posted on: Friday, April 04, 2008

What happens to a dream deferred?[1]

By Niki Jagpal

On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, jr., it seems appropriate to review the progress we’ve made as a country toward achieving, or at least advancing, Dr. King’s vision as articulated in his famous “I have a dream” 1963 speech.

The Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation recently released a report called What We Can Do Together: A Forty Year Update on the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. The report tracks progress in areas ranging from education, health, income and wealth to crime and poverty, and is a follow up to the informally known Kerner Commission Report of 1968, which investigated the causes of the 1967 riots in Newark, Detroit and New Brunswick, and suggested mechanisms to prevent reoccurrence.

Contrary to Johnson’s assumption that ‘militant groups’ like the Black Panthers were responsible for the ‘race riots,’ the report concluded, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal.” So 40 years later, it is fair to ask: is our nation still moving towards two societies, still separate and unequal? And what role can philanthropy play in addressing the needs of our evolving, pluralistic democracy?

Let’s compare some findings and statistics from the original report to those in the 40th anniversary report by the Eisenhower Foundation:

The criminal justice system:

“To some Negroes police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a "double standard" of justice and protection--one for Negroes and one for whites.” – Kerner Commission Report

Today, the numbers paint a picture of little progress. According to the Eisenhower Foundation report:

• Minorities face a greater likelihood of receiving the death sentence than Whites. Minorities are also given longer sentences than Whites for the same crimes. Crack cocaine, which is used disproportionately by minorities, carries much longer sentences than those for powder cocaine, used more frequently by Whites.
• Scholars continue to find that regardless of their qualifications, some employers push minority applicants into the worst jobs. Further, many real estate agents steer minorities to less desirable locations, than Whites and fewer minority mortgage applications are accepted than White applications
• From the 1960’s to the 1980’s, school desegregation made rapid advances but was reversed dramatically by the courts.

Residential segregation and the “ghetto”

“Within the cities, Negroes have been excluded from white residential areas through discriminatory practices. Just as significant is the withdrawal of white families from, or their refusal to enter, neighborhoods where Negroes are moving or already residing. About 20 percent of the urban population of the United States changes residence every year. The refusal of whites to move into "changing" areas when vacancies occur means that most vacancies eventually are occupied by Negroes.

The result, according to a recent study, is that in 1960 the average segregation index for 207 of the largest United States cities was 86.2. In other words, to create an unsegregated population distribution, an average of over 86 percent of all Negroes would have to change their place of residence within the city.” – Kerner Commission Report

So 40 years later, how integrated are our neighborhoods?

• In the 1990s, overall residential segregation declined for African Americans but it rose for African Americans younger than 18 years of age.
• From 1980 to 2000, Hispanic residential segregation increased in several major metropolitan areas
• The overall levels of residential segregation remain disproportionately high for communities of color.

Communities of color and poverty

“Although there have been gains in Negro income nationally, and a decline in the number of Negroes below the "poverty level," the condition of Negroes ill the central city remains in a state of crisis. Between 2 and 2.5 million Negroes-16 to 20 percent of the total Negro population of all central cities live in squalor and deprivation in ghetto neighborhoods. …

In 1966, about 11.9 percent of the nation's whites and 40.6 percent of its nonwhites were below the "poverty level" defined by' the Social Security Administration (currently $3,335 per year for an urban family of four). Over 40 percent of the nonwhites below the poverty level live in the central cities.” – Kerner Commission Report

Today’s numbers on poverty rates among African Americans and Hispanics are:

• At a time when the U.S. is the richest country in history, 37 million Americans live in poverty today.
• Very poor African Americans are 3 times as likely and very poor Hispanics are twice as likely as Whites to live below half the poverty line, which is about $10,600 for a family of four.[2]

A Paradigm Shift

The Kerner Commission’s conclusion that our country was headed towards two societies, separate but unequal, seems to have borne out, despite the report’s intent for government to make policy changes to address racial inequality.

What the authors of the original report probably didn’t know was that their recommendations presaged a radically different way of analyzing racial inequality in the U.S. – structural racism. Discussions of race that focus exclusively on class obscure the impact of public and private institutions in perpetuating racial inequality. Structural racism argues that the combined impact of institutional arrangements and structures have racialized outcomes, even when these structures appear to be racially neutral, such as those affecting economic mobility.

Re-conceiving race and racism require an intellectual paradigm shift, and this has practical policy implications for addressing gaps in achievement versus gaps in opportunity. It is time for a policy paradigm shift, as Dr. Stephen Mayer recently noted. Let’s consider reframing affirmative action by adding class-based criteria to race.

What does this mean for philanthropy?

Philanthropists and private foundations can choose to invest their dollars in structural change; this isn’t ‘ivory tower’ academia inserting itself into philanthropy. It’s about focusing on the groups who are engaging in work on a daily basis that produces long-term sustainable results that benefit their communities. Foundations should seek out opportunities to invest their limited contributions in grants to local community organizations that are working on structural barriers to racial equality in the U.S.

As diversity remains a ‘hot topic’ in philanthropy, the time is right to remember Dr. King’s closing statement at the March on Washington, D.C. in 1963 through the lenses of structural barriers to racial equality, including class, gender, age, disability and, yes, public policy. Class-based affirmative action may be the first step towards allowing us to achieve Dr. King’s dream:

“And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"”

Niki Jagpal is research director at NCRP.

[1] Langston Hughes (1951). Harlem, from Montage of a Dream Deferred. Quoted in the 2008 Eisenhower Foundation report
[2] 2008 HHS Poverty Guidelines