In the current Jan.-Feb. 2010 issue of the Clearinghouse Review, you’ll find a new article written by LSNC managing attorney Bill Kennedy, staff attorney Colin Bailey, and former staff attorney Emily Fisher about communications framing, entitled “Framing in Race-Conscious, Antipoverty Advocacy: A Science-Based Guide to Delivering Your Most Persuasive Message”.  It is a comprehensive article that provides both the scientific background of communications framing, as well as how legal advocates can harness it to the benefit of their clients.  I encourage all REP blog readers to read the piece and give us feedback about your efforts to implement communications framing in your practice.

Listen to the NPR Story

From NPR.org, published January 25, 2010:

After making a silly mistake, it’s not uncommon for a person to say, “Oops — I was on autopilot.” In his new book, The Hidden Brain, science writer Shankar Vedantam explains how there’s actually a lot of truth to that.

Our brains have two modes, he tells NPR’s Steve Inkseep — conscious and unconscious, pilot and autopilot — and we are constantly switching back and forth between the two.

“The problem arises when we [switch] without our awareness,” Vedantam says, “and the autopilot ends up flying the plane, when we should be flying the plane.”

The autopilot mode can be useful when we’re multitasking, but it can also lead us to make unsupported snap judgments about people in the world around us. Vedantam says that when we interact with people from different backgrounds in high-pressure situations, it’s easy to rely — unconsciously — on heuristics.

Read An Excerpt

3-Year-Old Bigots?

Racial categorization begins at an extremely early age. Vedantam cites research from a day-care center in Montreal that found that children as young as 3 linked white faces with positive attributes and black faces with negative attributes.

“Now, these were children who are 3 years old,” Vedantam says. “It is especially hard to call them bigots, or to suggest that they are explicitly racially biased or have animosity in their hearts.”

Vedantam says the mind is hard-wired to “form associations between people and concepts.” But he thinks that the links the children made between particular groups and particular concepts were not biologically based — those judgments came from culture and upbringing.

“We tend to think of the conscious messages that we give children as being the most powerful education that we can give them,” Vedantam says — but the unconscious messages are actually far more influential.

He says that for every 50 times a year a teacher talks about tolerance, there are many hundreds of implicit messages of racial bias that children absorb through culture — whether it’s television, books or the attitudes of the adults and kids around them.

“And it’s these hidden associations that essentially determine what happens in the unconscious minds of these children,” Vedantam says.

‘Take Back The Controls’

In American society, colorblindness is often held up as the ideal. And though it’s a worthy aspiration, Vedantam says it’s a goal that isn’t rooted in psychological reality.

“Our hidden brains will always recognize people’s races, and they will do so from a very, very young age,” Vedantam says. “The far better approach is to put race on the table, to ask [children] to unpack the associations that they are learning, to help us shape those associations in more effective ways.”

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.”

On Sunday January 3, 2010, I received the news that our colleague and friend Jack Daniel had died.  Jack had been fighting cancer for the past 4 years and though we knew the ultimate outcome of the disease, he put that thought out of our mind by remaining actively engaged in the public interest community that he called home.  When he spoke at a race equity forum in Denver just weeks ago, there was no hint that his powerful voice would ever cease to be.

Those of us who were fortunate enough to cross paths with Jack Daniel knew him as a man who made an unparalleled commitment to bring justice to those who, too often, fell beyond its reach, particularly when that line of demarcation involved issues of race or ethnicity.  Whether he served public housing tenants in Texas, farm workers in California’s central valley, or disenfranchised youth, he was a creative and fearless advocate.  He understood that inequity and powerlessness can rob a community of hope, and he used all of the tools in his possession to bring balance and power sharing to the communities that he served.  In so many areas of practice, he was a pioneer.

In 1999 Legal Services of Northern California was looking for the prototypical “Community Lawyer” to deliver a keynote address that would launch a new advocacy initiative.  When the planning committee described the traits this person must have all knew immediately that we were describing Jack Daniel.  Jack delivered that address and inspired many young advocates to understand the fundamental nature of our relationship with our clients.  Jack reminded our attorneys that the law is not a gift we bestow upon our clients.  He cautioned them not to become a crutch upon which the clients depend but to understand the law as a tool that our clients could wield to make their hopes and dreams manifest.  Jack unfailingly placed his clients first.  He did not do so from an abstract sensibility, but from time invested to understand the community.  His understanding was relational.

Jack was also my friend.  At many times in my life when confusion reigned, I would pick up the telephone and call Jack.  Jack provided that beacon that would set me aright and he did so with the wisdom, grace and good humor that were his hallmarks.  The Legal Services community has lost a giant but his work continues in all whose lives he touched.

To his wife Mary and his family, we extend our love and thanks for sharing this wonderful man with us.

*To view Jack Daniel’s obituary in the Fresno Bee, click here.  Click here to view a tribute written by Chris Schneider, Executive Director of Central California Legal Services.

Welcome to the latest installment of the Race Equity Project’s e-newsletter. We hope you found our last e-newsletter on LGBT Advocacy, Race, and Poverty informative. In this installment of the e-newsletter, we address the impact of the current recession on communities of color.

The four contributors to this e-newsletter each bring their unique perspective on the intersection of race and the current economic recession. We hope that you will find their articles provocative and inspiring.

Countdown to 2042: Equity in America – Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink.

Making the Case for Fair Housing: Evidence for Litigation and Actions for Stabilizing Communities Under Stress – Jesus Hernandez, real estate broker and doctoral candidate, University of California, Davis, Department of Sociology.

Foreclosure Crisis Built on Racial Injustice: The recession has resulted from, and contributed to, America’s racial divide – Seth Wessler, Research Associate at the Applied Research Center.

Recession Proofing the Economy: Building Wealth in Communities of Color – Meizhu Lui, Director of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

Do you have an idea for a future e-newsletter? Would you like to share the race-based work that you are doing with others interested in achieving race equity? Drop us an email. We would love to hear from you!

Recent Posts:

• Review of Baltimore Housing Mobility Program
• Race, Racism, and Racial Disparities in the “Post Racial Nation”
• The Battle of St. Bernard Parish
• Homeownership Drop Greatest for Asian-Americans
• The Economic Case For Fixing Racial Health Disparities
• Judging Workplace Racial Harassment Cases
• Racial Disparities in Nursing Home Care

By Angela Glover Blackwell

One of the visible areas of pain in this current recession has been the subprime mortgage debacle which caused a wave of foreclosures among many borrowers of color who had been unfairly targeted for high interest loans by the nation’s financial lenders. Had America paid attention to what was happening in communities of color the nation might have been spared the worst effects of an economic catastrophe that pummeled home values and sucked Americans into a vortex of foreclosures and layoffs, and stalled economic growth.  In a similar manner, the boat was missed in addressing our failing education system earlier, when test scores and dropout rates made it clear that something was going terribly wrong for many African American and Latino students.

For too long communities of color have been the canaries in the coal mine, sending out signals that should have served as urgent wake-up calls for the rest of the country.  One approach to ensuring that communities of color participate fully in the vitality of American economic life is through a focus on equity—just and fair inclusion for all.

The pursuit of equity today is different from the pursuit of equality.  While civil rights legislation established equality in principle many practical barriers remain to achieving economic and social parity.  You can’t just have the right to sit in a bus. Today, you need a bus that is frequent, connects you to employment, and provides a platform for economic, social, and physical mobility.

In many ways, inattention to equity brought about the country’s current economic mess.  The only way out is to refocus our sights on what it takes to build strong and healthy communities that enable everyone, including low-income people of color, to succeed.  To do this, the country must focus on jobs that pay family-supporting wages; high-quality education that prepares the next generation for 21st-century success; immigration and immigrant policy that fully taps the productivity and contribution of all residents; and reducing incarceration while at the same time preparing more young men for successful re-entry as productive and engaged citizens and community members. Just as essential is making sure our communities are livable, with access to healthy foods and physical activity for everyone.

Time is also running short because the demographic clock is ticking.   By sometime around 2042, the country is projected to shift from a majority white society to a “majority-minority” society with no single racial group as a majority.   Seventy-eight million baby boomers are poised to eventually retire, to be replaced by a new complement of workers reflecting the richness and diversity of America. The very future of the country will depend on how well it prepares that next generation of workers.

This is the time to reimagine the American future.  A bright future is possible if we keep in mind that diversity and equity are not the same.  Just because the country has a black president and is moving toward a more multicultural future does not mean that equity has been achieved.  At a time when everyone is hurting, communities of color are hurting even more.  High unemployment and poverty rates and growing hunger continue to define the reality for many black and Latino families.

To change that reality requires recognizing that universal strategies and policies don’t always work for everyone. For instance, the last attempt to address a financial crisis of this magnitude—the New Deal during the Great Depression—introduced many new programs but still fell short in reducing longstanding racial disparities.  Sometimes, countless seldom-seen barriers prevent communities of color from getting the help they both need and deserve.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), touted as a cure-all, has not yet reached low-income communities of color. As we look toward 2010, we must find ways to target investment so that all will benefit.

In the end, though, racial progress is more than about policy.  The civil rights struggle became a movement when it was fueled by ordinary citizens from all walks of life.  To address today’s pressing challenges, we need a similar movement, by Americans from every corner of the nation, who recognize that the country is at a crossroads and that the future depends on a broad vision of opportunity and inclusion for all.

Angela Glover Blackwell is the founder and CEO of PolicyLink, a national research and action institute. She is the coauthor of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future, forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Company in 2010.

By Jesus Hernandez

Abundant research exists showing how the current wave of foreclosures from unsustainable subprime mortgage products has brought a devastating loss of wealth to non-white neighborhoods across the US. Accordingly, the case against racially concentrated subprime lending should demonstrate not only how the inequitable effects of the mortgage meltdown are concentrated in non-white communities but also how these inequities remain rooted in long-standing patterns of housing discrimination that shaped segregated space – the essential condition for a racialized concentration of subprime lending to take place. Racially defined residential space should be seen as “ground-zero” for the foreclosure crisis and remains an important piece of evidence in building the case against predatory lending. The task before us is to clearly articulate how the uneven effects of subprime lending, a seemingly place-less and colorblind market phenomenon, continues the intergenerational practice of housing discrimination in the very neighborhoods initially shaped by race-based housing policies.

Here I offer two suggestions for building the fair housing case against predatory lenders and for stabilizing communities under stress. First, fair housing litigation and advocacy can benefit from contexualizing predatory lending within the historical record of racialized housing thereby linking the economic catastrophes brought on by the subprime mortgage meltdown to past episodes of racially disparate market action. Second, fair housing advocates can use this evidence to justify improvements to federal mortgage reporting requirements that can lead to more effective monitoring of financial institutions. The improved lender monitoring will aid in demonstrating how the spatially and racially concentrated loss of homeownership seen today represents a continuum of housing discrimination in segregated residential space. In turn, practical and expedited solutions for crisis relief can be targeted to those places and populations most affected by the on-going financial crisis.

Building the fair housing case against predatory lenders remains complicated by explanations that frame the cause of the mortgage meltdown as complex financial processes removed from social decisions or as irresponsible consumer action. Missing from this reasoning, of course, is acknowledging the racialized predatory lending that took place in predominantly non-white neighborhoods by subprime lenders supported by Wall Street investment. Here the significance of race-based market manipulation cannot be overstated. Holding financial institutions accountable for the social and financial damage brought by the default of rapidly unsustainable mortgages requires identifying the specific market practices that made racially segregated space vulnerable to predatory capital extraction. Connecting these historical practices to subprime lending is surprisingly very simple but because this link developed over decades of time through the formative years of the modern real estate and mortgage industry, it is easily overlooked. More often, the link is simply explained away as an epiphenomenon of competitive supply and demand markets. The link can be summarized as follows.

During the 1900s, community builders and the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) actively promulgated the use of racially restrictive covenants limiting the purchase of newly constructed homes to whites. The covenants were used as a way to create value and demand for new suburban residential developments. The NAREB also guided the development of appraisal techniques and practices that conditioned property values upon the racial characteristics of neighborhood residents. When NAREB members were appointed to draft FHA underwriting guidelines for New Deal home financing programs, racial restrictions became a formal condition of mortgage credit and fueled the formation of the homogeneous residential suburbs during the post-war housing boom.

New Deal FHA guidelines also prohibited, or “redlined,” access to credit in neighborhoods with non-white residents. The subsequent decline in redlined property values made inner-city neighborhoods vulnerable to urban redevelopment programs that assembled de-valued property for transfer to commercial developers. The forced exodus of non-white residents from redevelopment zones to areas without racially restricted covenants created new racial boundaries for residency and led to a second wave of mortgage redlining during the period 1950-1980. By this time, racialized residential boundaries were firmly embedded in the social and physical landscapes of our cities. Federal urban policy, and private implementation of said policy by the real estate industry, effectively redirected the flow of capital towards predominantly white suburban residential development. Concomitantly, these race-based market interventions shaped segregated space and created credit-starved neighborhoods now vulnerable to subprime and predatory lending.

When intensive bank deregulation shifted the risk traditionally associated with lending in segregated space to Wall Street via securitization, the rush was on. During the period 2003-2006, data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) revealed an intense concentration of unsustainable subprime loans in previously redlined areas, a market phenomenon now referred to as “reverse redlining.” To no one’s surprise, mortgage default and foreclosure rates also mirror subprime loan concentrations in redlined space. Accordingly, race remains a salient factor in understanding the current housing crisis as it played a central role in triggering the wave of foreclosures that eventually froze Wall Street credit markets.

Making the connection between financially vulnerable segregated space and today’s predatory lending practices exposes the inadequacies of federal financial monitoring policies designed to keep discriminatory mortgage lending practices in check. Lender monitoring currently takes place via the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which discourages redlining by assessing a financial institution’s record of helping to meet the credit needs of its entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods; and HMDA, which mandates lenders to report data regarding loan originations, loan pricing, loan purchases, and applicant demographics. Because these monitoring practices failed to detect in advance the disparate lending practices seen today in segregated space, connecting the history of housing discrimination to the current wave of foreclosures occurring in non-white communities becomes the starting point for justifying changes to federal monitoring policy.

Housing advocates should now push for three broad changes to federal monitoring that can improve access to fair credit and fair housing. First, expand HMDA reporting requirements to keep pace with industry innovation. The list of lenders required to report should now include all financial institutions and their affiliates that generate loans for securitization and eventual sale on Wall Street. Also, expand HMDA reporting to include data on borrower interest rates, credit scores, loan reset periods, balloon payments, adjustable rate mortgage margins and indices, and loan product underwriting (e.g. stated income or low-documentation loans). These data will help identify racial and spatial concentrations of dangerous credit products that strip away home equity and cause financial instability. Simply monitoring high-cost loans as the primary indicator of predatory lending fails to capture data on important loan characteristics that help identify abusive lending practices.

Finally, housing advocates should push for transparency and enforcement of loan modification reporting requirements imposed by federal bailout programs. Loan modifications are critical to stabilizing neighborhoods experiencing stress from concentrated subprime lending and mortgage foreclosures. Proper reporting of loan modification activities remains essential to monitoring the actions of lenders and asset managers who are unwilling to move quickly to modify unsustainable loans. When used with HMDA data on subprime lending and mortgage default data, the tracking of loan modification applications and outcomes can help demonstrate disparate patterns of treatment by lenders. Thus housing advocates can gain leverage against lenders by showing how the number of approved loan modifications in segregated space fails to keep pace with their mortgage foreclosure rates thereby inhibiting federal efforts to stabilize communities in stress. Such leverage can be used to push these same lenders to remedy past practices by improving access to safe financing products designed for home buyers in crisis neighborhoods. The resulting increase in homeownership opportunities will slow the pace of investors “bottom-feeding” on repossessed homes. This will expedite the rebuilding of communities with stable families and support networks rather than encouraging investor-owned neighborhoods of unstable renters.

Keeping an innovative global credit market accountable for abusive lending practices is a process that relies upon public scrutiny for its effectiveness. Improving the data available for fair housing practitioners can be a valuable strategy in revealing disparate credit practices, advancing fair credit and fair housing enforcement, and act as a pre-emptive strike against dangerous profit-taking from financially vulnerable communities in the future. These steps will go a long way in reversing the effects of the new global financial infrastructure now operating as a Plessy-type credit market that continues to separate and divide our communities.

Jesus Hernandez is a real estate broker practicing in the Sacramento area with over 20 years of experience in residential sales and financing. His research connects the current subprime loan crisis to historical processes of mortgage redlining and residential segregation and demonstrates how racialized mortgage credit practices reproduce long-standing spatial and social patterns of inequality. He is currently completing his Ph.D in sociology at the University of California at Davis.

By Seth Wessler

The Obama administration recently announced plans to bolster it’s foreclosure prevention plan — the one that was supposed to keep millions of Americans in their homes by giving banks incentives to refinance mortgages. Until recently the Making Home Affordable plan has been a widespread failure as mortgage makers have faced no mandate to renegotiate the terms of troubled mortgages. The recent move by the administration aims to put some teeth into the program.

The impact of the failure to date is catastrophic, as millions of homeowners continue to slide into foreclosure. People of color have been hit hardest by the crisis, facing disproportionate rates of foreclosure as well as higher levels of unemployment. The recession has deepened the racial divide.

This is why it seemed odd to many when Federal Reserve Chair Ben S. Bernanke met with world bankers and collectively declared the global economy to be back on track to normal. As long as we fail to address the struggles of working people and ignore the structures of racial inequity that helped push us all into recession, we will find that a return to normal will mean very little.

Earlier this year, I traveled the country from Michigan to Arizona, Rhode Island to Washington, researching race and the recession. Near Detroit, I met Leila*, who recently lost her job as a teacher’s assistant and supports her four children alone.

She was laid off late last year because of state budget cuts. Her unemployment benefit ran out and she applied for government cash assistance. A month later, her welfare checks were also cut off and she was suddenly without any income.

Leila fell behind on her mortgage payments on the house she had just moved into. She realizes now she was sold an adjustable rate subprime loan. Her house went into foreclosure. Without any other wealth to fall back on, she’s not sure what will happen.

Because people of color were disproportionately saddled with predatory loans, neighborhoods of color bear the brunt of foreclosures. Black, Latino, Asian and American-Indian families have been stripped of much of the wealth they had carefully accumulated over the years. The impact of these losses will last for generations.

That people of color face higher rates of foreclosure is no coincidence. Until the 1970s, communities of color were broadly excluded from owning homes as a result of racial “redlining” practices and racially restrictive neighborhood agreements. Then Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to end discrimination in lending. Suddenly redlining and racial exclusion were made illegal and people of color slowly began to access prime loans.

But in the late 1990s, Congress deregulated the mortgage industry along with Wall Street, opening the space for industry to circumvent the CRA. These were the same anti-regulatory maneuvers that made subprime securitization possible.

As the CRA was weakened and incentives to sell subprime loans grew, neighborhoods of color provided fertile ground for the sale of these faulty products. Since communities like Leila’s were largely devoid of prime lenders as a result of redlining, there was little competition and the credit vacuum created conditions for the predatory sale of high-cost loans to communities of color.

The streets of central Brooklyn and Detroit filled with predatory lenders and millions of these mortgages were sold. They ultimately burst, flooding the economy with toxic assets and submerging all of us in an economic storm.

In other words, the economic crisis is built on the country’s long history of racial discrimination.

Recovery must prevent families from suffering the recession’s worst results and lay a new foundation to avoid the kinds of unjust structures that put us all in this mess. Only by tackling racial inequity in the economy can we ensure a stable and just recovery.

An immediate halt on foreclosures is necessary, as is modernization of the Community Reinvestment Act, which would require equity in mortgage lending and expand the Act’s reach to cover new kinds of lending practices. The administration’s retooled foreclosure prevention plan is a hopeful sign but it should go further by mandating banks to renegotiate mortgages to less than 30 percent of income. Meanwhile, lawmakers should pass legislation allowing those facing foreclosure to rent their homes from the bank.

Fixing the broken healthcare system, which is responsible for more than half of personal bankruptcies and has pushed scores into foreclosure, ought to have happened months ago.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to rise, and it’s always much higher for people of color. Stimulus job creation money and green jobs programs should be targeted to communities of color, where joblessness is literally killing people. In all this, racial impact assessments must be conducted to ensure we’re building an equitable economy.

Recovery will not mean much if we return to the “normal” economy. Let’s demand an economy that is good for all of us.

A version of this article was published on inthesetimes.com.

Seth Wessler is a Research Associate at the Applied Research Center (ARC). He is the author and principal investigator of ARC’s recent report on Race and Recession.

By Meizhu Lui

When I was growing up, my Chinese parents used to say to me (as they sat me in front of my homework while my white friends were out playing), “You have to work twice as hard to be equal.” That just made me roll my eyes at their naïveté. After all, this was America, the land of equality. Fast forward to the 1974 recession when I was looking for work; my college degree didn’t help, so nearly a year into my search in desperation I applied to Dunkin’ Donuts. The manager interviewing me said, “You Chinese are good workers, aren’t you?” Suddenly, the light dawned: it was me, not my immigrant parents, who was naïve; I would be expected to work twice as hard as the other “girls.” Later, I found that many other children of color heard the same advice from their parents, too.

As we look at today’s economic picture, it reflects our parents’ truth. In fact, over the last few years people of color have been three times – not twice – more likely to live in poverty, three times more likely to have been steered into a sub-prime mortgage when they could have qualified for a lower rate, and three times more likely to get knocked back to zero through foreclosures. Recession? Some communities of color have been in a permanent recession. While there is a big hoo-ha now that overall unemployment has broken the double digit barrier, the rates among people of color surpassed 10% several years ago. And if you break down that 10% by race, African Americans have 15% unemployment, Latinos 12%, Asians, although suffering less from unemployment as a percentage of the Asian population, are seeing the fastest growing rate of unemployment, and on some Native American reservations, up to 50% have no jobs. For whites, the double digit mark has not quite been reached at 9%. And so while all racial groups are hurting, the pain is not distributed equally among all communities.

While most of the emphasis in getting out of the recession is on jobs and income, wealth – what you own minus what you owe – is even more important to achieving economic security for the people and economic stability for the nation in the longer term. Without wealth – no savings, no homeownership, no business ownership, no retirement pension, no assets – you will not be able to weather economic recessions, nor will you be able to make your money grow, and most importantly, you won’t be able to give your children a jump start on their own journey into the economy. As we tackle the recession, asset building and wealth creation, particularly for people of color, need to be part of the agenda.

When I was a kid, children used to chant at me, “Ching-Chong Chinaman, sitting on a fence, trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.” Looking at the data on wealth today, the average family of color still has only fifteen cents to the dollar owned by the average white family. In fact, African Americans are losing ground: in 2004, households headed by African Americans owned twelve cents to the average white household’s dollar; in 2007, it had shrunk to a dime. Single black and Latino women on average have only a little over $100 in wealth. Even if all the unemployed got jobs tomorrow, people of color would still lag far behind due to the racial wealth gap.

Why does such a huge gap exist? Throughout US history, government actions have transferred vast amounts of wealth from people of color to whites, created policy barriers to wealth creation by people of color, and used tax dollars and benefit programs for those who served in the armed forces to secure wealth building opportunities for whites. Land held by Native Americans was taken from them through violence and disregard for treaties. African Americans could not even earn a wage – they were themselves financial assets, part of the wealth holdings of their owners. Mexicans were forced off their land through a trumped up war and then allowed to come back only as temporary workers. Asians were denied the right to become citizens and to receive the benefits of citizenship, such as the right to own land, to form corporations, to get government jobs, or to receive public benefits. European Americans, on the other hand, have consistently received incentives and subsidies for wealth creation, from the Homestead Act to the free land-grant college system to low-interest mortgages to access to farm and small business loans to the current tax breaks for high-end homes and for capital gains.

For an equitable recovery, several principles have been developed by a network of experts of color in the asset building field organized by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping families and elders achieve and maintain economic security.

• Policies must be universal and targeted to communities of color. Like the policy in the Emergency Room, those with the most life threatening situations need to be cared for first. Every life can be saved if you start with the ones with the most pressing problem. We know there are new emerging sectors whose growth will be encouraged by government investment: besides green technology, broadband and transit are two sectors that will need new workers. The first hired for the new jobs that are “good” jobs – ones that include wealth building possibilities such as health and retirement benefits – need to be those from communities with disproportionately high unemployment rates. Tax incentives for employers who hire people from disproportionately affected groups; job training and creation programs that are targeted to people/areas disproportionately affected by job loss; community rebuilding programs with job residency requirements are tools to steer good jobs to communities of color.

• The perspectives of and resources created by experts of color must be drawn upon to develop public policy. Too often, “experts”, who have very little real-world experience in or with communities of color, have the most influence in shaping policies intended to help lift the poor. Look at the college savings accounts that allow such savings to be deducted from income taxes. For low-income families of color who don’t make enough to file income taxes, this doesn’t help. A more direct approach – scholarships for example – would best achieve increasing college enrollments by minority students, and set them on an upward economic path. 150 experts of color can be searched for by area of expertise in the Experts of Color Clearinghouse of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative, Insight Center for Community Economic Development. Their experience and their professional training are available to design effective policy solutions that will have a successful and lasting impact – so we don’t want to hear, “We want experts of color, but don’t know where to find them!”

• Collection of racial and ethnic data is essential to evaluate policy effectiveness. As the late Justice Blackmun once wrote: “In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way.” Too often there are insufficient or poor data to knowledgeably design public policy or measure its effectiveness, especially for Native and Asian communities. Aggregate data mask problems; Asians look like they’re doing well as a whole, but the poorest ethnicities in the US are Asian and they are denied the help they need due to the lack of good data. It is not easy to tease out the impact on communities of color from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) due to lack of data; future policies must be mandated to collect data so we can be clear about who benefits and who does not.

• Solutions must focus not just on individuals, but on community-wide prosperity. Because residential segregation is still a reality, and because people of color operate as members of extended families and larger communities, economic solutions must focus on communities, not just individuals. With the foreclosure crisis continuing into 2010, which will exacerbate the racial wealth gap, reform of the financial sector is essential to protect people of color from predatory products. The proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency is a step in the right direction, but it should not just hear individual complaints, but have the authority to oversee the Community Reinvestment Act and watchdog banks and the services they provide in minority neighborhoods as a whole. In addition, support must be given to community based organizations, which provide the cultural, educational, and financial bonds that strengthen community fabric.

Turning hard work into prosperity is the essence of the American dream; but people of color have been denied the tools to turn their dreams into reality. The US government knows that giving white Americans opportunities to gain assets helped grow the economy. To do so for all of us will expand our economy for the long term.

Meizhu describes herself as a “professional troublemaker!” She is the Director of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, and a co-author of The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide.

* Photograph included above is copywritten by Blethen Maine Newspapers.

Welcome to our third e-newsletter of 2009. This issue explores the intersection of issues affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and respective communities; race and poverty or low-income status. Each of the three articles references the Williams Institute’s groundbreaking study on poverty in the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities. The study serves to debunk the widely-held assumptions and stereotypes that families headed by same-sex couples have lower rates of poverty than different-sex couple families and concludes that for Latino/a and African-American same-sex couples, income levels are significantly lower than for their respective heterosexual counterparts. We hope the examples of cutting edge and innovative advocacy and practice described in the articles in this issue instruct and inspire our readers.

Legal advocates challenging stereotypes and increasing access to justice for LGBT communities, Lisa Cisneros, California Rural Legal Assistance, and Cathy Sakimura, National Center for Lesbian Rights

Economic realities in the transgender community by Matthew Wood, Transgender Law Center

Blacks and gays: Bridging the cultural divide by Joel A. Brown

Recent posts:

• Cries of “reverse racism” distract from reality of systemic racism
• The dire state of language access in state courts
• Voting Rights Act survives Supreme Court decision
• Critical race studies symposium takes on “colorblindness”
• The use of “frames” in race equity advocacy
• Can America’s urban food deserts bloom?

Welcome to the second part of our e-newsletter series on environmental justice advocacy, race, and poverty. This e-newsletter highlights two case studies of environmental justice advocacy conducted in Northern California and details a successful university-community-advocate partnership to combat environmental and regional injustice. The three contributing authors to this e-newsletter each bring their own unique perspective to environmental justice work. We hope that you will find their articles informative and inspiring. Enjoy!

A case study of environmental justice work in West Oakland, Helen H. Kang, Golden Gate University School of Law

Infrastructure and environmental justice: a case study of the Hurley Way Revitalization Project, Graham Brownstein, Environmental Council of Sacramento

Building collaborative communities: the Center for Regional Change and the Environmental Justice Project at UC Davis, Maggie La Rochelle, Jonathan London, Julie Sze, University of California, Davis

Recent posts:

• Two new law review articles on environmental justice and implicit bias in the judiciary
• Minorities, immigrants and homeownership
• Law school admission rates for African American and Latino students lag
• More about stereotype threat and what can be done to close the achievement gap
• Disparate impact on graduation rates of students of color caused by the California High School Exit Exam
• Magic and mind science
• MCLE training on the use of frames in race equity advocacy
• Sample slides from course to train trainers on social cognition and mind science
• “The House We Live In”
• Presentation on the use of GIS in advocacy at the UC Davis Law School
• An analysis of Parents Involved in Community Schools from a psychosocial perspective
• Poverty and gay, lesbian, and bisexual couples of color
• New Orleans multi-family housing moratorium struck down as racially discriminatory
• Oakland shooting raises questions of life and death

On March 20, 2009, the Race Equity Project conducted a two hour training on the use of framing in race equity advocacy. The training was approved for MCLE credit by the State Bar of California. The slides used in that training are provided below.

If you have questions about these slides please contact us.

Take a look at the REP’s “Framing Dos and Don’ts.”

Take a look at the framing excercises the participants worked on during the interactive section of the training.

The REP has been training advocates to educate their organizations and clients on the REP tools (Social Cognition and Mind Science, Framing, Community Lawyering, the Intent Doctrine, GIS and Mapping, and Structural and Institutional Discrimination) for the last several years. We’ve decided to share some of the slides we use to train trainers on social cognition and mind science. The  training trainers course introduces future trainers to the core concepts of social cognition and mind science. The training trainers course and the slides displayed below are more technical in nature then the slides used to introduce advocates and community members to social cognition and mind science.

Clicking on the slide show image below will take you to the REP’s Presentation page where you can view this presentation.

If you have questions about these slides please contact us.

Thanks to the hard work of LSNC’s gizmos, the comment feature is now back online.  Speak your mind!

Welcome to our first e-newsletter of 2009. Before we dive into the content of this e-newsletter, the REP would like to thank the hundreds of advocates across the county who fought to achieve more equitable results for low income communities of color in 2008. We promise that we’ll continue to strive to be your information and advocacy tools “one stop” for your race-based poverty law practice.

The three contributors to this e-newsletter each bring their own unique perspective to environmental justice work. It’s worth noting that all of the authors (without any prompting) stress the importance of incorporating community lawyering and client empowerment practices into their work. We hope that you will find their articles informative and inspiring. Enjoy!

Securing Environmental Justice through Community Lawyering, Steve Fischbach, Rhode Island Legal Services

Environmental Justice and Community Lawyering:  Successful Advocacy Strategies, Sofia Sarabia, The Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment

Workplace Environmental Justice, Silas Shawver, California Rural Legal Assistance

Do you have an idea for a future e-newsletter? Would you like to share the race-based work that you are doing with others interested in achieving race equity? Drop us an email. We would love to hear from you!

The REP thanks the Gizmos for the wonderful job they did on the redesign of the REP site. If you’re interested in things tech, take a look at the enterprise search engine they our currently implementing for our LSNC’s offices.

Welcome to the seventh iteration of our quarterly e-newsletter! We’re going to explore the implication of social cognition, implicit bias, and situationalism to race equity work and there application to a race-based poverty law practice.
The three contributors to this e-newsletter each bring a unique perspective on the application of the mind sciences and situationalism to legal services work. We hope that you will find their articles informative and inspiring. Enjoy!

The Situation of IDEA for Families with Limited English Proficiency, Jith Meganathan, Staff Attorney, Central California Legal Services.

Reversing the Trend in Antidiscrimination Jurisprudence, Kimberly Thomas Rapp, Director of Law and Public Policy, Equal Justice Society.

Connecting Poverty Practice and Mind Science, William Kennedy, Managing Attorney and Acting Deputy Director, Legal Services of Northern California.

Do you have an idea for a future e-newsletter? Would you like to share the race-based work that you are doing with other interested in achieving race equity? Drop us an email. We would love to hear from you!

We made a few new additions to our resources today that we think you should take a look at:

The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

• Site Summary: The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity’s “ultimate goal is to stimulate and facilitate transformative change to bring about a society that is fair and just for all people.” It approaches this goal “with the understanding that all communities of people are interconnected and that by fostering positive relationships through research, scholarship and collaboration, we will deepen the possibility for change.” The Kirwan Institute is a true pioneer in the fight to achieve equitable results for communities of color and its research and advocacy, particularly around opportunity mapping, represents some of the most innovative and effective advocacy currently being undertaken by advocates for race equity. The Institute also posts all of their PowerPoint presentations on their site. Available presentations cover topics ranging from GIS to framing to structural racism.

HealthyCity

• Site Summary: HealthyCity offers perhaps the most comprehensive access to community resources, demographic/health data, and cutting edge online GIS mapping technology that the REP has ever seen. For the time being, the site only offers geographic coverage for Los Angeles county. We hope that HealthyCity will be going statewide soon but until that time we will have to stew in our jealousy of the wonderful online mapping and data analysis tools that residents of the city of angels have access to.

• Suggested Uses: If you have any mapping or data analysis needs related to Los Angeles county and you are not adverse to free, powerful, user-friendly online mapping and data analysis tools than HealthyCity is for you.

The REP is happy to bring you the long-awaited and much-anticipated e-newsletter exploring land use and housing issues faced by low income persons of color. We hope this e-newsletter will shed some light onto how advocates can fight structural and institutional inequity and racism through the creative use of land use and housing law.

The three contributors to this e-newsletter each bring a unique perspective to land use and housing practice. We hope that you will find their articles informative and inspiring. Enjoy.

Using California Law to Advance Race Equity in Land Use, Mike Rawson, Co-director, The Public Interest Law Project.

Public Housing Redux, Demetria McCain, Esq., Director of Advocacy & Education, Inclusive Communities Project, Inc.

Empowering Communities of Color Through Land Use Advocacy, Zenobia Lai, Senior Attorney, Greater Boston Legal Services.

We are still ruminating on the theme of the next e-newsletter. If you have a suggestion, we would love to hear from you.

The REP is happy to bring you the long-awaited and much-anticipated e-newsletter exploring Language Access issues faced by low-income persons of color. We hope this e-newsletter will shed some light onto how language can function as a proxy for race and how poverty attorneys can integrate Language Access advocacy into their practice and their organization’s client interaction practices.

The three contributors to this e-newsletter each bring a unique perspective to Language Access practice. We hope that you will find their short pieces informative and, perhaps, inspiring. Enjoy.

Language Access to the Courts
By T. Wong, Staff Attorney, Legal Services of Northern California

Avoiding Burnout of Bilingual Employees
By Annie Struby, Staff Attorney, Legal Aid of Western Missouri

Race Equity via Language Access to Public Benefits Services
By Jodie Berger, Regional Counsel, Legal Services of Northern California

The next e-newsletter will discuss land use and race equity. If you would like to contribute please contact us.

We are measuring interest for an online training on mapping language and race using decennial census data and ArcGIS 9.1 or Dataplace (free online mapping tool). If you are interested please contact us and indicate the program that you would like the training to be on.

The Race Equity track at the 2007 NLADA substantive law conference was a resounding success thanks to the efforts of the presenters, the NLADA staff, the track organizers, and the many track participants. It was truly a pleasure to see so many legal services advocates, academics, and other professionals committed to furthering the goal of race equity.One question looms in our minds after the conference, “Great conference, what’s next?” We believe that there is only one answer to this question: develop our ability to apply GIS analysis, social cognition theory, and community lawyering in practice to better serve our clients. How? Persistence, patience, and a willingness to experiment.

Here’s what’s currently on the REP’a plate. For starters, we’re working on several issues brought to us by staff attorneys at Legal Services of Northern California including inclusionary zoning, disparities in the quality of care received by MediCal beneficiaries of color and fair housing obligations attached to CDBG monies. The REP will also be teaching/supervising an externship at UC Davis Law School this fall. We feel privileged to again be afforded the opportunity to connect with future public-interest attorneys and involve them in the goal of achieving equitable results for low-income persons of color. Lastly, the REP is continuing to work to improve relationships and communications with the public interest community and low-income communities of color in Northern California.

We would love to learn how other advocates and organizations are working to achieve more equitable results for low-income clients of color. Why not drop us a line?
The next e-newsletter will mark a return to our practice of focusing the e-newsletter on one substantive issue or area of practice. The e-newsletter will focus on Language Access, LEP, and how language discrimination can be a proxy for race discrimination. If you have any suggestions or thoughts on this topic or if you would like to contribute to the e-newsletter please contact us.

The REP recently created informational brochures to support or community outreach. Take a look at our community member brochure and our legal advocate brochure. Both brochures are tri-fold and were designed by the wonderful folks at Trudesign Graphics.

The 2007 NLADA Substantive Law Conference (San Jose, California, July 19th-21st) is less than a month away and we can hardly contain our excitement! There are a total of 10 sessions in the substantive area of Race Equity:

• Structural Racism: When Racism Doesn’t Have a Face;
• The Science of Racism: Moving Beyond the Intent Doctrine;
• The Assault on Diversity;
• Mapping, Data & Race: The Importance of Fact Based Advocacy;
• Promoting Race Equity in Land Use, Infrastructure and Government Services;
• Education Disparities in K-12 Public Schools;
• Introduction to the Law and Science of Environmental Justice;
• Community Based Lawyering: Returning to Legal Services’ Roots;
• Using Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law to Protect Clients’ Access to Public Benefits;
• Using Legal Strategies to Create Healthy Homes, Schools and Communities.

If the sessions perk your interest, wait till we tell you about some of the presenters:

• Eva Paterson, President of the Equal Justice Society;
• Professor John Powell, Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity;
• Professor Jerry Kang, Co-Director of the UCLA Law School Critical Race Studies program;
• Lee Cokorinos, Executive Director of the Capacity Development Group and author of The Assault on Diversity: An Organized Challenge to Racial and Gender Justice (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003);
• Ann Joyner, Executive Director of the Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities ;
• Sarah Truehaft, Program Associate at Policylink;
• Dick Bauer, attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services;
• Reed Colfax, attorney at Relman & Dane;
• Demetria McCain, Director of Advocacy and Education at the Inclusive Communities Project;
• Mike Rawson, Co-Director of the Public Interest Law Project;
• Illene Jacobs, Director of Litigation at California Rural Legal Assistance;
• Tammi Wong, attorney at Legal Services Of Northern California;
• Deborah Escobedo, attorney at the Youth Law Center;
• Cynthia Rice, Director of Litigation at California Rural Legal Assistance and the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation;
• Steve Fishbach, attorney at Rhode Island Legal Services;
• Zynobia Lai, attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services;
• Mona Tawatao, Regional Counsel at Legal Services Of Northern California;
• Jodie Berger, Regional Counsel at Legal Services Of Northern California.

Registration at the normal rate is open until July 6, 2007. Late registration is available after that date. We hope to see you there.

The REP just updated our “must-read” list. Take a look.

Hello,

You might have noticed that there some content is missing from the REP site. A technical problem erased several posting on the site last week. We will be doing our best to recreate the content. The REP thanks you for your understanding.

Happy New Year! The REP has resolved to promote fact-based, race inequity arguments. Why? Unless decision-makers are confronted with hard data, claims of race inequity are often dismissed as anecdotal or diverted by side arguments. Worse yet, arguments founded on theory or policy afford parties the opportunity to revert to their respective ideological camps thus foreclosing the opportunity of productive dialogue. Fact-based arguments remove the wiggle room; they force decision-makers to address the evidence as you frame it.

The REP has a three-step process for creating fact-based arguments using data: (1) Identify the appropriate data source; (2) Obtain and analyze the relevant data; (3) Present the data in an understandable format.

Identifying the Appropriate Data Source

Even though data is more accessible then ever, finding the right data source can be a daunting task. With so much data available, how do you find what you need? The REP’s Data & Demographics page lists a host of data sets useful for race-based advocacy. The page includes a synopsis of the data, suggested uses, and even a few time saving tips. We also try to evaluate the credibility of a given data set. Still can’t find what you need? LSNC provides a massive list of data sources relevant to a variety of poverty practice areas. Remember, the data most favorable to your position may not be the best choice if your audience doesn’t think it’s from a credible source. Choose your data source wisely.

Obtain and Analyze Data

Obtaining data is often as simple as familiarizing yourself with a given website. The learning curves can be steep but take solace in the fact that learning how to use a site is like learning to ride a bicycle… you never forget. As far as analysis, don’t concern yourself too much with issues that are properly left to statisticians. When people examine your data they will want to know (1) its source and (2), on rare occasions, the raw numbers. Outside the context of litigation, your data analysis will likely not be subject to further scrutiny.

Data Presentation

It’s all about the presentation! Nothing puts an audience to sleep faster than a list of data. We suggest presenting data using graphs, charts or maps. Excel or web-based mapping applications are an excellent tool for this. Lastly, don’t get caught up in minutia. A data presentation should tell a simple, understandable story. Any superfluous points should be left out.

Contact the REP if you would like to see examples of our data presentations.

In The News

We know it isn’t much but it would be hard to find find two more reputable recommendations.

Poverty Law News, National Center on Poverty Law, December 8, 2006.

• “Legal Services of Northern California has launched a website for the Race Equity Project. The Project will digest, implement, evaluate and disseminate race-based advocacy resources and will facilitate a more efficient and effective delivery of race-based advocacy.”

Housing Task Force Update “News Update”, Western Center on Law and Poverty, No. 57 January 2007.

• “Created to develop a strategy to coordinate race conscious advocacy in the legal services community, the Race Equity Project provides invaluable information.”

A Call for Research Projects

We have externs! The REP wants to know what you need and assign work accordingly. Do you have a race-related memo or research project that you need? Do you lack the time or resources to start it? Does the project or memo have broad appeal? Share your idea with us and we will see if we can make it a reality.

The REP has recently commenced an externship program with UCD Law School. The program consists of two components: (1) a research component and (2) a discussion group. What will our externs be discussing? Take a look at our syllabus for the semester.

Social Science & Race: Behavioral Realism, Social Cognition Theory and Situationalism

• Anthony G. Greenwald, Linda Hamilton Krieger, Implicit Bias: Scientific Foundations, 94 Cal. L. Rev. 945 (2006).
• Jon Hanson, Kathleen Hanson, The Blame Frame: Justifying (Racial) Injustice In America, 41 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 413 (2006).
• Gary Blasi, Advocacy Against the Stereotype: Lessons From Cognitive Social Psychology, 49 UCLA L. Rev. 1241 (2002).

Law & Race: The Intent Doctrine

• Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217, Section I, Section III, White, Brennan, Marshall Dissent and Marshall Dissent (1971)
• Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229, (1976).
• Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corp., 429 U.S. 252, Section I, Section III, Section IV (1977).
• Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).
• Grutter v. Bollinger, Amicus Brief of The Coalition For Economic Equity, The Santa Clara University School Of Law Center For Social Justice And Public Service, The Justice Collective, The Charles Houston Bar Association, And The California Association Of Black Lawyers.
• Michael Selmi, Proving Intentional Discrimination: The Reality of Supreme Court Rhetoric, 86 Georgetown. L.J. 279 (1997).
• Linda Hamilton Krieger, Susan T. Fiske, Behavioral Realism in Employment Discrimination and Law: Implicit Bias and Disparate Treatment, 94 Cal. L. Rev. 997 (2006).

Fact-Based Argumentation: Community Mapping & Data Analysis

• The Annie E. Cassey Foundation, Race Matters Toolkit: Whats Race Got To Do With It.
• Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Race and Poverty in California: Census 2000 Profiles, 2002.
• PolicyLink, Equitable Development Toolkit: Community Mapping.

Race-Based Advocacy: Current REP Projects

Interracial Justice and Conflict: The New Civil Rights Movement

• Bill Ong Hing, Kevin R. Johnson, The Immigrant Rights Marches of 2006 and the Prospects for a New Civil Rights Movement, University of California, Davis Legal Studies Research Paper No. 96, 42 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. (TBD) (2007).
• Eric K. Yamamoto, Rethinking Alliances: Agency, Responsibility And Interracial Justice, 3 Asian Pac. Am. L.J. 33 (1995).

Welcome to the Race Equity Project (REP) website. We designed the REP to serve two functions. First, we hope that the REP’s effort to digest, implement, evaluate and disseminate race-based advocacy resources will make us more efficient and effective advocates. Second, we hope that you will use this site as a forum to share your knowledge on and experiences with race-based advocacy. Sharing resources is critical to maximizing our collective impact and your input and engagement will determine the success of the broader project for race equity. Lastly, the REP is growing. Visit frequently as our resources will be evolving.

Project resources are accessible via the links on the right side of this page. You can contact us by clicking on the “Contact the REP” button. The REP produces an e-newsletter to inform users about site usage techniques, recent additions to the site, and emerging race-based advocacy tools. If you would like to sign up for the e-newsletter please use the “Subscribe to the REP” link.

The REP would like to thank Brian Lawlor for his time and effort. Without his help, this site would not exist.

It has been five months since our meeting at the NLADA Substantive Law Conference in San Jose where we discussed a proposed strategy to coordinate race conscious advocacy in the legal services community. The fact that it took five months to follow up, suggests that the task will be challenging as we all respond to local pressures and demands that swallow our time.

Until we can fund and schedule a conference where we will have sufficient time to discuss and share the newly developing tools of race based advocacy, I would like each of us to begin to share those tools informally on line. Those tools may include:

• GIS mapping for race and opportunity.
• Social Cognition Theory and its implications on the “intent doctrine” and community discussions of race.
• Regionalism as an advocacy approach to leverage racial equity.
• Polling and focus groups reports that may guide our advocacy.
• Community based efforts to elevate discussions of race in communities.
• Review and share literature on racial issues.
• Tools for staff discussion of race.

Local advocates will determine the utility of each of these tools in their communities and hopefully share their experience and application with the group.