It’s hard to see racism when you’re White

Posted on February 23, 2012 by

“It’s hard to see racism when you’re White,” the billboards erected by Duluth’s Un-Fair Campaign allege.   Enraged Whites, according to an article in the Star Tribune, have interpreted this as anti-White, as an insult to their intelligence.  “They’re saying we’re stupid.”

It’s hard to see racism when you’re White is no doubt true, but not because Whites are stupid.  It’s because,  just as fish will be the last to discover water, Whites are so enmeshed in the systems we created that we can’t see how it works in our favor.  We’re just too close.

Society’s systems and markets for housing, finance, employment, law enforcement, economic development, etc are riddled with privileges that favor Whites as a group over other groups, on average, as virtually every study in these arenas shows.  These differences in the ground-rules are barriers to more equitable outcomes, and form a pattern of institutional racism that is typically unseen and unacknowledged by Whites, as the billboards point out, because we’re just too close.

Racism isn’t only about hateful attitudes, or intelligence, it’s about the unfair performance of our society’s systems.  Exposing the privileges enjoyed by Whites – not all Whites, of course, but on average — is a challenge in the face of emotional, angry resistance by Whites who refuse to look or listen.

Of course lingering in the land of anger and resentment is counter-productive. Anti-racism workshops or white privilege workshops can begin to open minds and hearts, but only if minds and hearts are willing to open.

What else can be done?  If institutional barriers to fairness is the problem in our systems of economic development, justice, school-to-life pathways, etc., then how about some fair-minded folk coming together to focus some creative energy on the institutional barriers themselves – forget the feelings — and promote some fixes?  That seems more productive than provoking people (though some say, with justification, you have to provoke some people first to rouse them from slumber, get their attention, and inspire them to act).

Pushing for change in these systems will require pressure from outside and leadership from inside these institutions.  Also needed is community leadership, some good ideas for improving policy and practice that could productively address the equity issues, perhaps one barrier at a time in one arena at a time.  See my two most recent posts, here and here.

This in turn requires sustained energy, leadership, and resources.  The Monday morning evaluation discussions should focus on “Are we making progress in addressing this particular equity issue?”   Participants should come prepared to discuss, “Are we getting to know a promising leverage point — the just-right tweak to the policies and practices that determine how decisions get made?” “Do we have the just-right partners to move these changes along,” and “Will our people understand how this is a win-win solution?”

Philanthropy, in the form of precisely-targeted gifts to the right organizations, can support these activities.

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Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / February 23, 2012 / JustPhilanthropy.org

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Does unfair discrimination really exist?

Posted on February 13, 2012 by

A reader writes in response to my last post: “I have great difficulty to believe there are legal impediments in the area of discrimination. I used to live in a fully integrated neighborhood in Chevy Chase near DC, where everybody who could afford to live there was able to move in without the slightest impediment. I also have difficulty understanding the connection with philanthropy. Maybe the author could clarify the connection.” 

Truthfully, there are an amazing number of legal impediments “in the area of discrimination.”   Take housing — while it’s possible that a person of color, let’s say African-American, who has found the home he/she wants to buy and who has the full purchase price in hand may be able to buy without legal impediment, this situation is far from typical.

Studies consistently show that African-Americans looking for a home are steered away by realtors from largely White neighborhoods into predominantly Black neighborhoods, yet this is illegal.  Studies also show that African-Americans are more frequently denied mortgages or given mortgages with more onerous terms even when they present the same qualifications as Whites, and this is illegal too.

The recent mortgage foreclosure crisis has revealed other problems.  African-Americans are faced with more predatory loan practices, and African-Americans at risk of defaulting on their mortgage are less frequently helped and therefore pushed into default than Whites in the same predicament.   The rental market shows additional problems of discrimination, with disproportionate harassment by landlords leading to eviction.

It’s very common for people to think that such problems don’t happen in their community, even when the data (and other people’s experience) show otherwise.  While the efforts by ERASE Racism reported in my post are limited to discrimination in one region of New York (and who thinks such problems exist on Long Island, of all places?!), these same problems of lax enforcement of fair housing laws are found virtually everywhere.

Here is the link to Montgomery County’s (where Chevy Chase is located) fair housing enforcement efforts, and here, for the sake of comparison, is New Orleans.  For more on fair housing enforcement and advocacy see here and here.

It has taken the efforts of advocacy organizations such as ERASE Racism to insist on better rules and more effective law enforcement.  Every state and city has such advocacy efforts, which are typically non-profit organizations funded largely by philanthropy, from individual donors to local and national foundations, on web pages like this.

The reality of unfair housing discrimination even after it was made illegal shows the persistence of the problem.  Housing discrimination is an arena like others where perhaps well-meaning people who don’t think of themselves as racist nevertheless benefit from a system that produces results that favor Whites over others.  I’m not suggesting such people are racist, but that the (housing and finance) systems are racist; this is referred to as institutional or structural racism.  Worsening the problem is that solutions that ignore race in favor of income, class, poverty, or opportunity are inadequate for erasing the racism that remains.

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Posted by Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / February 13, 2012

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A pointed attack on inequity

Posted on February 6, 2012 by

“Throughout the history of the United States, public officials have used the rule of law to deny equal opportunities to African Americans.”

Strong language, almost shocking in its clarity.  It’s how Elaine Gross of ERASE Racism begins her January “Message from the President.”

ERASE Racism is a regional organization (based in Nassau County on Long Island, NY) that leads public policy advocacy campaigns to promote racial equity in areas such as housing, community development, public school education and public health.

Its M.O. is to work directly against the formal, legalized barriers to equity and the disparate impacts of seemingly benign policies and actions.  If public officials have used the rule of law to deny equal opportunities to African Americans, as her introductory statement charges, one must direct efforts to re-design the rules of law to be more equitable.  Sometimes the problem is badly conceived law, other times it’s badly implemented law enforcement, but the two together have led to wide disparities in housing, community development, public school education, and public health.

Working with data and the power of persuasion, “we expose forms of racial discrimination and advocate for laws and policies that help eliminate racial disparities,”  Ms. Gross says.

Three important victories:

Through its participation in a governor-appointed Regional Economic Development Council, ERASE Racism was a leader in  inserting policy language that “increases the diversity of Long Island housing stock by producing affordable non-age restricted rental housing, affirmatively marketed, and without residency requirements.”

Its research report, “Long Island Fair Housing: A State of Inequity,” along with a press conference and coverage from Newsday, Long Island’s daily newspaper, educated a largely-surprised Long Island audience on the extent of housing segregation throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties.  Momentum was created and co-operation gained  from Nassau county leadership at the highest levels, resulting in  new “fair housing” laws that provide an administrative enforcement system and strong civil penalties for violations.

In marking the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking Supreme Court school desegregation case, ERASE Racism brought together local colleges and universities, developed a conference and monograph, “Brown v. Board of Education: The Unfinished Agenda,” which attracted over 600 people.  It increasingly engages those in the region about the need for  structural changes in the public education system.  One current project: developing an index to monitor disparities on the input side of public education, such as disparate college readiness curriculum, disparate teacher quality, and disparate levels of poverty, all of which in turn correlate with disparate student outcomes.

In discussing these with me, Ms. Gross concluded with these important lessons. “It’s very easy to miss the mark in addressing structural impediments to equity if one is not looking very specifically at race.  One can substitute the language of economic disparities, or talk of the benefits of diversity, but one still has to look at the racial equity impact of policy decisions.  And in doing that one has to be straightforward and persistent.  It’s not only the work that gets you into headlines that’s important, it’s laying the groundwork, building the relationships, connecting with people who can do the heavy lifting that’s important.  And having funders that recognize the value of these steps.”

February 3, 2012 / Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D.

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Walking the Talk

Posted on January 16, 2012 by

It’s a rare foundation that demonstrates the value of its grantmaking, its leadership role, and its values.

But that’s what the Duluth-Superior Area Community Foundation did.  Its motivation to make evident the benefits of its work lay in its own convictions:

  1. that discretionary grantmaking can be powerful, especially if pursued through five fields of interest in which the nonprofit communities themselves get to define and promote their own goals.
  2. that the CF’s  core values of Generosity, Inclusiveness and Engagement are excellent values to promote through the discretionary funds and leadership role of a regional community foundation.
  3. that development of more discretionary funds is in the community’s best interest and therefore a priority of the community foundation.

DSACF hired us, the Effective Communities Project, to address these evaluation opportunities, which we did through a series of focus groups to nominate the primary qualities of “benefit” experienced by recipient organizations, followed by an on-line survey of these recipients to estimate the extent of these particular benefits.

It worked out well.  Almost all recipients of grants from discretionary funds were included in the project.  They certainly got the message that the CF cares, that it listens, that it wants to learn, and that it sees itself as partner in the quest to legitimize and secure  discretionary funds that benefit the region.   Through this evaluation inquiry the CF could  show its colors and hear well-expressed views of what community benefit looks like in its region.   The focus groups in particular became a series of organizational learning events, with sharing across organizational boundaries, and highlighting themes around which the CF can communicate its value.

Another thing.  As DSACF’s vision statement makes clear, the values of Generosity, Inclusion and Engagement are important ones for the region.   Since we already had grantees’ attention, staff and board wanted us to check out how well these key values are playing out and being influential.  Here, too, it became clear that it was  beneficial simply having the discussion about what generosity, inclusion, and engagement even look like at a community or organizational level.  One could easily say these discussions themselves manifest generosity, inclusion, and engagement!

Several lessons for discretionary fund development became clear as well.  The stories of accomplishment told by focus group participants make very clear the value of discretionary grants.  From these stories Effective Communities Project could present specifics, themes, and numbers – which all make great talking points to any prospective donor.

In addition to these immediate benefits, which (BTW, for those evaluators present) flow directly from the process of this inquiry, came a number of suggestions for beefing up the CF’s grantmaking policies and practices. Completed in October, the report of findings and suggestions  are being studied and discussed by staff, and then committee, and then full board – and then a larger public.

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Steven E. Mayer, Ph.D. / January 16, 2012

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Can philanthropy create greater racial equity and social justice?

Posted on November 14, 2011 by

Good question.  And what do “success” and “progress” look like?   These are two questions we at Effective Communities pursued over five years, with support from the Ford Foundation.

Pathways to Progress: Focusing Philanthropy on Racial Equity and Social Justice (pdf) is the culmination of this work, drawing lessons from Ford’s portfolio of grants, “Community Philanthropy and Racial Equity in the American South.”

Formerly a website and now a downloadable document, “Pathways to Progress” presents broad strategies by which progress gets made in social change efforts using philanthropic resources.   We think it has application to addressing a variety of inequities, not only those framed in racial terms.

The analysis is based on reflective conversations conducted by our team (including Betty Emarita and Dr. Vanessa Stephens) with nearly 100 philanthropic organizations operating in both African American and White American settings.  We grounded our inquiry in the ultimate goal of closing “gaps” or “disparities”– those long-standing differences in group averages that indicate inequitable or unfair public systems and private market performance – and the challenge to philanthropy to help in that work.

What do philanthropic organizations do to close such gaps?  We present six pathways to progress that summarize how philanthropic resources are used with the intent, ultimately, of creating improvements to the benefits or outcomes along more equitable lines.   The six pathways:

  1. Preparing the organization to address tough issues like social justice and racial equity
  2. Building trust – talking safely and listening productively to difficulties and opportunities
  3. Advancing solutions that stand to close disparities
  4. Strengthening relationships, networks, and leadership
  5. Increasing resources that can be deployed to address disparities and gaps
  6. Combining the above to move the needles that measure system performance

The six pathways are not intended to be undertaken serially.  Rather, they represent interconnected strands that combine and recombine at different points, as with DNA, to produce a level of effort that moves those needles or metrics indicating the state of our systems.  If there’s not much interconnection of efforts, real change is unlikely to happen.

For each of the six pathways, we present a set of promising practices drawing on examples from the field as well as links to practitioner organizations.  We also include benchmarks by which initiatives to reduce inequity can be measured as well as links to short essays and tools allowing you to go deeper on key topics, including papers written by our team.

The answer to our opening question is “Yes, philanthropy can help.”  If only the piecemeal or independent efforts that currently dot the landscape could be strung together more intentionally to create more powerful efforts that create collective impact – impact that actually moves the needles indicating more equitable system and market performance –we’d see real progress, and much more effective use of philanthropic resources.

Using the Pathways as the backdrop or lens for creating meaningful strategy – making grants that collectively produce efforts with real power behind them — could make a big difference.    Some of this thinking is elaborated in Wanted: Better Evaluation Practices for Better Philanthropy.

More impactful philanthropy requires a style different from the prevailing one, which involves piecemeal, independent, and scattered efforts.   Our communities need sustained, change-focused efforts that engage a variety of essential players pushing together against the creaky mechanisms that maintain the status quo.  My hope is that foundations are open to inviting and receiving such proposals.

You can download “Pathways to Progress” here.

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Steven E. Mayer / November 14, 2011

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Evaluating “Occupy Wall Street”

Posted on October 27, 2011 by

Like many, I’m intrigued by this Occupy Wall Street movement.  And why not?  It purports to voice both the pain and the interests of the 99% of Americans who are harmed by the richest 1%.  Disclosure: I’m not one of the 1%.   Who are the 99%?  By definition, it includes almost all of us, so in this post I’ll be saying Us and We in addition to “the 99%,” just to honor their basic premise.  And OWS intends, it seems, to put pressure on those in positions of influence to fix the systems that have created these disparities that have damaged our society.

As this blog  is active at the confluence of philanthropy, justice, and evaluation, it would seem the OWS movement is fair game for discussion.  Though OWS has allegedly fuzzy goals and no apparent management structure as traditionally understood, does that mean it can’t be evaluated?   No.

In the spirit of advancing the state of the art of evaluating social change movements (a very undeveloped art at this point), I would put forward three criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of this particular movement at this particular point in time.  I base these solely on my own understanding of OWS as gleaned from the media and reading the signs, and not any insider knowledge.  

1) Growing recognition and ownership of OWS’ message.  Job One of OWS seems to be to help “the 99%” recognize the ways we’ve been abused by The System, and to be in touch with our outrage enough to demand changes in the ways The System works.  An evaluation question is, then, Is there growing recognition that the issues OWS is talking about relates to each of us, as members of the 99%?  Do I know the list of particular abuses OWS says we have experienced at the hands of the 1%?  Some, but not clearly.  And do I share in the feeling of unfairness that such abuse creates?  Yes, but I’m not sure I know how to express my outrage appropriately or productively.  So, OWS has some work to do, if my own data points are illustrative.  Carefully worded surveys and focus group discussions should provide evidence of how well OWS’ message has penetrated the hearts and minds of those it intends to speak for.

2) Growing support of the movement.   Support of the movement can be measured in many ways, not just the obvious one of crowd size (which may even be the least valid indicator of OWS success).  Evidence that could be gleaned from well-crafted surveys or polls: Numbers of people listening with an intent to understand; numbers of people identifying with intent of OWS, and cheering it on; numbers of people supporting participants with food, shelter, money, etc; numbers of people passing on the messages of OWS to others; growing access to media of various types and to people, institutions, or networks of influence.  Measuring a “groundswell of support” is an underdeveloped art, but we all know such a groundswell when we feel it.

3) Growing influence of the movement.  It may not be realistic to expect OWS, as a protest movement, to produce specific proposals or plans for fixing the systems.  Fixing the systems is more the job of people who own and keep the systems.  At this point, such people haven’t felt the desirability of moving ahead with such a change agenda.  OWS could be evaluated, then, on how well it makes its grievances known such that those with influence in policy setting circles take constructive action that closes the alleged systemic disparities at the heart of OWS’ message.  At this point, the media have provided a good deal of coverage of this movement.   Other signs of progress:  the conversation has changed, not just in the media but also at café gatherings, tailgating events, and cocktail parties.  As for influence that goes beyond talk into the realms where policy and practice can change, OWS hasn’t succeeded, to my knowledge,  much beyond head-scratching by those in charge, who ask themselves bemusedly, “What do these people want?”

In writing this blog, I find myself giving OWS passing grades so far, and recommending that greater effectiveness will come when OWS pushes out on the above three criteria.  The three sort of cascade, the first enabling the second, which enables the third.  The first is key, and so far underdeveloped, in my opinion.  Until there’s greater movement on all three fronts, OWS is little more than a consciousness-raising event.  Which isn’t all ineffectual…

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Steven E. Mayer / Effective Communities Project / October 27, 2011

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Too complicated for the average grant maker?

Posted on September 29, 2011 by

A reader suggests my Mittenthal principle is perhaps too complicated for the average grant maker, or the average nonprofit applicant.  I don’t think so.  True, it asks the applicant to focus on two things: on how best to deliver a valuable service to its constituents, and also on how to ratchet up the capabilities of its organization at the same time.  Developing these simultaneously actually saves both the applicant and the grantmaker time and energy, and allows it to put the organization on a firmer footing.

Consider a charity that provides hot meals.  Maybe it could design a project that not only provides hot meals but also, in the process of developing this project, allows it to create stronger connections with local food sources it didn’t have before, that can be drawn on in the future.  Or maybe it could be done in ways that give it another card to play in its communications and fund-raising efforts, or its board development efforts.  These “outcomes” strengthen the organization above and beyond what a simple grant to provide hot meals in its usual way achieves.

Or consider an advocacy organization that wants to grade its state legislature’s work – creating a legislative report card while at the same time using the grant to train legislative aides, to attract new donors who care about legislative issues, and to create stronger advocacy efforts.  Such a grant yields much greater benefit per charitable dollar spent.

The Mittenthal principle encourages grantmakers to coax multiple benefits from their grants and grantees, and helps grow the organizational capacities of the nonprofits  it cares about.

A project that delivers something important can be designed to strengthen at least one of these important organizational capacities:

  • Increasing board and/or staff skills
  • Creating efficiencies in program or financial administration
  • Raising financial or political capital
  • Strengthening connections with allied organizations or agencies
  • Communications with key stakeholders
  • Positioning and marketing the organization

Maybe we could host a competition, the next version of Effective Communities Project‘s  Effies (TM) Award for Effective Philanthropic Practice.  We could award prizes to organizations that maximize organizational gains from a single grant.  The most organizational strengthening from a project grant gets first prize.  If someone would step up with prize money, we could award more than just publicity to notable efforts.

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