Evaluation Tools for Racial Equity

The Center for Assessment and Policy Development (CAPD) has launched a new website titled, “Racial Equity Tools“, which displays a wide array of tools available to race equity advocates.  The Site Map includes links to numerous links including an introduction to the theory behind a race equity lens, community race equity assessment tools, tools for creating an advocacy and implementation plan, and tips on how to remain focused and maintain sustained effort in furtherance of your race equity goals.  In order to close the race equity advocacy loop, CAPD also has an entire website dedicated to evaluation tools for racial equity available for advocates.

This is a very useful website for those looking for a comprehensive presentation of race equity advocacy, planning, implementation, and evaluation tools.  Dive in!

In an odd commercial, some try to link health care reform to racism. According to the commercial, some on the Left claim it is racist to oppose health care reform. In the commercial a series of actors, who pretend to oppose health care reform, pose the question, “So, I Guess I’m a Racist?” 

So what is the point of this commercial and who is behind it? Does the ad advance mature discussions of race and health care reform? Or does the ad simply trivialize both issues?

MSNBC news show host Rachel Maddow discusses the commercial with Princeton University Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell.

Missouri State Representative Robert Schaff, Republican - Makes guest appearance in anti-health care commercial stating, "I guess I'm racist."

Here is an interesting NY Times Op-Ed piece titled the “Shades of Prejudice” which highlights many of the Race Equity Project’s topics of unconscious bias and framing.  The writer starts off with the recent controversial comments by Senate majority leader Harry Reid,  that President Obama had an edge over other Black politicians because he is of a lighter skin tone and does not have a distinct “negro dialect” and leads the reader to the idea that this is an example of an unconscious prejudice towards blackness itself.

“This isn’t racism, per se: it’s colorism, an unconscious prejudice that isn’t focused on a single group like blacks so much as on blackness itself. Our brains, shaped by culture and history, create intricate caste hierarchies that privilege those who are physically and culturally whiter and punish those who are darker.”

While law schools added about 3,000 seats for first-year students from 1993 to 2008, both the percentage and the number of black and Mexican-American law students declined in that period, according to a study by a Columbia Law School professor.

What makes the declines particularly troubling, said the professor, Conrad Johnson, is that in that same period, both groups improved their college grade-point averages and their scores on the Law School Admission Test, or L.S.A.T.

“Even though their scores and grades are improving, and are very close to those of white applicants, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans are increasingly being shut out of law schools,” said Mr. Johnson, who oversees the Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at Columbia, which collaborated with the Society of American Law Teachers to examine minority enrollment rates at American law schools.

However, Hispanics other than Mexicans and Puerto Ricans made slight gains in law school enrollment.

The number of black and Mexican-American students applying to law school has been relatively constant, or growing slightly, for two decades. But from 2003 to 2008, 61 percent of black applicants and 46 percent of Mexican-American applicants were denied acceptance at all of the law schools to which they applied, compared with 34 percent of white applicants.

“What’s happening, as the American population becomes more diverse, is that the lawyer corps and judges are remaining predominantly white,” said John Nussbaumer, associate dean of Thomas M. Cooley Law School’s campus in Auburn Hills, Mich., which enrolls an unusually high percentage of African-American students.

Mr. Nussbaumer, who has been looking at the same minority-representation numbers, independently of the Columbia clinic, has become increasingly concerned about the large percentage of minority applicants shut out of law schools.

“A big part of it is that many schools base their admissions criteria not on whether students have a reasonable chance of success, but how those L.S.A.T. numbers are going to affect their rankings in the U.S. News & World Report,” Mr. Nussbaumer said. “Deans get fired if the rankings drop, so they set their L.S.A.T. requirements very high.

“We’re living proof that it doesn’t have to be that way, that those students with the slightly lower L.S.A.T. scores can graduate, pass the bar and be terrific lawyers.”

Margaret Martin Barry, co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers, said that while she understood the importance of rankings, law schools must address the issue of diversity. “If you’re so concerned with rankings, you’re going to lose a whole generation,” she said.

The Columbia study found that among the 46,500 law school matriculants in the fall of 2008, there were 3,392 African-Americans, or 7.3 percent, and 673 Mexican-Americans, or 1.4 percent. Among the 43,520 matriculants in 1993, there were 3,432 African-Americans, or 7.9 percent, and 710 Mexican-Americans, or 1.6 percent. The study, whose findings are detailed at the Web site A Disturbing Trend in Law School Diversity, relied on the admission council’s minority categories, which track Mexican-Americans separately from Puerto Ricans and Hispanic/Latino students.

“We focused on the two groups, African-Americans and Mexican-Americans, who did not make progress in law school representation during the period,” Mr. Johnson said. “The Hispanic/Latino group did increase, from 3.1 percent of the matriculants in 1993, to 5.1 percent in 2008.”

Mr. Johnson said he did not have a good explanation for the disparity, particularly since the 2008 LSAT scores among Mexican-Americans were, on average, one point higher than those of the Hispanics, and one point lower in 1993.

Over all, Mr. Johnson said, it is puzzling that minority enrollment in law schools has fallen, even since the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, that race can be taken into account in law school admissions because the diversity of the student body is a compelling state interest.

“Someone told me that things had actually gotten worse since the Grutter decision, and that’s what got us started looking at this,” Mr. Johnson said. “Many people are not aware of the numbers, even among those interested in diversity issues. For many African-American and Mexican-American students, law school is an elusive goal.”

In an article published yesterday by the New York Times, reporter Choe Sang-Hun detailed a recent phenomenon in South Korea of mixed-race groups and couples being confronted with scorn and racial slurs in public. The author quotes an Amnesty International report that asserts “incidents of zenophobia are on the rise” in South Korea.

According to the article, the response to this trend has been two-fold.  First, legislators in Parliament have begun drafting and debating legislation that would criminalize racial discrimination. Opponents of the legislation believe the law will encourage immigration, drive up crime rates, and push native workers out of their jobs.

Second, following media coverage of the incident, prosecutors charged a man who used racial slurs against a mixed-race group with contempt, signaling the first time such charges have been used to punish an allegedly racist offense. In that case, a Korean man shouted racial slurs at a Korean woman and East Indian man who were traveling together on a bus.

The Pride Foundation is a nearly quarter-century-old national philanthropic organization.  Pride Foundation’s mission is to raise and manage funds to support problem-solving efforts within the LGBT community and respective communities.  Toward this end, it has launched a Racial Equity Initiative.

The Pride Foundation’s Race Equity Initiative is an effort to consciously counteract the inequities in the allocation of resources from foundations that LGBT organizations headed by People of Color have faced.  Specifically, the Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues (FLGI) authored a report, titled, “Understanding Race Equity among LGBTQ Grantmakers,” as part of FLGI’s Race Equity Campaign, which found that it is common for organizations run by and for LGBT People of Color to operate without paid staffing; over two-thirds of these same organizations operate on an annual budget of $50,000 or less; and, on the whole, these groups receive fewer and smaller grants from all sources available.  Congratulations to Pride Foundation and FLGI for recognizing and taking head on the need for race equity in LGBT grantmaking!

Also of note, FLGI has an excellent Race Equity Resources section.  It includes, among other tools, a tool for understanding structural racism in the context of grantmaking and a tool for comparing racial equity frameworks.

If you haven’t already, please also see the recent Race Equity Project E-Newsletter 4.3 on LGBT Advocacy, Race and Poverty.  It is an excellent read!

On August 10, 2009, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote approved a $62.5 million settlement agreement in a landmark action brought by the Anti-Discrimination Center (ADC) against Westchester County, New York. In a legal first, the ADC sued under the federal False Claims Act to enforce the County’s obligation to “affirmatively further fair housing” as a condition of receiving Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds from the federal government. Specifically, ADC alleged that over a period of six years, the County took CDBG funds under false pretenses by certifying to HUD that it affirmatively furthered fair housing, when in fact it failed, among other things, to consider race-based impediments to housing choice and to implement measures to overcome such impediments. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Westchester County must spend $52 million (the amount ADC alleges the County falsely obtained) to build at least 750 units of affordable housing within five years in County neighborhoods with very small African-American and Latino populations. Counsel for ADC are ADC Executive Director Craig Gurian and the law firm of Relman & Dane. For more background on the case, see Judge Cote’s opinion denying the County’s motion to dismiss the action and decision granting partial summary judgment for ADC and the August 11 New York Times article on the settlement.

On March 21, 2009 four Oakland Police Officers were killed in the line of duty.  The shootings of the officers  made national headlines.  The public outpouring of sympathy for the officers and their families has been enormous, culminating in a memorial that filled the Oracle Arena.   It seemed unanimous that what happened to the dead officers was absolutely wrong.  The assailant, Lovelle Mixon, 26, shot and killed the two officers that pulled him over for what is assumed as a routine traffic stop.  He then shot two more officers while the police attempted to apprehend him.

Somewhat lost in the news coverage is the long history of violence between the Oakland Police officers and the community.  What some may perceive as four heroic officers shot while serving their community, some members of the Oakland community have expressed it as another example of state sponsored violence against the Black community.   When the national media attention was highlighting the heroics of the fallen officers, members of the community marched through the streets of Oakland visiting the sites of the shooting showcasing their anger over how Mixon’s is part of a lineage of state oppression.  Although the opinions of this group are in the minority, it is important to understand the psychology that gives rise to these opinions.

On a syndicated radio program Street Soldiers on KMEL, Dr. Joseph Marshall, confronted these sentiments with callers on his show.  The anger and resentment between the community and the Oakland PD is so deep that when four officer’s lives are lost, some consider it some type of victory against the state.  This level of animosity does not bode well for efforts to bridge the gap between the community and police.

There should never be any mixed emotions between life and death.  Life should be cherished and death should be mourned.  How far are we from our goals of bringing the community together to heal its wounds and stand up against violence?  Obviously, there is still residual anger from the shooting of Oscar Grant, who was killed by BART officers on New Years Day.

Although tragic, the events of the past few weeks have given me a glimpse of hope and optimism.  The community has come together to bind up its wounds and reaafirm its beliefs that they are all working towards a peaceful and more equitable world.

I’ve previously shared some places to obtain free satellite and DOQ raster imagery (my personal favorite is the National Map  Seamless Server). Now that I’m actively using raster DOQ imagery to create a series of base maps to be used for a PPGIS project, I realize that I may have been overly caviler about using raster data.

First, the processing power needed to preform operations on raster files is substantial. I wanted to mosaic 15 or so DOQ tif files together to create a single DOQ tif for the target area. Lacking experience with rasters, I naively executed the operation in the middle of the day. My computer took 5 and a half hours to execute the operation. Although I enjoyed finishing some legal research at the local library, my computer being inoperable for 5 and a half hours was problematic.

Second, you may want to activate your trial period for Spatial Analyst.  Most of the tools I was familiar with from working with vector data couldn’t be used on raster data.  Even a simple feature clip took on a whole new level of difficulty when I was trying to clip a raster area by a vector feature. After several frustrating hours, I managed to clip the raster by a shapefile using the Spatial Analyst tool Extract>Extract by Mask.

I don’t want to discourage you from using raster data. In the past, I’ve worked with small raster images without a problem. If you’re about to embark on a project where your map will contain a large amount of raster dater (my DOQ mosaic was about 1.2 gb), just plan ahead and keep your stress ball handy.

The Equal Justice Society recently honored the San Francisco Latino ? Black Union Carpenters and La Raza Centro Legal at its Annual Gala, held on December 5th in San Francisco.

According to the Socialist Worker’s article, “Divide and conquer in San Francisco“, the racist practices of the construction company, Rubecon, included:

• Job-site supervisors taking $100 to 400 per week from Latino workers, either through withholding the money or forcing workers to give kickbacks.
• Black carpenters being told there was no work available, even though contractors continued to hire Latino workers.
• Blacks and Latinos working on separate crews.
• Management hiding non-union workers to avoid detection by union officials.
• Black workers being accused of being slow and producing shoddy work.
• Black workers often working fewer than 40 hours per week, while Latino workers usually work overtime and sometimes weekends.
• Latino workers being forced to do fast and shoddy work; one job-site supervisor said it was because only Black people would live in those units.

After 150 workers walked off work to protest the conditions and practices, the Construction Workers News Service reports that Rubecon went after the workers in court. At a hearing in which Rubecon sought a restraining order against the Halls, the article continues:

“Rubecon … charged [union organizers] with organizing an anti-Latino “riot” on October 2 and 3 and asked for a restraining order that would bar the two from the area near the construction site.”

The organizers refuted the charge, which had attempted to drive a racial wedge between two allied groups. The judge found the evidence inadequate and did not grant the restraining order sought.

At a 2008 May Day Rally rally, The Militant reports, Gerardo Sánchez, a meatpacking worker said of the Black and Latino Union Carpenters:

“The struggle of these brothers is inspiring other workers… It is touching something that workers know is important—overcoming the divide-and-rule tactics that bosses use in every workplace. It is through such fights that the unions will be strengthened. That will lay the basis for a labor party based on the unions, a party to represent the interests of workers.”

Truly, the Black and Latino Union Carpenters solidarity overcame the centuries-old practice of using race to turn workers on each other. Congratulations to the Union Carpenters for their much-deserved award and their victory over both external and internal racism.

Other articles:

• http://www.hispanictips.com/2008/03/26/building-racism-segregation-racism-used-black-latino-carpenters-against-each-other-low-income-housing-site-francisco/
• http://www.sfweekly.com/2008-03-26/news/building-racism
• http://graypantherssf.igc.org/08-02-28-Support_anti-racist_carpenters.htm
• http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/black-and-latino-construction-workers-build-alliance/

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In other news of solidarity working across racial lines, The American Prospect reports Black and Brown (Working) Together in Mississippi. Organized by The Mississippi Project, shipyard workers organized to, as one periodical stated it, “stop 21st Century slavery.” The article states:

The shipyard workers – who are from India – have filed a class action suit against Signal International, a marine fabrication company; recruiters in India and the United States; and a New Orleans immigration lawyer, Malvern Burnett; accusing them of forced labor, human trafficking, fraud and civil rights violations.

The suit charges that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, more than 500 Indian men “were trafficked into the United States through the federal government’s H-2B guestworker program to provide labor and services . . . Plaintiffs were subjected to forced labor as welders, pipefitters, shipfitters, and other marine fabrication workers at Signal operations in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Orange, Texas.”

Mississippi Project Founder, Jaribu Hill, provides insights into the development of this campaign and how it fights worker exploitation and racism in a YouTube interview.

In Race-Conscious Community Lawyering:  Practicing Outside the Box, published in the July-August 2008 issue of Clearinghouse Review Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, LSNC volunteer attorney (and former staff attorney) Tammi Wong discusses “community lawyering as a strategy to develop cultural competence between our client population and the systems with which our clients interact[.]“  The article sets forth the basic components of community lawyering practice, with an emphasis on pursuing advocacy from a client-driven framework using the Sacramento Hmong Mediation project as an example.  The project is lead by Hmong community leaders and Sacramento judges and court staff who are seeking to create a bi-cultural family court mediation system.  The article also describes the relationship building process that took place between LSNC advocates and Asian/Pacific Islander community members to better understand why A/PIs where underutilizing LSNC’s services in Sacramento despite the fact that one-quarter of the community’s members lived in poverty.  To read this article in its entirety, subscribe to Clearinghouse Review or order the individual article.

A recent phone survey of 2,500 Californians conducted by the non-partisan Public Policy Intitute of California (PPIC) found that less than half (48%) of the state’s Latinos have a home computer as compared to 86% of whites, 84% of Asians and 79% of African-Americans.  The report on the survey, Californians and Information Technology, also provides findings on computer and internet usage by race, income and gender, with low-income persons, not surprisingly, having the lowest usage.  In Latinos lagging far behind in internet use, report says (Sacramento Bee, June 26, 2008), UC Santa Cruz economics professor Rob Fairlie attributes the divide to disproportionately low education rates and lower incomes among Latinos.  The effect of the divide?  In the Bee article, Liz Guillen, legislative and community affairs director for Public Advocates opines, "Latinos and poor communities are already struggling to get access to the opportunities that will move them beyond poverty, that will lead to things like education and homeownership. . .[t]he lack of Internet access is really a lack of access to information, and information is what one needs to move forward in today’s society."

Notwithstanding its many problems, PolicyLink VP Judith Bell explains in Lessons from the Farm Bill that there are important provisions in the bill that form the "building blocks" for achieving healthy food access equity.  In addition to increases for funding for Food Stamps, the bill establishes a Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Center to increase access to healthy locally grown food to underserved communities, including communities of color.  The bill also provides support for farmer’s markets and access to them by poor people and support for socially disadvantaged farmers and farmworkers who are disproportionately people of color.  Please click on the title of Ms. Bell’s piece above for more details about the parts of the Farm Bill that promote food equity and about the advocacy groups and legislators who helped ensure that these provisions were included.   Also, look for the links to programs that provide grant money and other resources that might be helpful to food advocacy groups that you are working with.

The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity advisory board and staff has invited us to join in their First Critical Issues Forum: A Virtual Convening to Address Progressive Racial Justice Issues in Philanthropy.

These essays focus on critical issues around the AB 624 debate. AB 624 would require that foundations collect and disclose information on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation for their organizations and grantees.

From personal experience I can tell you that it is tiring being Black in America, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Being Black in this country compelled me to realize that race, a socially constructed concept, plays an important role in the lives of many people. At Berkeley, no one was colorblind. My peers and professors always noted my race and I also took notice of theirs. In general, the people of color on campus filled the jobs of services workers and manual laborers, while the white employees had most of the administrative jobs. In each of my classes and at my campus job, I was the only one or one of the few Blacks. This trend worsened while I was in law school. These social conditions, along with many others, have had a profound impact on my education and my identity.

I don’t have the answer to how I “made it” when the life patterns of many young black men show that it is evident that there is a huge pool of poorly educated black men that are becoming more disconnected from the mainstream society than ever before. For black men in this country’s inner cities finishing high school is the exception, professional work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine.

I am the first of two children raised by a single mother in a poor family in the Bay Area. Since my younger sister and I are the only siblings, we were very close. My mom has worked hard in retail her whole life, but regardless, her wages were not always enough to provide for the family, and our father never helped us out. We certainly did need government assistance but we never received it. Every month we would come up short when it was time to buy food, put clothes on our back, and pay the bills.

Besides each of the apartments we lived in being small, rent in the Bay Area was extremely high. We all shared one room and when times got rough, tensions rose. Our apartment was in poor condition and the landlord would often make excuses for why he could not fix one problem or another. I will never forget the broken toilets and refrigerators that forced us to live in inhumane conditions. Every couple of years we moved in search of cheaper rent or when we fell behind in our payments.

My life experiences and hard work, despite the odds against me, in addition to the help and support of various people, allowed me to escape a life of oppression and into Berkeley. At the university, I was able to focus more on my studies because of scholarships and from the money I saved working. I succeeded at Berkeley beyond my wildest dreams and recently graduated from law school. Without the educational opportunities that I received I would have been trapped by conditions that I had no control over.

I realize that being black sets me apart; I am American but still Black. I have figured out that my racial category has given me a history of accumulated disadvantages in obtaining educational, social, and economic opportunities in the United States. In the past, and in many instances today, Blacks could not live in the same neighborhoods as Whites, vote, or attend superior schools.

No matter how successful I am in the future, I will forever be Black, a black man and a black lawyer. Being Black is not the problem; I am filled with racial and cultural pride. However, when much of society uses the term black, it is stigmatized, in a racist manner, as a negative indicator of my personhood and all my hard earned accomplishments.

We all must be dedicated to improving the health, education, social, political and economic status of persons who are discriminated against based on race and/or ethnicity.

Senator Barrack Obama’ s speech delivered on March 18, 2008 in Philadelphia elevates the discussion of Race to the national level. This is the first time since the civil rights movement in the 1960’s that the issue of this country’s racial divide has been addressed directly, historically and in the context of a national campaign. Though we endorse no candidate in any public election, the significance of the speech merits it’s posting on this site. We would love to hear your response to the speech.

A written transcript and full length video recording of the speech can be found at the Washington Post site.

The Public Policy Institute of California has released a study by scholars Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl–Crime, Corrections and California: What Does Immigration Have to Do With It?–which concludes that immigrants in California, including “undocumented” persons, are far less likely than their native-born counterparts to commit crime.

Among males between 18 and 40–a demographic that correlates highly with the commission of crimes, as compared to the rest of the population– the U.S. born males are 10 times more likely than immigrants to be imprisoned or jailed. The study also found that low educational attainment, a prevalent characteristic among immigrants and usually highly correlated with incarceration, did not translate into high rates of incarceration for immigrant males, though it does for their U.S. born counterparts.

Additionally, to test for the possibility that immigrants might be simply avoiding incarceration by leaving the country, the study looked at crime rates in California cities with the largest influx of immigrants, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento.The study found that on average, the crime rates in those cities dropped between 2000 and 2005. As conservative Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters opines in his February 26 column Immigrant facts rebut alarmists, the study supports a rethinking of the “criminal immigrant” stereotype and the expensive and severe anti-immigration policies and laws founded upon it.

(Additional source for this posting: Prison rate far lower for immigrants, study finds, Sacramento Bee, February 25, 2008.) According to the Sacramento Bee, authors Butcher and Piehl will present their report to analysts and the public on March 7, 2008 at the Library and Court Building on Capitol Mall in Sacramento, and on March 14, 2008 at the U.S. Capitol in D.C..

Image Source: Kristin F. Butcher, Anne Morrison Piehl, Crime, Corrections, and California: What Does Immigration Have To Do With It?, California Counts: Population Trends & Profiles, Volume 9, Number 3, February 2008.

Know any community organizations who work against racism? The Catalyst Project offers a four month political education and leadership development program called the Anne Braden Anti-Racist Training Program, which is designed to support the development, skills, and analysis of white activists in becoming accountable, principled anti-racist advocates working for multiracial movements for justice. The program begins in February 2008. Applications are due by November 1st, 2007.

The Catalyst Project states that participants in the Anne Braden Anti-Racist Training Program will…

• Learn about systems of oppression and privilege in a collective liberation framework
• Develop an understanding of white supremacy along with patriarchy, capitalism, heterosexism, imperialism, anti-semitism, the gender binary system and the state
• Learn about histories of resistance and liberation, and about movements today
• Learn about organizing and develop organizing skills
• Gain undraising skills
• Participate in volunteer placements in racial and economic justice organizations
• Have mentorship and anti-racist leadership development opportunities

Location: San Francisco, CA
Length: 4 months, 8-12 hours/week commitment
Cost: $250-500 sliding scale, limited scholarships available
To apply: Fill out your online application here or print it out and mail it to the Catalyst Project

For more information on the training, check out the Catalyst Project’s FAQs section.

For advocates on the East Coast, a similar training titled, “Whites Confronting Racism“, will be hosted by Training for Change and held in Philadelphia from November 30 – December 2, 2007.

Agencies (including Legal Aid organizations) have many options when deciding how they will serve LEP clients. One of the most favorable of these options is hiring bilingual staff people. This is preferential because they are on-site during the workday, they understand the agency’s policies and procedures, and clients are likely to feel more comfortable if they do not have to speak through an interpreter.

It is easy, however, to take advantage of the convenience of having a bilingual staff person by overusing their services, leading to their burnout.Overuse of bilingual staff by non-bilingual staff for interpretation or translation purposes usually happens very innocently. The non-bilingual staff person may have a “quick phone call” for which they need an interpreter or a “short letter” that needs to be translated. While a single request for this type of assistance may not be problematic, the bilingual staff person may be receiving these types of requests from many non-bilingual staff. Taken together, these “quick” translating/interpreting requests can account for a substantial portion of the bilingual staff person’s work time, impairing their ability to fulfill their regular job duties.

With a little planning, it is possible to avoid overusing your bilingual staff. First, job descriptions for bilingual staff must be written specifically enough so that the staff person knows in which situations he or she is expected to translate/interpret for another staff person. Job descriptions for bilingual and non-bilingual staff should be written so that the overall workloads will be comparable, instead of expecting a bilingual staff person to handle the same workload as a non-bilingual colleague while also fulfilling some or all of the agency’s language access needs.

Agencies must also develop clear guidelines regarding when it is appropriate to have a bilingual staff person assist in communication with LEP clients and when an outside interpreter or translator should be accessed. After a plan is established, all staff need training on what the guidelines are and how to apply them. This will insure that they only ask a bilingual staff person to translate or interpret when it is acceptable to do so. The process of accessing an outside interpreter should be made as simple as possible to increase the likelihood that non-bilingual staff will follow the guidelines.

By Anne Struby, Staff Attorney, Legal Services of Western Missouri

Would you like to be published in a nationally-recognized journal?! Well then, send us your article idea! The proposal should tell us about your race-based advocacy — that case you took where race was front and center; your organization’s efforts to deal with race internally or in the community; your analysis of the law with respect to race and communities of color; and so on.
Please e-mail Colin Bailey a paragraph describing your proposed article and the names and contact information of the proposed authors. You’ll get a follow up call or e-mail within about a week.

Working with the journal’s editorial staff, an effort will be made to fill out an entire issue on race-based advocacy for the poor. We are looking for diversity in substance, geography, and authorship. So please encourage people you know to submit their proposals as soon as possible. The issue is slated for publication as early as March 2008, so please submit your paragraph descriptions no later than September 17, 2007. We look forward to hearing from you! ~CB

In a recent article posted in the Equal Justice Society newsletter, Lee Cokorinos, the Author of The Assault on Diversity, details the strategy of Wardell Connerly and the Heritage Foundation to pursue the elimination of affirmative action programs through legislative initiatives in Colorado, Missouri, Arizona and Oklahoma. The “Super Tuesday” strategy is well financed by the same foundations that have coordinated the roll back of civil rights over the past two decades. The article is essential reading not only for those in the states currently targeted but for all who work to close the opportunity gaps that fracture and separate our society.

Lee will be presenting on these and other issues at the National Legal Aid & Defender’s Organization’s substantive law conference in San Jose, CA on July 20, 2007.

We decided to answer some REP fan-mail in this newsletter. Enjoy!

“I would like to schedule a “vacation” but I’m not sure where to go or what to do? Can the REP make a suggestion?”
– Lucky

We can indeed! It’s not too early to start making plans to attend the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) Substantive Law (Sub-Law) Conference in San Jose, CA, from July 18-21. You might be wondering, “Why is the REP promoting the NLADA Sub-Law conference?” That’s an excellent question.

This year there will be an entire track on race equity and poverty law practice (that means 8 or more sessions). While the specific “sessions” are still in the works, the REP can tell you that there will be, among others, sessions on community lawyering, GIS and data analysis, the science of discrimination, environmental justice and structural racism. The track will also feature some prominent presenters. Advocates from Boston to Sacramento are working to make this a memorable opportunity for advocates to share their experiences and learn about race equity strategies.

“The REP makes all these references to maps and data but doesn’t share any examples from its advocacy efforts. Could you stop all the talk and show us the (tofu) bacon!”
- K.C. (Team SACTO SF3 – Mathematics Consultant)

If it’s tofu bacon you want, then it’s tofu bacon that you shall get!

The REP recently created a database of Census 2000 SF3 data indexed to publicly available census map files (shp. files for the techies) available from ESRI . The database markedly decreases the time and effort needed to create maps for neighborhoods within Sacramento County. Take a look! We also recently discovered some niffty freeware that allows organizations to assemble area databases of relevant Census 2000 data in a cost effective way to be used with ArcGIS or Maptitude. Contact us to learn more.

Working with attorneys in LSNC’s Sacramento office, the REP created maps to support outreach to local high school students. The maps were designed to be simple (target audience was high schools students) and to be reproducible on a black and white copying machine. Take a look at the Del Paso Heights map and the North Highlands map.

LSNC’s Auburn Office and the REP are investigating the intersection of sub-standard housing and race in the Lake Tahoe region. The REP created a series of maps to supplement a recent site-visit. Take a look at the South Lake Tahoe map.

A REP extern, Bandana Kohli, completed a case study of the Sikh community in northern California. Her project relied heavily on census and fieldwork data and is the perfect example of how fact-based analysis should inform and support community lawyering. Take a look at excerpted graphs and charts from the case study.

“I like mapping and data but I need help with my cases. When will the REP provide web-access to litigation support materials like research memorandums and case law analysis?”
- P.L.B.

The REP hears you loud and clear! The Project is involved in several ongoing projects within LSNC’s service area. Unfortunately, due to concerns about releasing information about pending litigation etc., we are unable to post materials until well after the fact. Since the REP is fairly new, this means that we haven’t gotten to that point yet. However, you can always contact us directly and ask if we have materials on a specific subject or suggest a research project to the REP. The REP has a fascinating memo on Article III standing obstacles that residents or developers seeking to challenge a city’s actions under the FHA must overcome. Okay, we’re kidding about the fascinating part but you should contact us if you’re interested.

Recent REP Web postings:

Equal Protection Clause: Historical Meaning and Normative Function (5/4/2007)
Imus Controversy and Institutional Racism (4/20/2007)
New Demographics for the California Bar and Bench (4/19/2007)
Post-Intent Racism: A New Framework For An Old Problem (4/19/2007)
So I have a map … now what? (4/18/2007)

Check out The political reality in Imus controvery, a thoughtful OpEd piece in today’s Sacramento Bee by Sacramento State educator Bruce Snyder. Uniquely, Snyder avoids repeating the obvious regarding Imus’ overtly racist remarks, and analyzes the controversy from an institutional racism perspective. With riffs on Reconstruction, Bill Clinton’s 1992 scolding of Sister Souljah and how and why in every election cycle (actually every day) the Democratic Party betrays African Americans–their most loyal supporters–this is not just another Imus bashing and definitely worth a read.

On March 6-7, 2007, The Legal Services Training Consortium of New England and the Legal Aid University convened an Advocacy Symposium on Structural Racism gathering advocates from throughout New England to examine Structural Racism and new advocacy tools.

The keynote address, delivered by john a. powell, Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute, was a powerful presentation using complex systems analysis to illustrate racism in its current manifestations. More importantly, he suggested practical steps that legal services advocates can take to address these issues in their neighborhoods.

Sessions examined racial disparities and solutions in the areas of housing, income distribution, health care, the environment and education always challenging the participants to integrate race conscious advocacy into their day to day practice. Kudos to the advocates in New England leading the way to a regional approach to race equity.

The following is excerpted from Jon Hanson, David Yosifom, The Situation: An Introduction To The Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, And Deep Capture, 152 U. Pa. L. Rev. 129 (2003).

“College students participated in a simulated quiz game and were randomly assigned to either of two roles: contestant or questioner. Questioners were asked to compose general-knowledge queries to be posed to the contestants, and the contestants were instructed to answer as many questions as they could. The situational advantage of the questioners is clear, given that they could draw from their areas of personal expertise, while contestants were forced to answer questions on unfamiliar topics. Therefore, it should not have been surprising that contestants could only give a small percentage of correct answers. Yet, when it came to estimating the intelligence of the two groups, the situational advantage was forgotten … both groups ranked the questioners as more generally knowledgeable than contestants. In other words, the game was perceived as a fair measure of general knowledge, and the failure of contestants was attributed to disposition [lack of intelligence]. Put differently, participants saw the players and missed the playing field, thus presuming that it was level.”