Challenging the Structures of Racism: Moving Hartford Forward

1
Challenging the Structures of Racism Moving
Hartford Forward

• Presentation to
• The Interfaith Coalition for Equity and Justice
• November 10th 2005
• john a. powell
• Williams Chair in Civil Rights Civil Liberties,
  Moritz College of Law
• Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
  and Ethnicity
• The Ohio State University
• http//www.kirwaninstitute.org/

2
Preliminary Questions

• What responsibility do churches and congregations
  have in alleviating racial inequalities?
• What are these disparities, and what are the
  causes of them?
• How do we achieve a just society?
• What are some examples of progress?

3
Outline and Focus

• Relationship Between Spirituality and Social
  Justice
• Structural Racism
• Spatial Racism
• Housing
• Education
• Healthcare
• Immigration
• Building a Collective Equity Agenda

4
The Relationship BetweenSpirituality and Social
Justice
5

• We are all caught up in an
  inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a
  single garment of destiny. Whatever
  effects one directly effects all
  indirectly.
• -The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

6
Common Humanity

• A racialized structure harms more than just
  people of color, it harms everyone.
• A new arrangement works to lift us all,
  spiritually and pragmatically.
• A civil rights agenda is NOT SOLELY a means to
  lift up the poor and people of color but a
  recognition and embracing of our differences
  within our greatest commonality Humanity.

7
Spirituality and Social Justice

• What is the relationship between spirituality and
  social justice?
• We usually focus on how spirituality inspires
  social justice work, but not on how working for
  social justice informs spirituality.
• Spirituality ?? Social Justice

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The Meaning of Self

• Social justice work spirituality calls for an
  expansion of our understanding of self society
• Current paradigm of a Hobbesian, isolated view
• Perceives individuals as autonomous-independent
  selves
• egoistic, possessive, separate, isolated,
  rational
• role of state protect individualism and
  individual property
• This leads to increasing isolation and fear of
  the other.
• The price we pay is denigration of part of
  ourselves.

9
Connectedness

• The alternative is a model of connectedness
• This model perceives individuals as
  part of something bigger.
• Inter-being, unified, not egoistically
  separate
• This perspective is at the heart of spirituality
• The racialized space and identities we have
  organized ourselves around are toxic and need to
  be reconstructed.
• However, because identity is not constructed
  solely at the individual level, it cannot be
  reconstructed solely at the individual level.
• Collective Imagination!

10
Suffering

• Suffering is a central concern of both
  spirituality and social justice
• Existential/ontological (Spiritual Suffering)
• Sense of lack
• Disillusionment
• Separation from each other, the whole that is our
  unified selves
• Inherent in existence
• Surplus (Social suffering)
• The result of social and institutional
  arrangements/structures
• Visited on people and groups unequally

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Spirituality Structural Racism

• What does this understanding of the unified self
  mean for spirituality/religion?
• If one of the foci of spirituality is to engage
  suffering and its causes, spirituality must also
  be concerned with how institutions and structures
  function in society.
• Structural racism causes suffering, This
  suffering is a call to the spiritual to combat
  these structures.

12
Structural Racism
13
Defining Race

• Historically, biological definitions of race
  explained (and produced) the secondary status of
  people of color.
• Cultural understandings have more recently been
  used to explain disparities which persist.
• In contrast, we suggest that race
• is a social construction
• produced as dialectical and hierarchical
• gives power to white peopleto legitimize the
  dominance of white people over non-white people.
  (Western States Center 2)
• and distributes benefits (and disadvantages)
  accordingly.

14
Racial Categories

• We recognize that racial categories are both more
  and less significant than we acknowledge.
• Less because they are not inherent, natural or
  essential differences
• More because they are socially inscribed. We have
  created it as a difference
• How do we resolve this?
• Ignore them?
• Naturalize them?
• Acknowledge the social meaning, and recognize and
  challenge the inscription of race in our
  structures and institutions

15
Inequalities as Symptoms of Structural Racism

• Inequality matters, however durable group
  inequalities deserve closer inspection. Why?
• Persistent inequities are a reflection of
  cumulative, durable, group based inequalities.
• When disparities are durable and cumulatively
  visited on certain groups, this brings into
  question the fairness of larger structures and
  arrangements.
• Inequity arises as disenfranchised groups are
  left out of the democratic process

16
Model for Disparate Outcomes
Historically
Today
Explicitly Biased Structures
Colorblind (De Jure) Structures
Structural Racism
Disparate Outcomes
Disparate Outcomes
Individuals/ Culture
Structures/ Opportunity
17
Structural Racism

• How do we understand racial disparities if they
  are not explained by personal discrimination or
  explicit laws and policies?
• Structures are sets of mutually sustaining
  schemas or relationships and resources that
  empower and constrain social action and
  that tend to be reproduced by that
  social action. (Sewell)
• Structural racism is both a model for
  understanding the reality of how racism
  functions and a way to refigure necessary
  intervention.

18
Disparities as a Barrier
to a Just Society

• How do we recognize a system of racialized
  structural exclusion and arrangement? Especially
  if it affects not just people of color, but
  whites as well.
• Racism can impact the function of other domains,
  that appear to be outside of race.
• For example, healthcare has been shown to be
  inequitable for people of color, however it is
  not universally attainable for whites either.

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Disparities as a Barrier
to a Just Society

• Thus we cannot use a traditional model of
  equality where Group B strives to get what Group
  A has. This normalizes what Group A has (which
  may be insufficient).
• At best the normalized group gets nothing, and at
  worst something is taken away from them (zero-sum
  game)
• Without re-conceptualizing structures and
  relationships everyone will come up short.

20
Structural Racism (SR)

• Understanding structural racism as a system of
  mutually reinforcing constraints leads us to
  believe that changing one of those constraints
  will bring down the house of cards.
• Yet when one of the cards is removed,
  the house remains standing.
• Utilizing a structural racism model of
  intervention, we need to construct an
  approach to achieve a just
  society through the
  pursuit of civil and human
  rights.

21
Spatial Racism(Structural Racism and Space)
22
Examples of SR Spatial Racism

• Spatial racism is a form of structural racism
• What is spatial racism?
• The cumulative impact of policies and structures
  that work to segregate people of color from
  opportunity and strip away resources from inner
  city (and sometimes inner suburban) communities
  of color

23
Policies Enforcing InequityHistorical
Government Role

• If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is
  necessary that properties shall continue to be
  occupied by the same social and racial classes.
  A change in social or racial occupancy generally
  contributes to instability and a decline in
  values.
• Excerpt from the 1947 FHA underwriting manual

24
Policies Enforcing Inequity Contemporary
Government Role

• Spatial Racism is not natural or neutral it
  results from government policies, such as
• Zoning laws which prevent affordable housing in
  many suburbs
• Housing policies that concentrate subsidized
  housing
• Municipalities that subsidize the relocation of
  businesses out of the city
• Transportation spending which favors highways,
  metropolitan expansion and urban sprawl
• Court decisions that prevent metropolitan school
  desegregation
• School funding which is tied to property taxes

25
Spatial Racism The Civil Rights Agenda for the
21st Century

• Space is how race plays out in American
  society-and the key to solving inequities in
  housing, transportation, education, and health
  careSprawl is the new face of Jim Crow. -- john
  powell
• Social and racial inequities are geographically
  inscribed
• There is a polarization between the rich and the
  poor that is directly related to the areas in
  which they live

26
The Cumulative Impact of Spatial Racism
Opportunity Segregation

• The cumulative impact of sprawl, fragmentation
  and spatial racism is the segregation of low
  income residents from opportunities such as
• Good schools, meaningful employment, safe and
  stable neighborhoods
• This is opportunity segregation

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Spatial Racism The Civil Rights Agenda for the
21st Century

• The city of Hartford has lost 40 of its total
  population since 1950.
• Those who were left behind were largely people of
  color
• City schools are 95 Black and Hispanic
• More than 2/3 are eligible for free and reduced
  lunch
• More than half are from non-English-speaking homes

Kahlenberg, Richard D. 5/1/2003. The New Brown,
Integration by class, not race, can fix schools
in poor cities. Equality Education A Century
Foundation Project.
28
Segregation in Connecticut
29
Racial/Opportunity Segregation in Hartford
Connecticut

• Neighborhood Segregation
• In 2000, Hartford, CT African American/White
  dissimilarity is 0.65, meaning 65 of the African
  American or White population would need to
  relocate to desegregate the region
• For Latinos, segregation is just as extreme
  (0.63), Hartford has the 7th most segregated
  Latino population in the nation

Source Lewis Mumford Center, University of
Albany, NY
30
Racial/Opportunity Segregation in Hartford
Connecticut

• Opportunity Segregation The result of racial
  segregation
• African Americans and Latinos on average live in
  neighborhoods that have..
• Poverty rates that are more than 300 higher than
  the average White neighborhood
• Twice as many vacant and abandoned housing units
  as the average White neighborhood
• Nearly 250 higher unemployment rates than the
  average White neighborhood

Source Lewis Mumford Center, University of
Albany, NY
31
Structural Racism in Housing
32
Examples of SR Housing

• Housing is another arena where structural racism
  impedes access to opportunity and
  disproportionately harms people of color

33
Racial Disparity in Housing

• Significant racial disparity exists across
  multiple indicators of housing need and housing
  health
• Home ownership
• Home equity and mortgage approval
• Cost-burdened households
• Affordability of housing
• As the housing market grows more unaffordable,
  people of color who earn low incomes bear the
  brunt of escalating housing costs.

34
Racial Disparity in Housing Problems in
Connecticut

• In 2000, African Americans and Latinos in
  Connecticut were nearly twice as likely as Whites
  to have housing problems (either due to
  overcrowding, housing condition or cost)

Source HUD, CHAS Database
35
Housing Challenges Facing Communities of Color
36
Structural Racism and Housing

• Multiple structures work to promote and reinforce
  racial disparity in housing needs
• A housing market that primarily serves the
  affluent
• Insufficient public resources to create
  affordable housing opportunities
• Local regulations that reduce housing
  affordability
• Discrimination in the lending and housing market
• Predatory lending practices

37
Inequitable Distribution forHousing Assistance

• Government tax subsidies to home owners are
  nearly 500 more than spending for low income
  housing assistance
• In 2003 the federal government devoted 23
  billion for low income housing assistance, but
  provided 113 billion in mortgage deduction tax
  subsidies
• These subsidies primarily benefit the wealthiest
  households (chart on right)

38
Exclusionary Land Use Regulations Exacerbate the
Affordability Problem

• Local government land use restrictions in
  suburban areas can enable communities to exclude
  affordable housing
• These restrictions drive up the cost of housing
  and block access to lower income African American
  and Hispanic households
• This is often referred to as exclusionary
  zoning
• density restrictions (lots too large)
• building size (large square footage requirements)
• site restrictions (requiring driveways, large
  setbacks)
• use restrictions (not allowing enough
  multi-family zoned land)

39
Structural Racism in Education
40
Examples of SR Education

• Education is perhaps the most important crucible
  for remedying disparities, enhancing life
  opportunities, and promoting a genuine
  multiracial and multi-ethnic democracy.
• -john a. powell
• A New Theory of Integrated Education.
• In School Resegregation Must the South
  Turn Back? 2005.

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The Impact of Education

• There is a strong link between
  education level and employment
  opportunities, which subsequently
  affects every other opportunity structure,
  including safe and stable housing, health, wealth
  and employment
• Poor children and children of color
  disproportionately receive inequitable education,
  limiting their future ability to secure
  employment

42
Education

• Examples of factors that affect the quality of
  education a student receives include

43
Racial School Segregation in Connecticut

• Both racial segregation and economic segregation
  coexist in Connecticuts three largest school
  districts

44
Economic School Segregation in Hartford, CT

• Students of Color in the Hartford region
  disproportionately attend higher poverty schools

45
Concentrated Poverty

• In 86 of states, school districts with the
  greatest numbers of poor children have less money
  to spend per pupil than districts with the fewest
  numbers of poor children

• Studies have suggested that one of the greatest
  predictors of student success is the SES of the
  school
• A middle-class school is twenty-four times as
  likely to be consistently high performing as a
  high-poverty school

Source The Century Foundation (2004). Can
Separate Be Equal? www.tcf.org
46
Concentrated Poverty

• Low-income students attending middle-class
  schools perform higher, on average, than
  middle-class children attending high-poverty
  schools

Source The Century Foundation (2004). Can
Separate Be Equal? www.tcf.org
47
Structural Racism in Health Care
48
Examples of SR Health Care

• Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in
  health is the most shocking and the most
  inhuman.
• -The Rev. Martin Luther King,
• at the Second National
• Convention of the Medical
• Committee for Human Rights,
• Chicago, March 25, 1966

49
More on Health Disparity

• Despite progress, significant health disparity
  exist for African Americans
• In 2002, mortality rates for African American men
  were 27 higher than mortality rates for white
  men, mortality rates are 14 higher for African
  American women than White women

50
Health Disparity Life Expectancy by Race
Life Expectancy by Race 1950 to 1995 Source
Changing America Indicators of Social and
Economic Well-Being by Race (1997), By the
Council of Economic Advisors for President Clinton
51
The Multiple Factors Impacting Racialized Health
Disparity
Multiple factors impact the racialized health
disparity for people of color. Like other
structural racism based disparities, health
disparity is tied to other issues such as
education, housing, living in poverty, economic
opportunity and mobility.
52
SR Employment Insurance

• The majority of non-elderly rely on employers for
  health insurance
• People of color are much more likely to be
  employed in jobs that do not provide health
  insurance
• Due to inequities in the job market
• In Connecticut in 2003-2004, non-elderly Whites
  were 8.5 times more likely to have employer
  sponsored health insurance than non-elderly
  African Americans and Latinos

Source The Henry J. Kaiser Health Foundation
53
Structural Racism in Immigration
54
Examples of SR Immigration

• Our Hobbesian society, egalitarian individualism
  and xenophobia reflected in our attitudes and
  beliefs regarding immigration
• Job competition
• The burdening of public services

55
Examples of SR Immigration

• Immigration policies have discriminatory effects
• In 1997, countries with non-white populations
  represented the top five countries of origin of
  legal immigrants.1
• Immigration policies do not consider the
  proximity to the United States, the demand to
  immigrate, or the population of the country.
  Regardless of these, country caps are the same.2
• As a result, Japan has a visa acceptance rate of
  99.7, while Mexico has over one million people
  on visa waiting lists.

1. See 1997 INS Statistical Yearbook, supra note
19, at 20 tbl. C. The top five countries in 1997
were, in order Mexico, the Philippines, China,
Vietnam and India. 2. http//www.bc.edu/bc_org/av
p/law/lwsch/journals/bclawr/41_4/01_FMS.htm 3.
James A. R. Nafziger, Review of Visa Denials by
Consular Officers, 66 Wash. L. Rev. 1, 69 (1991).
Thomas Alexander Aleinikoff et al., Immigration
Citizenship Process And Policy 295 (4th ed.
1998).
56
Building a Collective Equity Agenda
57
A New Paradigm

• Our society cannot be de-racialized solely by
  material redistribution (e.g., redistribution of
  wealth), nor by only achieving numerical
  diversity in our institutions (affirmative
  action).
• It must come out of the deliberate, collective
  action to address the presence and construction
  of racial hierarchy.
• Collectively Reshaping a New Paradigm!
• Define the paradigm it is hard to know what to
  do until we define what were trying to do.

58
Setting Goals, Measuring Progress

• Our work must be outcome-oriented (i.e., equal
  humanity), not just simple process or input
  focused (i.e., we need to be and think
  iteratively).
• First identify goals (i.e., equal humanity), then
  work to produce those desired outcomes.
• Measure progress or retrenchment in multiple
  areas, as structures and institutions are complex
  and intersecting.
• We can make progress toward realizing a new
  paradigm but we need to work together and
  question what we have/are today in order to be
  able to achieve that craved EQUAL HUMANITY in a
  Socratic sense.

59
Strategic Interventions

• Often our work is transactional, we seek to make
  small changes- incremental gains within existing
  arrangements.
• We need transformative thinking.
• Strategic transactional change can be
  transformative, however we must keep in mind the
  multidimensional nature, and reinforcing
  structure of inequities.

60
Strategic Interventions

• Need to think about these issues in both in a
  particular and universal context
• Targeted universalism Broad programs that are
  universally available to citizens of all racial
  and socioeconomic groups (such as universal
  healthcare and childcare), used in conjunction
  with specific targeted interventions to remedy
  inequities.

61
Existing Equitable Reforms in Connecticut

• Sheff v. ONeil school segregation
• Found that defacto segregation was illegal
• Connecticuts statewide affordable housing
  policies (Connecticut Affordable Housing Appeals
  Procedure)
• Policy sets goals that cities and towns have at
  least 10
• The policy resulted in an additional 10,084
  affordable housing units between 1990 and 1998

62
Existing Equitable Reforms in Connecticut

• These results are not without flaws (for example
  Sheff was back in court last year for the State
  not meeting its obligation) but they represent
  progress
• We must continue to advocate and fight for
  expanding this (and other) equitable initiatives

63
Faith-Based Organizations

• Faith-based organizations offer great
  opportunities for advocacy and action, and have
  achieved numerous successes across the nation in
  furthering racial and social justice.

64
ICEJ Success

• ICEJ (Interfaith Coalition for Equity Justice)
• Hartford, CT
• Education Called for an expansion of School
  Readiness funding for preschool
  children living in the poorest school districts.
• Immigration Joined with 40 other organizations
  from across the country pushing for passage of
  national comprehensive immigration reform through
  the SOLVE Act. 
• Taxes Fought together with various allies for
  progressive income tax increases (portion of
  family income in excess of 250,000) to increase
  state's share of public education costs and
  reduce reliance on local property taxes.

65
Other Faith-Based Organizations Success

• MCU (Metropolitan Congregations United for St.
  Louis)
• St. Louis, MO
• An interfaith, multi-racial community
  organization of 76 member
  congregations impacting more than
  700,000 people.
• Healthcare Helped pave the way for 90,000
  children in Missouri to gain access to health
  care through passage of presumptive
  eligibility.
• Jobs Was actively involved in economic
  development plans for the St. Louis Lambert
  Airport buyout land, which will result in 18,000
  new jobs.

66
Achieving a Just Society

• The obstacles we face in disestablishing racial
  hierarchy can seem insurmountable, however
• Through a comprehensive structural understanding
  and the development of a collaborative prevention
  agenda, we can make great strides in addressing
  and remedying disparities along racial lines.
• Strategic transactional change, can ultimately
  accomplish transformation.
• Eyes on the prize(s)
• Remember- We Have, and Can Make Progress

67

• Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in one
  lifetime, therefore, we must be saved by hope.
  And, nothing that is true or good or beautiful
  makes complete sense in any immediate context of
  history, therefore, we must be saved by faith.
  And, no act, however virtuous, can be
  accomplished alone, therefore, we must be saved
  by love.
• -Theologian Reinhol Niebuhr quoted in Franklin
  (2003)

Franklin, Robert M. (2003). The Way Forward
Conversations About Justice, Virtue, and Social
Change. An address to the National Humanities
Council, Savannah, GA, November 8.
68
Questions or Comments? For More Information
Visit Us On-Linewww.KirwanInstitute.org
69
Addendum
70
The Meaning of Self

• "I" cannot reach fulfillment without "thou." 
  The self cannot be self without other selves. 
  Self-concern without other-concern is like a
  tributary that has no outward flow to the ocean. 
  
• Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
• Where Do We Go from Here Chaos or Community?

71
Personal vs. Social

• Were constantly in the process of not just
  making a world to inhabit, but were constantly
  in the process of making ourselves.
• Relieving social suffering to move beyond our
  self
• Must reject structures that limit our ways to
  embrace love and hope in all out interpersonal
  interaction to come home
• Love calls the ego beyond itself

72

• The ultimate ideal of social cohesion, as of the
  moral life, is not altruism the willingness to
  limit self-interest, with or without insight into
  the other person. It is love the capacity to
  imagine and to accept the other, lifting,
  haltingly, the wall of defense with which we
  protect ourselves against him.
• -Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Unger, Roberto Mangabeira (2001). False
Necessity Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in
the Service of Radical Democracy from Politics A
Work in Constructive Social Theory. London/New
York Verso.
73

• The need to face and understand our suffering,
  and to change toward new values, is perhaps the
  basic spiritual narrative-the common core of
  world spirituality.
• -Roger Gottlieb

74
Structural Racism Model vs. Traditional Models
of Racism
75
Examples of SR Education

• "It is precisely because education is the road
  to equality and citizenship, that it has been
  made more elusive for Negroes than many other
  rights. The walling off of Negroes from equal
  education is part of the historical design to
  submerge him in second class status. Therefore,
  as Negroes have struggled to be free they have
  had to fight for the opportunity for a decent
  education."
• -Martin Luther King, Jr., 14th March 1964

76
Structural Racism

• Because segregation and concentrated poverty in
  education implicates structural inequities, we
  must design a remedy using a structural racism
  approach
• Inequities in schools are tied to disparities in
  the availability and affordability of housing
• Segregated neighborhoods lead to segregated
  schools
• As funding is tied to property values, inner-city
  schools have less resources
• Therefore in order to address and remedy
  education, we must also examine structural racism
  in housing

77
Segregated Schools

• Despite increasingly racially diverse public
  school K-12 enrollment, White students are
  experiencing more isolation from Black and Latino
  students
• Research by the Harvard Civil Rights Project
  found school segregation on the rise since the
  1980s
• In every state, districts with high minority
  concentrations had lower graduation rates than
  districts where Whites were the majority. This
  relationship is independent of poverty.

http//www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research
/deseg/reseg_schools02.php
78
Concentrated Poverty

• There is a large gap between the resources
  available to districts with a majority of
  students of color and districts with a majority
  of White students
• Racial isolation in schools strongly corresponds
  to economic isolation in schools
• Only 15 of schools that are 90-100 White are
  high poverty, but 86 of segregated Black and
  Latino schools (90-100 minority) are high
  poverty

http//www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research
/deseg/reseg_schools02.php
79
Coalition Building

• Faith-based organizations offer a great
  opportunity to build coalitions because many
  congregations are already diverse racially,
  economically, and politically.
• It takes a village coalition, engagement with
  community groups, and community building are key.
• To harness the power of coalitions, groups need
• Leadership Success in coalition building is
  often tied to leadership with a vision for
  multiracial work
• Flexibility The strength of the coalitions lay
  in their mutability
• Respect Both from the community, and of the
  diverse perspectives, ideas, and beliefs
  different groups bring to the table