Race at 100 Days

390 Years Minus 100 Days, Pt. 2

Terrance Heath — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:02:10 -0400

National Urban League head Mark Morial recently described the state of black America today as "the best of times and the worst of times." He's right.

The inauguration of the first African-American president was a moment worth celebrating as an undeniable example of the progress we've made regarding race. Many African-Americans from communities across the county traveled to D.C. to witness the moment. Even more of us gathered around radios, television screens and computer monitors.

It was a brief respite, savored for as long as the day lasted, and then we all returned home, or turned off the television and returned to reality. For reality the day before and the day after was, and remains, an indicator of how far we are from "the Dream" so often referenced on that day. For just as much as "everything changed" for African Americans on that day, at the same time nothing changed, as one article noted days before Obama's inauguration.

Nothing will change for black Americans on Tuesday, when the first black president takes office. They will wake up in the same homes, go to work at the same jobs, face the same obstacles.

Just a month after Barack Obama's inauguration, the State of the Dream 2009 report revealed that Black Americans are, in this economy, experiencing a "Silent Depression," based on the following findings:

Almost 12% of Blacks are unemployed; this is expected to increase to nearly 20% by 2010. Among young Black males aged 16-19, the unemployment rate is 32.8%, while their white counterparts are at 18.3%.
Overall, 24% of Blacks and 21% of Latinos are in poverty, versus 8% of whites.
The median household incomes of Blacks and Latinos are $38,269 and $40,000, respectively, while the median household income of whites is $61,280.
Nearly 30% of Blacks have zero or negative worth, versus 15% of whites.
On the median, for every dollar of white wealth, people of color have 15 cents. On average, people of color have 8 cents for every dollar of white wealth.

Click the logo for more views on President Obama's first 100 days and the road ahead.

As the Obama administration neared its 100-day mark, the National Urban League published its State of Black America report, examining black progress in education, home ownership, entrepreneurship, health, other areas, and including a message to the president. The report features an Equality Index, a statistical measurement of the status of blacks compared with whites, and while the change in the index — from71.5% in 2008 to 71.1% in 2009 — reflects a continuation of the status quo, it is a status quo defined by disparity, as Morial mentioned in his remarks on the report.

Obama's historic election is a "story of accomplishment, prosperity and increased political power," Morial writes in the forward to the annual study. Yet the "other story is very different," and statistics bear that out.

Morial said the state of black America "is the best of times and the worst of times."

Fewer than 50 percent of African-Americans graduate from high school, prisons are disproportionately populated by black men and there are wide educational achievement gaps along racial lines.

"Taken together, these facts underscore the reality that the election of the first black president does not mean we can now all close up shop and go home," Morial writes.

The report also points that, ironically, that even as an African-American holds the highest office in the country, African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed, and three times more likely to live in poverty.

There are other disparities and signs that, as far as we've come, we've a ways yet to go, such as:

heavier jobs loses for black men, and employment rate has dropped 7.8% since November 2007;
the rise in school segregation, as black and Hispanic students are more separate from white students than at any point since the civil rights moment;
tougher economic times for black colleges , where many students require some form of financial aid continue their education, and
health issues such as racial disparities in cancer treatment, and higher rate of heart disease in young African-African Americans, both related in part to a lack of health insurance, less access to quality health care, and socioeconomic factors.

It's long been said that when the U.S. economy catches a cold, Black America gets pneumonia, and in the current economic downturn the diagnosis is more severe than the common cold, and the symptoms are hitting African Americans just a bit harder. Job loss is taking a greater toll among African Americans, causing many to lose ground only recently gained.

Nationally, the picture for blacks is even worse. The overall unemployment rate for blacks in February climbed to 13.4%, while the rate for black men reached 16.3%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"Last hired, first fired" is an old adage in the African American community. Factory hands and the unskilled have long been whipsawed by the economy's downturns. Now layoffs are beginning to reach a once fast-growing cohort of black professionals, managers and government workers, including many who overcame discrimination and limited economic and educational opportunities to win quality jobs.

While the recession has touched virtually every industry, it has battered traditional strongholds of black employment and is threatening such secure bastions as public education and government services.

Nationally, the troubled auto industry, which has been particularly welcoming to African Americans, has slashed tens of thousands of high-paying, unionized positions. Retail, services and manufacturing, which disproportionately hire blacks, have slumped.

The growing layoffs among higher-paid African Americans and steep foreclosure rates in their neighborhoods are dealing a crippling blow to the nation's black middle class, community leaders say.

And this is in an economy where the first generation to achieve middle class status is having trouble passing the benefits on to their children.

Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new study — a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many African Americans.

Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.

This troubling picture of black economic evolution is contained in a package of three reports being released today by the Pew Charitable Trusts that test the vitality of the American dream. Using a nationally representative data source that for nearly four decades has tracked people who were children in 1968, researchers attempted to answer two questions: Do Americans generally advance beyond their parents in terms of income? How much is that affected by race and gender?

The crisis in the auto industry, and the plight of African American dealers in particular illustrates the circumstances many African Americans are facing in this economy, as their first foothold in the American Middle class crumbles away.

Since the 1970s, General Motors has led the way in providing opportunities for minorities to own car dealerships. The automaker pioneered special training programs and put money behind candidates for new dealerships.

Now, after almost four decades of slow but steady progress, minority dealers are increasingly worried that the latest wave of GM cuts could erode any gains. As part of its latest restructuring, GM yesterday said it planned to slash about 2,600, or 40 percent, of its 6,200 dealerships. GM currently has about 240 minority dealers.

...Even during good times, minority dealers struggled. Their problems have centered around insufficient capital and being placed in poor locations by the companies. The recession has brought on plummeting sales and tight credit markets, exacerbating the dealers' troubles.

Peggy Cockerham, the African American owner of Franklin Pontiac-Buick-GMC outside Nashville, said minorities are having increasing difficulty finding capital to keep their businesses afloat through rocky economic periods.

"Minority dealers don't have the second-generation and third-generation dollars they can pull from," Cockerham said. "After all this is done, the opportunities will remain with the same group of old-line wealthy dealers. Unless we are very careful — unless we get manufacture support — we will eliminate our minority dealers."

So, what's to be done? How much can be done? How much should be done? And by whom? How these questions are answered depends upon everything from political philosophy to historical perspective, both of which collide at the present point, where the gains made by African-Americans since landing on this continent just shy of 400 years ago — from "boy" to Mr. President, from "girl" to "First Lady," and from owned assets to finally owning assets — are at once reflected in White House, and being reversed in African-American homes, neighborhoods and communities.

It's at that collision of politics, history and present reality that we'll have to answer these questions and create solutions to all of the above (and more), if we are to make it the rest of the way to the America that many have believed and many of us still do believe can be.

But first, we have to have a more honest discussion about race in America. And, if we are only part of the way towards being the kind of country that Martin Luther King and so many others dreamed of — believed in with an intensity that propelled towards being the kind of country that would elect a Barack Obama to the presidency — we are still clearly only part of the way towards having that most necessary discussion.

We're are further along than we were, but we haven't yet gone far enough. The question is: Why?

390 Years Minus 100 Days, Pt. 1

Terrance Heath — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:04:57 -0400

Many people — including the president himself — have mentioned the absurdity of judging Obama's success at cleaning up messes that were decades in the making, based on his first 100 days in office. It's equally absurd to expect the first 100 days in the administration of our first African American president to change 390 years of racial history in this country. But it's at least an opportunity to assess where we really are, where we're headed, and how far we've yet to go.

Racism and the social construct of race itself are much older than the United States, with deep roots European colonialism. But its beginnings in this continent can be traced back to August of 1619, when the first Africans in America — 20 or so, stolen from a Spanish ship — were traded for food by a ship's captain, upon arrival at the Jamestown colony, in Virginia. Categorized as "indentured servants," but without vital dates indicating the end of their bondage, some were almost certainly slaves. By 1640, as least one African was listed as a slave, and slavery was underway.

The space between here and there is covered by enough history books to fill entire libraries. Suffice it to say that the election of a person such as Barack Obama reflects much that has changed for the better since then. The spectacle of our first African-American president, though not a descendant of slaves himself, being sworn in on the Lincoln bible — held by his wife, who is a descendant of slaves — was a "pinch me" moment for many of us. Reality, on that day, took on a dreamlike quality.

Click the logo for more views on President Obama's first 100 days and the road ahead.

As I watched the inauguration from home, sitting on the carpet in our family room with our two sons — both African-American — I looked up at my bookshelf. There, pictures of my father and grandfather seemed be to looking down at the scene. I sensed a division in time was born at that moment. On one side was the America they'd known all their lives. On the other, my family and I — along with the everyone else — were carried along by history into an America forever changed by what was unfolding before our eyes.

The past 100 days in this new America revealed how much has changed. There have been a surprising number of moments, days, and even weeks — many of them consecutive — during which Obama was not "the black president" but just the president, whose policies don't necessarily satisfy everyone, and irritate some, but whose missteps or debatable decisions are not attributed to on his race.

Not even three months have passed since President Obama's historic inauguration, and already it tends to slip the nation's collective mind that the first black president of the United States is, in fact, black. There may be hope for us after all.

In the cacophonous commentary about the president — he's a breath of fresh air, he's too liberal, he's too moderate, he's being far too generous to the banks, he's some kind of closet socialist, he's restoring the nation to greatness, he's leading us to perdition — it's striking how seldom race is mentioned as an issue or even an attribute. That's only natural, since race could hardly be more irrelevant to the multitude of urgent problems Obama wrestles with every day. Watching him in action, as he shoves out the chief executive of General Motors or exchanges small talk with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, we witness a daily demonstration of the irrelevance of race. And that, potentially, is nothing short of transformative.

There's evidence that the transformation continues. Despite criticism that he hasn't engaged enough in or attempted to lead the "national discussion on race," Barack Obama has altered the course of that discussion, and altering the public perception of race relations — with nearly two thirds of Americans, and twice as many blacks saying race relations are good, according to a recent poll — simply by being the president. First Lady Michelle Obama has made an impression as well. Pegged as a potential "loose cannon," race-baited, and stereotyped as an "angry black woman" during the campaign, Michelle Obama proved one of the campaign's best assets and most popular surrogates. She now enjoys a higher approval rating (79%) than her husband (65%).

I get the sense that the Obamas know more will be conveyed by the way in which they carry out their new roles, than any amount of discussion. As Obama's campaign could not be about race neither can his presidency. At some point, he decided he was running to be president, not "the black president." What's most significant is that, finally, a candidate such as Obama could run for president, and not just to be "the black president."

Obama's candidacy and electoral victory both raised the bar for African Americans, and placed it within reach. My six-year-old son was excited about Obama's campaign from the moment I told him what it would mean if Obama won. The best I could do was to say that it would be the first time "someone who looks like you or like Daddy"" would be president. Fortunately, he didn't ask why it would be first time or what took so long, sparing me the task of having to explain racism to my child. For now. But Obama has changed that conversation already, because I can say to my son "You could be the president, if you want be," and point to Obama as an example.

For the record, Parker has no plans on a political career right now. He doesn't like being in the spotlight and having all eyes on him. He says he doesn't want to be president, because "the president has to give too many speeches in front of people." But then he considers his 15-month-old little brother and says "Dylan could be the president!" And maybe he could, now. The ceiling on my sons' aspirations was raised on January 20th, as it was for many African-Americans.

Nothing will change for black Americans on Tuesday, when the first black president takes office. They will wake up in the same homes, go to work at the same jobs, face the same obstacles.

And yet, some Triangle residents say, everything will be different. Many say that Obama's success has prompted them to re-examine what is possible in their own lives, or given them a nudge to pursue ambitious goals.

Many also say they have hopes that their children and grandchildren — whose history books will forever be changed — will see their horizons differently. They will never look at a black candidate for president and think that the color of his skin will assure loss.

Much changed for the better on day one of Obama's "first 100 days" as president. It was a brief respite. For reality the day before and the day after was, and remains, an indicator of how far we are from "The Dream" so often referenced on that day.

In the journey from the America that was to the America that will be, 390 years minus 100 days, is a good start. But only just a start.

What The Right, And The Left, Doesn't Get About Race

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:10:55 -0400

A New York Times/CBS News poll this week suggests the nation's racial climate has been dramatically changed by the election of America's first biracial president, with an apparently record high 66 percent of Americans saying race relations are good. But don't think that because people are feeling more positive about race relations that we are entering an era where we can begin to treat race is irrelevant.

Quite the contrary, says john a powell, the director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, who warns in an interview with me that progressives as well as conservatives are badly misreading the racial landscape that the country has entered in the age of President Obama.

powell is leading a new organization, Americans for American Values, that will look at the nation's continuing racial disparities from a different angle from how it has been frequently addressed. While much of the debate around race has focused on conscious attitudes (which is what was being measured by the Times/CBS poll) and behavior, Americans for American Values will focus on unconscious bias and how that bias affects our educational, economic and social institutions.

"The research shows that unconscious bias is actually fairly high throughout the whole population. And it can be manipulated, or influenced, by the showing of images, telling of stories, hearing certain buzzwords," powell says in the interview. This bias affects individual behavior and, from a public policy perspective, leads us to embrace and adopt policies and programs that end up having a racially disparate effect, even if that effect was unintended. "We need to be aware that we can be biased and that can affect our behavior even when we don't want to be," powell says.

powell calls the "practices, cultural norms, and institutional arrangements" that grow out of this bias "racialization," and wrote about its implications in detail in an article published in the Denver University Law Review. He uses the term, he wrote in the article, because "the language of race and racism is understood in a way that is too limited and specific to help us acquire greater insight into the important questions posed" by today's racial realities in America.

Progressives, powell says, are as susceptible to accepting racialization as conservatives. "The failure to actually embrace race in a constructive, much more sophisticated way is one of the great failures of the progressive movement," he says.

It is not enough to pursue "race-neutral" policies or to use proxies for race, such as poverty, powell says. For example, in the absence of structural changes in patterns and practices that leave African Americans and women underrepresented in construction trades, the money in the economic recovery bill that is now being poured into infrastructure projects will invariably end up benefiting whites and males more than African Americans and females, powell says.

Americans for American Values will operate under the auspices of the Institute for America's Future and will conduct research into how racialization influences policy and how policies can be changed so that they are more fair and address continuing racial inequities. The project is supported by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

powell will be a speaker at the America's Future Now! conference in Washington June 1-3.

"What we want to do is help America to understand how race continues to operate—in interesting ways and in measurable ways—and undermine our values" of "a racially fair and racially inclusive society," powell says.