The State of Opportunity

Lifting the Curtain

Last week I got on the B train from Brooklyn to Manhattan at 5:30 am.  It was early for me, but the train was packed with regulars.  They were not Wall Street titans or corporate moguls.  Not lawyers or accountants.  The train was filled with low-income folks, overwhelmingly people of color, on their way to work.  Many were going to, or even returning from, the first of several jobs that they do every day to make ends meet and support their families. 
And so, it was especially jarring to open the paper and read Hillary Clinton’s words in an interview with USA Today:

"There was just an AP article posted,” Clinton said, “that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how the, you know, whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

Upon reflection, I realized that what was remarkable about Clinton’s comments was that she had explicitly made the connection between white Americans and “hard working Americans.”  Politicians from both parties have been making the connection implicitly in voters’ minds for decades, but rarely has a major politician lifted the curtain on that troubling narrative.

Throughout the 1980s, Ronald Reagan told the story of the "Chicago welfare queen" who had 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and collected benefits for "four nonexisting deceased husbands," fleecing taxpayers out of "over $150,000."  The story turned out to be untrue, but Reagan kept telling it.  Just as important, Reagan’s audience understood the mythical Welfare Queen to be an African-American single mother, even though most women on welfare in the 1980s where white, and even though this particular woman did not actually exist.  Reagan was tapping a longstanding stereotype and understood that he did not have to—and shouldn’t—make the racial connection explicitly.

A decade later, when Bill Clinton touted rewarding Americans who “work hard and play by the rules,” and “ending welfare as we know it,” the subtext of poor people of color was also in the background.  Who, exactly, were the people who were not working hard and breaking the rules?  The phrase tapped the sub-conscious—and inaccurate—script that millions of Americans carried in their heads.

What’s remarkable about Hillary Clinton’s comment is that she actually made explicit what Reagan and Bill Clinton had kept below the surface: the stereotype that people of color are lazy and dependent on “big government.”

Unfortunately, many progressive organizations and leaders continue to use the “hardworking Americans” and “playing by the rules” narratives, perhaps unaware of what that triggers in their audiences, or how it is experienced by many people of color. 

It’s time to move to a narrative that honors hard work, perseverance, and honesty without playing on racial stereotypes and division.  We can start by breaking the predominant frame and showing, as well as telling, the real story of America’s working poor, including the low-income people of color who work hard every day.

Still Changing After All of These Years

Celebrating forty years of outreach to America's marginalized, the Center for Community Change has helped carry on the dreams of America's most inspirational dreamers. Launched in 1968, following the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the center was a direct response to the war on poverty that was embarked upon during the 1960s.

The Movement Vision Lab has posted a well produced video that looks at the movement that launched the center, and the work CCC has done over the years to lift up American communities.

We're excited about the work that we've been able to do with the Center for Community Change, working to foster values that bring our communities together and open the doorway for opportunity to all Americans. Forty years after RFK was gunned down in front of the nation's eye, I find a great sense of satisfaction and hope in the cry for change that many have been calling for in recent times.

The spirit of Kennedy seems alive and well in the hearts of the many attendees I encountered last Friday at the Better Deal Conference in Washington. The conference set out the many issues that young Americans face; issues such as the fact that many find themselves achieving a lesser standard of living than that of their parents. Key issues such as housing raise some serious questions as to the obstacles that our Future Majority will face.

However, in spite of the mountain that has risen in front of young Americans since their parents traveled down these same roads, a great energy was felt throughout the crowd. Rev. Lennox Yearwood, from the Hip Hop Caucus said that the children born after 1968 are part of the "Dream Generation," those who have lived in the world that Dr. King had dreamed of when he imagined freedom ringing from the highest mountain.

with the National Mall only a few blocks from the Beter Deal conference, where Dr. King had cried out his dream, change seemed well masted in the horizon.

The seeds that the Center for Community Change has planted over the past forty years continue to grow, and bear the fruit of our future leaders. Their voice is strong, and when reflecting on the work CCC has done over the past forty years, I'm excited to think what the next forty will hold.

The Value of Knowledge

The American academy of higher education has stood for centuries as the theatre for new ideas and progressive discourse. In the never-ending search for truth, and the formation of hearts and minds, over 17.4 million people seek to further their education beyond secondary schools each year in the United States, in more than 4,100 colleges and universities--this according to The National Center for Educational Statistics reported in 2005. The value earned is far greater than the value raised by tuition bills. Higher education is the nursery for new dreams and opportunity for so many Americans.

As grounds crews work through the night, in preparation for many college and university commencement ceremonies to be held in the coming days, planting flowers and making sure thousands of plastic folding chairs sit uniformly together, I find myself growing concerned over a new value on education that has come across my radar this past semester.

On yesterday's Leonard Lopate show aired daily on WNYC in New York, Former LBJ press secretary and Peabody winning journalist Bill Moyers shared his thoughts on the state of democracy. In the interview, he raised his concern over the recent demands on American universities to teach specific courses as a stipulation for large charitable donations. The concern comes after a $1 million donation made to Marshall University this past February was given with the requirement that the university must teach a course on Atlas Shrugged, the popular novel by Russian born Ayn Rand, a renowned American author who launched her hard-lined political philosophy in her fiction novels. Rand has been an iconic figure amongst American venture capitalists for over forty years, and her views have become the drum beat for a great number of Americans who feel that opportunity is gained solely by a "Go it alone" approach.

This past march, BB&T, a large Carolina based banking company who offered the donation to Marshall University, gave a $2 million grant to The University of Texas--Austin, to establish a chair in the Department of Philosophy dedicated to the study and discussion of Rand's work and philosophy. Large donations are made to universities across this country, earmarked for specific purposes and research. Indeed, without such charitable gifts, many of the great advancements in scholarship and research would have died as soon as they were dreamed. However, I'm left with dismay at how the American paradigm of education continues to move more in line with the interests of stock holders, over the interest of intellectuals. This has been a growing trend in American education for several generations. Sociologist Stewart Hall made note of this in the 1970s when contrasting American higher education with that of Europe. I can't help recall my own undergraduate school long known as an institution for liberal arts and the humanities, and how it channelled all of a $10 million donation into its small business program, while the philosophy department struggled to stay alive. I left that school to finish my undergraduate and graduate work from a leading college of journalism at a major public university, completing seven years of coursework in journalism without ever having to take an ethics class.

There is no doubt that education has a price in this country. However, the solution to prevent our colleges and universities from turning American higher education into higher corporations (where dollars are greater than hearts and minds) comes through our own choice as market consumers. Ultimately, our demand dictates what deans will choose to offer in their course catalogs. Therefore, we need to be bold in promoting liberal studies as the foundation for any higher education. Offering courses that expose students to a wide range of ideas is a strong benefit to their overall intellectual formation. Excluding Rand, then, is not something I suggest. However, colleges and universities need to make sure that her philosophy is balanced with alternative views, and critical analysis of how her work has impacted opportunity and community values should not be railroaded by donors who see her rhetoric as dogma. Control should come from those who have been given the faculties to profess the arts and sciences, not those who can buy them.

Take, then, some time, if you're registering for classes next semester, to let your college dean know how important you feel a balanced curriculum is. Call up your alumni association and remind them how important the value of intellectual freedom is in expanding the opportunity to education. And faculty should not be afraid to challenge their university administration when programs are designed without full faculty consent.

With over 4,100 schools of higher education in the United States, the opportunity that college affords is greater than any single novel like Atlas Shrugged can provide. We come together in the classroom as a community determined to not just raise our own level of success, but to raise that of our whole society. The opportunities I've received from my education have been priceless; not just in the path my career has taken, but in the depth that life has taken on after leaving the classroom. This is a depth--a beauty that the expanding mind earns--which is critical in overcoming so many of the social blindnesses that greed often creates. It, too, is a depth that touches our humanity by truly knowing one another in this culturally complex world.

"Brave New Laws" by Alan Jenkins at OurFuture.org

Check out The Opportunity Agenda Executive Director Alan Jenkins' new column, "Brave New Laws," at the Campaign for America's Future blog, Blog for Our Future.  Jenkins discusses the need for new, proactive laws that recognize what technological advances and scientific research have clearly demonstrated--that many Americans are still at risk of discrimination:

A growing body of research shows that, while old fashioned bigotry has declined, subconscious stereotypes and implicit biases continue to pose daunting barriers to equal treatment in health care, education, and the criminal justice system, among other sectors. Particularly compelling is the work of Harvard’s Project Implicit (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/), which shows that we all carry around subconscious biases based on race, gender, religion, and other human characteristics that often influence our decisionmaking. The Institute of Medicine at the National Academies, among others, has found that such biases can influence health care and other decisions, including by professionals who have no conscious intention to discriminate.

Despite this established research, the courts have interpreted the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which bars racial discrimination in federally funded programs), to address only intentional efforts to harm people of a particular group. Because that reading fails to respond to the realities of modern exclusion, Congress should amend Title VI, and the next Administration should advocate a reading of the Constitution that embodies the Framers’ intention to eradicate discrimination, in its evolving forms, from our nation’s institutions.

Read the full column here.

Disappearing Food

Rising rents are not only displacing New York residents but their food as well.  As the New York Times reports, the city of eight million now has just over 550 moderately sized supermarkets, defined as at least 10,000 square feet.

The dearth of easily available fresh food isn't confined to poor communities but these areas are disproportionately affected.  A Health Department study from last year specifically compared the Upper East Side with Harlem finding a vast disparity in access to healthy foods.  Harlem has twice as many bodegas, or corner stores, than the Upper East Side but these stores typically offer less healthy food.  Only three percent of Harlem bodegas even sell leafy green vegetables.  Expanding to other food options, 16 percent of Harlem restaurants serve fast food compared to only four percent on the Upper East Side.

Predictably, the result is Harlem residents are three to four times as likely to be obese or have diabetes.  Yesterday's NYT article features an excellent citywide map (see below) showing the correlation of low supermarket density and incidences of diabetes.  Pay particular attention to the Bronx and the intersection of Queens and Brooklyn.

Baking More Pie

With a tongue-in-cheek ad declaring “Our prices are insane!,” last week’s Education Week section of the New York Times ran a cover story entitled “The Low Cost of College.”  Inside, an article by David Leonhardt describes a surprising trend among elite American universities.  They are actually reducing tuition and increasing aid for low-income and middle classed students.
Beginning next fall, schools including Dartmouth, Haverford, and Rice will offer grants instead of loans to lower income students.  They are following the lead of schools like Harvard, which announced in 2006 that parents making less than $60,000 would not have to pay anything toward their kids’ education.  And many schools are reaching out to middle class families too—Harvard announced in December that it would also offer significant financial aid to families making less than $180,000.
Leonhardt’s article points out that these efforts are extremely modest compared to the substantial decrease in low-income students at elite schools over the last two decades.  As we reported in The State of Opportunity in America, “since 1983…the increase in tuition costs at both public and private four-year institutions has greatly outpaced the increase in median family income.”

As Leonhardt’s piece correctly notes, increases in the federal Pell grant—which typically goes to families making less than $40,000—would accomplish far greater positive change, as would reforms that transcend these elite schools, like “preparing more low- and middle-income children to attend college, lifting the graduation rates at community colleges and large four-year colleges, and simplifying and expanding federal financial aid.”

The article falls short, though, when it comes to discussing the reasons why any of these changes are worth making in the first place.  Explaining that “there are several arguments for increasing economic diversity at elite colleges,” the article says (1) “it makes the universities more consistent with their self-image as meritocracies”; (2) these colleges “have come to play arguably a larger role in American society”; and (3) “recent research also suggests that lower-income students benefit more from an elite education than other students do.”

Is that really it?  Those reasons, it seems to me, are both cynical and narrow.  They are out of touch with the promise of opportunity that a quality college education represents for successive generations of Americans.  What about these reasons:

➢    A fundamental value in our society is mobility—the notion that where you start out in life should not determine where you end up—with access to college serving as a primary rung on the upward ladder of opportunity.  If the country’s most prestigious schools are effectively open only to the rich, the mobility ideal is thwarted, and these institutions’ public mission must be called into question.

➢    Economic diversity is crucial within institutions like these that train so large a share of our nation’s leaders.  Not only should those leaders hail from the breadth of our population, but their education should include learning from and with people from different backgrounds.

➢    It’s in our national interest to ensure that opportunity is available to everyone in our society.  Taping the genius of kids and communities that have traditionally been shut out of the American Dream will generate untold societal benefits—cures to deadly diseases, new technologies, economic and social advances—that we can barely conceive of today.

➢    With manufacturing jobs disappearing, empowering working class families to make the leap to a globalized, information economy through a top-notch education is critical to our success as a nation.

Why do the reasons matter?  Because if opening elite schools to low-income families is just about making Ivy League bureaucrats proud of themselves, or because poor kids may get an incrementally greater value than rich kids, then it's about others, not about all of us. 

Just as important, connecting financial aid polices to our national values and interests leads to other, more profound questions.  Like so many articles about higher education, the piece fails to ask how we can go beyond ways of dividing up the existing educational pie, and actually bake more pie.   Clearly, the future of our nation depends not only on achieving a mix of students from different backgrounds, but also on expanding educational opportunities so that every kid who can do the work has access to a school that taps her or his full potential.  Expanding opportunity and, therefore, shared prosperity, is where we should set our sights as a nation.

AZ Proposal To Ban Race-Conscious Student Groups

As reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education and the blogger angry asian man, an amendment to a homeland security bill in the Arizona state legislature seeks to "withhold funds from public schools sponsoring activities that 'denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization.'"  The bill specifies that such activities include the creation or operation of student organizations based on race.  The language, an amendment to SB 1108, is provided here.

In addition to being clearly unconstitutional (First Amendment freedom to peacefully assemble, anyone?), this proposal massively misconstrues what "American values" are by tying them exclusively to "Western civilization."  American values like mobility, security, community and equality are inherent in the American Dream that has brought and continues to bring people from every part of the world to the Land of Opportunity.  These true American Values have been strengthened throughout our history by the labor, service and contributions of Americans of diverse ancestries originating in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific Islands.  The values that make this country a wellspring of hope and possibility are not exclusive, but inclusive.

Perhaps most offensively, this proposal would in many ways silence discussion about real, ongoing racial issues in the United States.  As research shows, Americans' conscious beliefs about race and equality are much, much better than their subconscious or unconscious beliefs; discussing race openly and honestly makes America richer and stronger, while censorship plays to our worst demons: myths, rumors, tropes and misunderstandings.

If you live in Arizona, you can find and contact your state legislators by inputting your address in the top-right corner of this map, or call the House info desk at (602) 926-3559 and the Senate info desk at (602) 926-4221. Let your representatives know that you oppose State Rep. Russell Pearce's amendment to SB 1108 that denigrates the contributions of millions of Americans, as well as American values themselves.

From the USHR-Network Conference in Chicago, Day 3

When I thought I had experienced every form of media convergence, today taught me how some advocates are really thinking out of the box (a box that measures 32X8X). Cut Off is a challenging documentary on the housing crisis in the years following Katrina. It wrestles with the destruction of affordable housing, in the name of progress, or at least redevelopment, and looks at how the voices most impacted have been silenced and ignored.

The other week, while engaged in a conversation with an editor and another writer, the editor mentioned to us that publishers are steering away from Katrina books over the past year. I would imagine the same is true amongst documentary producers. However, seeing how charged and engaged the audience was at today's screening, it's clear that both the need and the audience still exist. The mood in the room was charged. and hearing audience members recite the number of days since Katrina (561), my own feelings of injustice swelled.

what was most interesting was the way in which one New Orleans resident had pushed for a form of marketing I had yet heard. A group had brought up a F.E.M.A. trailer, and someone had suggested to show the documentary on the side of the long white box trailers that have become icons amongst New Orleans residents and advocates. The trailers are an interactive multi-media platform, in that

They are open to the public and can travel with some ease, as much as one can easily get around while pulling 32 feet of F.E.M.A. fine living.

From the USHR-Network Conference in Chicago

Writing from the U.S. Human Rights Network's national conference in Chicago, The Opportunity Agenda has been one of a great number of social justice organizations here working to secure and expand those fundamental rights that all humans deserve. Amidst the more than 400 registered participants, there are advocates, students, social justice leaders and consultants exchanging ideas on how the human rights frame can be strengthened and mobilized.

Most interesting, for me, has been the demand for sessions that focus on using new media as an advocacy tool. Yesterday, I attended a session on video advocacy, presented by Witness, a nonprofit group out of Brooklyn who empowers human rights groups around the world by teaching them how to be citizen video journalists. Their HUB is an excellent on-line video advocacy tool, where user generated materials can be uploaded and shared.

Everyone loves moving images with fancy graphics and sound. But, as compared to previous years, there seems to be a shift from gazing at the bells and whistles, to seeking out a greater depth on how these tools can truly further the human rights initiatives here in the U.S.

I'll be attending two more sessions over the remaining two days, both of which focusing on this new media as a tool for informing and mobilizing audiences. It's reassuring to see such a high interest in social media, which is still undergoing adolescent growth across the board. and the more human rights advocates can stay ahead of the curve, the stronger offense they can have in challenging opposition rhetoric.

Chicago is a great town for a conference such as this, the city having a long history in domestic human rights work. Over 120 years ago, during the Columbian Exhibition of 1893--where Chicago got the title of the "Windy City" after its unprecedented public relations campaign to win the bid for the World's Fair marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in the New World, this expanding frontier town was forced to deal with the gross human rights violations that came as a result of the fair, itself. Things like labor, immigration, healthcare, housing, homeless and racial justice issues came to a head in just a couple of years. The event placed Chicago on the map as a world class city, with world class problems, forcing it to come up with new solutions. Those solutions made Chicago a leading town for labor and advocacy.

Let's hope the innovations presented at this years conference help change the direction the wind has been blowing for many years now, in regards to the work that needs to be done to overcome current problems in labor, immigration, housing, poverty, healthcare, race and gender issues, to name a few.

You're Invited to a Hill Briefing on CERD and Health Inequality

Here's an event that folks interested in health equity and human rights might want to attend ...

Congressional Briefing on Health Inequality and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)

The U.S. government recently filed a required periodic report to the United Nations on the nation's progress toward the elimination of racial discrimination. The report cited progress in many areas, including health and health care. The U.N. CERD Committee agreed with some aspects of the report but noted that the United States has failed to recognize and remedy instances where facially-neutral policies contribute to inequality in health and health care.

To address these issues, several dozen non-governmental organizations and individual scholars, under the leadership of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, prepared a "shadow" report, Unequal Health Outcomes in the United States (available at http://www.prrac.org/pdf/CERDhealthEnvironmentReport.pdf), that illustrates instances of non-compliance with CERD in the right to health, health care access, and treatment, and outlines steps to correct them.

You are invited to a special briefing with some of the collaborators on this report to learn of the extent of racial inequality in health and environmental health, their causes, and actions that government can take to address them. This panel discussion, moderated by Brian Smedley of The Opportunity Agenda, will feature presentations from Katrina Anderson of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Steve Hitov of the National Health Law Program, Rea Pañares of Families USA, and Philip Tegeler of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, and will take place on April 24 from 1:30pm - 3:00pm in room HC-8 of the Capitol. To RSVP for the briefing, please call or email Kara Forsyth of the Raben Group at (202) 223-2848 or KForsyth@rabengroup.com. All are invited, but seating is limited and priority will be giving to Congressional staff and members.