... State legislators have introduced roughly two-and-a-half times more bills in 2007, than in 2006.  The number of enactments from 2006 (84) has more than doubled to 170 in 2007 ... In the continued absence of a comprehensive federal reform of the United States’ challenged immigration system, states have displayed an unprecedented level of activity.

“We’re facing racial profiling, as people are being asked for their documentation on traffic stops if they look ‘foreign.’

“We’re facing attacks in Congress that keep chipping away at the rights of immigrants to argue their cases in court, the power of judges to make decisions about individual cases, and assurances that detention facilities keep people safe.

“We’re facing the enforcement of ‘material support’ laws that define immigrants and others as terrorists if they have ever provided any help to a rebel group, even if that rebel group fought alongside American troops, and even if the choice was to carry water for an army or be shot in the head.

“We’re facing a seemingly endless trail of death at the US-Mexico border.

“We’re facing the tangled interests and assumptions of African Americans, Latinos, labor, agribusiness, churches, and practically every other politically powerful interest group.

“Many immigrant rights activists are feeling overwhelmed and scared.  A lot of people are angry, and some are more reflective than they had been.

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

Black and Brown on the Immigration Debate

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As we move closer to the 2008 presidential election, an increasing number of politicians and political operatives will attempt to use the immigration issue to drive a wedge between the Black and Brown communities.

Some will blame the hiring of low-skilled immigrants for the decline in employment among Black American men.  (A very thoughtful article by Bill Fletcher, Jr. at the Black Commentator addresses this issue.)  Others will point to longstanding tensions between African Americans and Latinos. 

But those of us inside and outside these communities need to resist the claim that it’s a zero-sum game.  We need to acknowledge the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery, colonialism, and other forms of oppression.  We also need to begin shifting our focus from the competition for low-paying jobs to guaranteeing a living wage and strong safety net for all Americans.  One immigration advocacy organization puts it this way:

As long as the “ladder” that allows different race and ethnic groups to, over time, climb into other employment opportunities (through training, employment, etc.) is broken, multiple groups will get stuck at and compete along the same rung – for the unskilled, non-stable and, for the most part, non-union jobs in the secondary sector.

According to a new study by the Economic Mobility Project, American men have less earning power today than their fathers did (when adjusted for inflation).  Workers are losing ground.  And we have yet to fully appreciate the links between the dynamics of labor markets in the United States and increasing globalization.

The more our Black and Brown communities are divided and conquered, the less likely they’ll be able to counter the larger forces eroding their earning and savings power.

The Color of Generosity

I’m wearing a magic cloak that blunts the effects of biting sarcasm from fellow bloggers, so I’m emboldened to say that Warren Buffett’s gift to the Gates Foundation will cement what is for many Americans the archetype of the philanthropist: a wealthy, socially conservative white male considerably past middle age.  We know, of course, that Great Givers come in all colors and genders* from every income category, even though their generosity doesn’t often make front page news.

We’re reminded of this when we read contemporary versions of the parable of the widow’s mite, like this Washington Post story on the extraordinary generosity of Thomas Cannon, an African American postal worker who had given away an estimated $150,000 to charity by the time he died.

The African American community has a reputation among fundraisers for being especially generous.  On average, blacks donate to charity 25 percent more of their discretionary income than whites.  In 2004, African Americans made $11.4 billion in charitable contributions.  According to the author of the Post story, “That kind of giving tends to be curiously overlooked by critics who describe their black countrymen as selfish underachievers who lounge around waiting for handouts.”

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* Yes, all genders, even the in-between ones.