john a. powellExecutive Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Moritz College of Law

Lassiter Conference on Structural RacializationUK School of LawFebruary 25, 2011

Racial possibilities in the age of Obama

Structural Racialization Arrangement of structures

Public/Private?

Corporate Prerogative and race

Mind Science Challenging our biases

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Why does race continue to play such a critical role in determining societal outcomes?

Haven’t we entered a post-racial moment with the election of Barack Obama?

While significant, Obama’s victory does not erase the persistent inequalities that hinder the life chances for marginalized groups 3

Black and Latino children are much more likely than white children to attend high-poverty schools

A white man with a criminal record is three times more likely than a black man with a record to receive consideration for a job

Minority home-seekers with good credit scores steered to high-cost, sub-prime mortgages thus devastating their communities in light of the foreclosure crisis

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By prematurely proclaiming a post-racial status, we ignore the distance we have yet to travel to make this

country truly a land of equal opportunity for all, regardless of racial identity.

President Obama’s election “suggests that a sea change in race relations has already occurred”

However, his “exceptional racial background” and the fact he was elected in the midst of national crises indicates “race hasn’t been overcome so much as temporarily superseded.” These crises could worsen racial resentment

“race forms a basis for the exploitation and hoarding of material, political, and cultural resources; in turn, the same processes that facilitate racial stratification continually reconstitute race.”

5Source: Lopez, Ian Haney. Post-Racial Racism: Crime Control and Racial Stratification in the Age of Obama

We have fluidity in terms of racial identities▪ Situations affect who you are, how you identify. ▪ For example, it may not be until you’re in a

room with full of people of a different race that you become truly aware of your own race. ▪The British did not become “white” until

Africans became “black.”

• In order to notice race, society has to create this category/idea of race. After it is created, individuals can negotiate it using the social tools created by society.

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Although racial attitudes are improving, racial disparities persist on every level.

Inequity arises as disenfranchised groups are left out of the democratic process.

Source: www.cartoonstock.com

Membership, the most important good that we distribute to one another in human community (Michael Walzer)◦ Prior in importance even to freedom

◦ Citizenship, a precondition to freedom

◦ Membership, a precondition to citizenship

Distribution of membership Cost to not belong

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The cost of membership in a democratic society

Current estimate for family of four: $48,778*

▪ Over three times as many families fall below family budget thresholds as fall below the official poverty line

How far do you fall (children in extreme poverty, skyrocketing bankruptcy rates, family homelessness)?

Are all neighborhoods are neighborhoods of sustainable opportunity?

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Source: James Lin and Jared Bernstein, What we need to get by. October 29, 2008 | EPI Briefing Paper #224

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Inequality

Categorization

Emulation and

AdaptationHoarding and Exploitation

Pattern recognition and generalization

This may change over time, but the

wholestructure is highly inert

Source: Douglas Massey. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2007.

Conscious and Unconscious (i.e.

implicit bias)

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ImplicitBias

Structural Racialization

How race works today There are still practices, cultural norms and

institutional arrangements that help create and maintain (disparate) racialized outcomes

Structural racialization addresses inter-institutionalarrangements and interactions It refers to the ways in which the joint operation

of institutions produce racialized outcomes▪ In this analysis, outcomes matter more than intent

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Ongoing Racial Inequalities

Outcomes: Racial Disparities

Racial inequalities in current levels of well-being

Capacity for individual and community improvement is undermined

Current Manifestations: Social and Institutional Dynamics

Processes that maintain racial hierarchies

Racialized public policies and institutional practices

Context: The Dominant Consensus on Race

National values Contemporary culture

Adapted from the Aspen Roundtable on Community Change. “Structural Racism and Community Building.” June 2004

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…to a multi-dimensional understanding….

• Structural Inequality– Example: a Bird in a cage.

Examining one bar cannot explain why a bird cannot fly. But multiple bars, arranged in specific ways, reinforce each other and trap the bird.

• One variable can explain why differential outcomes.

• Understanding the relationships among these multiple dimensions, and how these complex intra-actions change processes• Relationships are

neither static nor discrete

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Outcomes

Social

Physical

Cultural

These structures interact in ways that produce racialized outcomes for different groups…

Racialized…

• In 1960, African-American families in poverty were 3.8 times more likely to be concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods than poor whites.

• In 2000, they were 7.3times more likely.

Spatialized…

• marginalized people of color and the very poor have been spatially isolated from opportunity via reservations, Jim Crow, Appalachian mountains, ghettos, barrios, and the culture of incarceration.

Globalized…• Economic

globalization

• Climate change

• the Credit and Foreclosure crisis

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• Less than 25% of students in Detroit finish high school

• More than 60% of the men will spend time in jail

• There may soon be no bus service in some areas

• It is difficult to attract jobs or private capital

• Not safe; very few parks

• Difficult to get fresh food

HIGH OPPORTUNITY

• The year my step daughter finished high school, 100% of the students graduated and 100% went to college

• Most will not even drive by a jail

• Free bus service

• Relatively easy to attract capital

• Very safe; great parks

• Easy to get fresh food 18

LOW OPPORTUNITY

Which community would you choose?

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How can we be sensitive to inter- and intra-group differences?

How do the ladders or pathways of opportunities differ for different people?

Every institution has built in assumptions, i.e. “stairways” are a pathway – but not for people in wheelchairs, baby strollers.

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…Some people ride the “Up” escalator to reach

opportunity

…Others have to run up the “Down” escalator to

get there

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Not only are people situated differently with regard to institutions, people are situated differently with regard to infrastructure

People are impacted by the relationships between institutions and systems…

…but people also impact these relationships and can change the structure of the system.

People are “differentially situated”

We come from different places. Illuminating people’s different and shared experiences of oppression encourages collective action with others whose experiences may be slightly different. Young’s 5 Faces of Oppression: Different

groups/people experience one or more of these faces throughout their lives Exploitation Marginalization Powerlessness Cultural Dominance Violence

23Source: Grassroots Policy Project. “Faces of Oppression.” http://www.grassrootspolicy.org/node/85

Neighborhood Segregation

School Segregation

Racial stigma, other psychological impacts

Job segregation

Impacts on community power and individual assets

Impacts on Educational Achievement

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Exposure to crime; arrest

Transportation limitations and other inequitable public services

Source: Barbara Reskin (http://faculty.washington.edu/reskin/)

Segregation impacts a number of life-opportunitiesImpacts on Health

Zoning laws prevent affordable housing development in many suburbs

Municipalities subsidize the relocation of businesses out of the city

Transportation spending favors highways, metropolitan expansion and urban sprawl

Court decisions prevent metropolitan school desegregation

School funding is tied to property taxes

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How we arrange structures matters The order of the structures The timing of the interaction between them The relationships that exist between them

We must be aware of how structures are arranged in order to fully understand social phenomena

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One cannot have a just society unless the arrangement of institutions are just

-John Rawls

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The government plays a central role in the arrangement of space and opportunities

These arrangements are not “neutral” or “natural” or “colorblind”

Social and racial inequities are geographically inscribed

There is a polarization between the rich and the poor that is directly related to the areas in which they live

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Racialized policies and structures: Promoted sprawl Concentrated subsidized housing Led to disparities between schools▪ Achievement gap

▪ Discipline rates

▪ Funding disparities

▪ Economic segregation

▪ Graduation rates

▪ Racial segregation

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30Photo source: (Madoff) AP

Today…

Institutions and structures

continue to support, not

dismantle, the status quo.

This is why we continue to

see racially inequitable

outcomes even if there is

good intent behind policies,

or an absence of racist

actors. (i.e. structural

racialization)

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A series of mutually reinforcing federal policies across multiple domains have contributed to the disparities we see today School Desegregation Homeownership/Suburbanization Urban Renewal Public Housing Transportation

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Distinction blurredExamples: Private colleges Housing as a private good

complemented by government policies GI Bill Expansion of highway system Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

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Civil Rights Act of 1875 – equal treatment in “public accommodations” Citizenship clause and membership in political

community

Overturned by Supreme Court eight years later “The wrongful act of an individual, unsupported by

any such authority, is simply a private wrong, or a crime of that individual”

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Private vs. public discrimination

Tension between addressing state action vs. de facto conditions produced by “private” decisions

35Source: CSUN Daily Sundial Newspaper

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“What the nation, through Congress, has sought to accomplish in reference to that race is, what had already been done in every state in the Union for the white race, to secure and protect rights belonging to them as freemen and citizens; nothing more. The one underlying purpose of congressional legislation has been to enable the black race to take the rank of mere citizens.”

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"The distinction between government and private action, furthermore, can be amorphous both as a historical matter and as a matter of present-day finding of fact. Laws arise from a culture and vice versa. Neither can assign to the other all responsibility for persisting injustices.”

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Misidentifying the situation, not public vs. private

Expansion of corporate prerogative

Corporate space diminishes public &private space

Corporate

Private

Public Private

Non-pubic Corporate

Domains

Natural entity theory: corporations as separate juridical entities with separate rights

Fourteenth amendment and corporate personhood

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Corporations under control of state for much of US history – serving a public function

Source: Terrence Nowicki Jr. ThisIsHistoricTimes.com

Taney Court: states’ rights, anti-elitism and denial of citizenship to blacks “provided a coherent defense of both corporations

and slavery in a rapidly democratizing union” (Austin Allen)

Corporate dominance connected to whiteness “middle-stratum identity” (Martinot)

Citizens United: expansion of corporate rights and reduction of civil rights

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Source: powell, j. and C. Watt.“Corporate Prerogative, Race, and Identity Under the Fourteenth Amendment.” Cardoza Law Review Vol. 32:3.

Capitalist Welfare State

Property Owning Democracy

John Rawls: Justice as Fairness

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CORNEL WEST: “…I don’t think President Bush individually hates black people. Hispolicies were racist in effect and consequence,and especially classist in terms of generatingmisery among poor and working people,disproportionately black and brown…And Iwould say that even about the Obamaadministration.” (Democracy Now!)

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The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of political importance: 1)the growth of democracy; 2)the growth of corporate power; and 3)the growth of propaganda as a means of

protecting corporate power against democracy (Alex Carey)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5_7Ap0gWMQ

Treasury report February 2011: “Reforming America’s Housing Finance Market”

Does not mention role of segregation in housing and credit markets in subprime crisis

Three options laid out: variations of privatization Potentially mortgage costs, down payments,

fees/costs for FHA loans Disproportionate impact on people of color and low-

income communities45

Universal Programs

Targeted Programs

Targeted Universalism

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Targeted Universalism recognizes racial disparities and the importance of eradicating them, while acknowledging their presence within a larger inequitable, institutional framework

Targeted universalism is a common framework through which to pursue justice. A model which recognizes our linked fate A model where we all grow together A model where we embrace collective

solutions

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Only 2% of emotional cognition is available to us consciously

Racial bias tends to reside in the unconscious network

Messages can be framed to speak to our unconscious

Racial attitudes operate in our “unconscious” (also called “subconscious”) mind

Usually invisible to us but significantly influences our positions on critical issues

Negative unconscious attitudes about race are called “implicit bias” or “symbolic racism.”

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How messages are

framed affects how

they are perceived.

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When scientists showed a similar sketch to people from East Africa - a culture containing few angular visual cues - the family is seen sitting under a tree. The woman is balancing an item on her head.

Westerners are accustomed to the corners and box-like shapes of architecture. They are more likely to place the family indoors and to interpret the rectangle above the woman's head as a window through which shrubbery can be seen.

Race is a social reality

While we are hardwired to categorize in-group vs. out-group, we are “softwired” for the content of those categories

Softwiring is social

Racial categories and meaning can be constantly be reconfigured

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Competence

Warmth

Low

High

Low

High

Esteemed In-Group

Despised Out-Group

Pitied Out-Group

Source: Douglas Massey. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2007.

Envied Out-Group

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Competence

Warmth

Low

High

Low

High

Esteemed: Your own group, who you identify

with

Despised: African

Americans, Undocumented

immigrants

Envied: Competent, but don’t really like them: Asians

Pity : women, elderly,

disabled

Source: Douglas Massey. Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. 2007.

Unconscious biases are reflected in institutional arrangements

Prejudice leads to outcomes, and the outcomes reinforce the stereotypes / prejudice

Ex: Females aren’t good at math.Many females don’t take math classes.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrqrkihlw-s

Our environment affects our unconscious networks

Priming activates mental associations Telling someone a scary story activates a frame of fear

Claude Steele’s “stereotype threat”: For example, tell students about to take a test that

Asian students tend to do better than whites, and the whites will perform significantly worse than if they had not been primed to think of themselves as less capable than Asians

62Source: http://www.eaop.ucla.edu/0405/Ed185%20-Spring05/Week_6_May9_2005.pdf

Experiment with 7th graders; ~50% white & 50% Black Given a list of values▪ Experimental group: Choose the values that are most

important to you and write why they are important▪ Control group: Choose the values that are the least important

to you and explain why End of semester – While Black students still did not do as

well as whites, the Black students in the experimental group showed a 40% reduction in racial achievement gap

Experiment was repeated with a group of college students and yielded a 50% reduction in the racial achievement gap

63Source: Cohen, Geoffrey L.., Julio Garcia, Nancy Apfel, and Allison Master. (2006). “Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention.” Science 313(5791): 1307-1310,

Be aware of implicit bias in your life. We are constantly being primed

Debias by presenting positive alternatives

Consider your conscious messaging & language. Affirmative action support varies based on whether it’s

presented as “assistance” or “preference”

Engage in proactive affirmative efforts – not only on the cultural level but also the structural level

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