September 24, 2015

David DodsonPresident, MDC

Opportunity: Three Dimensions, Four Faces

Today’s discussion:

• What are the dimensions of opportunity?

• What are the barriers to opportunity?

• What are the levers that can help opportunity flower for our shared wellbeing?

Detroit 1915Lillian and Norris

Upward Mobility

What does their story sayabout opportunity?

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Three Dimensions of Opportunity

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Three Dimensions of Opportunity

Barriers to BelongingOverall economic segregation index

Source: Martin Prosperity Institute

Barriers to BelongingRacial Segregation: city and neighborhood diversity indices for 100 largest U.S. cities

Source: FiveThirtyEight using data from Brown University’s American Communities Project

Barriers to BelongingPercentage of the population under the poverty lineliving in high-poverty neighborhoods

Source: The Century Foundation using U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data

Total White Black Hispanic

15.1

6.3

30.4

21.2

10.3

4.1

18.6

13.811.9

6.5

21.7

13.214.4

7.5

25.2

17.4

1990 2000 2005-2009 2009-2013

Barriers to BelongingHighest black concentration of poverty

Rank Metropolitan Area 2000

2005-2009

2009-2013

1 Syracuse, NY 43.4 48.3 65.22 Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI 17.3 41.4 57.63 Toledo, OH 18.7 43.4 54.54 Rochester, NY 34.2 43.5 51.55 Fresno, CA 42.8 28.1 51.46 Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY 30.8 31.8 46.47 Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH 26.7 36.7 45.58 Gary, IN 22.2 30.1 45.2

9Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis,

WI 38.7 41 44.8

10 Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN 38.6 41.9 42.6

Source: The Century Foundation using U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data

Source: Urban Institute and Southern Education Foundation

Barriers to BelongingConcentrated poverty and concentrated affluence in schools, 2013

Barriers to BelongingRace and the concentration of poverty in schools, 2013

Source: Urban Institute and Southern Education Foundation

Barriers to BelongingIncarceration rate for all youth, 2011

Source: The Burns Institute

Barriers to BelongingDisparity gap: incarceration rates for youth of colorand white youth, 2011

Source: The Burns Institute

Clustering and Fragmenting

• Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort: We’re increasingly living in “balkanised communities whose inhabitants find other Americans to be culturally incomprehensible.”

• Bonding, bridging, and linking capital

• Amb. James Joseph: Smaller communities of “meaning and memory”

The Consequence of Isolation

Divided communities don’t develop.

--Peter Goldmark

Divided Develop

Who gets to belong?

Where are the institutions and structures that can help society bridge the fault lines of race, ethnicity, and circumstance to a more accepting and affirming notion of “us”?

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Three Dimensions of Opportunity

The American Dream

How many of you believe that where a person starts in life shouldn’t determine where they end up?

At the root of the uncertainty lies a pervasive doubt: whether the nation can sustain the American Dream of each generation moving up and doing better than previous generations.

Complex Landscape, Common ChallengeLack of mobility: The South stands out

Source: Equality of Opportunity Project data

Stuck in PlaceAnnual growth rate of real income across the family income distribution, national

Source: Alan Krueger, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers

Upward Mobility

“Inequality would not be a problem if upward mobility were strong in America.”

--Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor

Growth and Low MobilityThe Paradox of the Metro South

Sources: Forbes, Equality of Opportunity Project, Trulia, Brookings, and U.S. Census Bureau

Forbes Best for Business Mobility Poverty

RateIncrease in

Poverty Since 2000

Raleigh, NC 1 94 12.0% 96.8%

Nashville, TN 6 78 14.0% 66.7%

Charlotte, NC 7 98 14.0% 97.4%

Dallas, TX 8 55 14.4% 64.4%

Atlanta, GA 9 96 14.5% 89.9%

Memphis, TN 84 100 19.6% 31.8%

Who gets the good jobs?Median pay gap, STEM jobs and non-STEM jobs

Source: Bloomberg Business

Income Mobility, by EducationChances of moving up or down the family income ladder

Source: The Pew Charitable Trusts

• From 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period.

• The amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents.

The Enrichment GapParental ability to invest is increasingly important

Source: Sean Reardon on Greg Dunacn and Richard Murnane research

Affluence and CompletionFamily economic status influences educational attainment

Source: New York Times graphic using Department of Education data

Who is thriving?

The opportunity to thrive is conditioned by race, place, and economic status.

Detroit 1915Lillian and Norris

Upward Mobility

• What is your family’s mobility story?

• Who put your family on the path to upward mobility?

Discuss for 5 minutes with your neighbor.

The Path to Possibility

If individual mobility rests on a combination of personal drive, deliberately supportive institutional practices, community supports, and the eradication of structural barriers, how can we make sure all of those factors are operating in the lives of the young people who start out furthest from opportunity?

• It is the systems and supports needed to boost young people to higher rungs on the ladder of economic and personal advancement.

• It includes employers, education systems, community-based organizations, policy makers, civic and neighborhood leaders, philanthropy, and young people themselves

• It engages them all to foster a common strategic vision of aims and outcomes for education and training systems

What is the Infrastructure of Opportunity?

• It takes advantage of local assets and addresses the community’s distinctive challenges

• It should be as pervasive and reliable as the physical infrastructure of roads and water lines

• How can we make it a reality regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, economic status, or neighborhood?

What is the Infrastructure of Opportunity?

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Three Dimensions of Opportunity

“Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

--Reinhold Niebuhr

Democracy and DNA

Barriers to ParticipationAfrican-American disenfranchisement rates, 2010

Source: The Sentencing Project

Barriers to ParticipationYoung-adult voting rate in presidential elections by race and ethnicity

Source: CIRCLE

A fully realized democracy requires:

• Broad and deep access to opportunity

• Structures for civic engagement and democratic participation

• A “Seventh Generation” Ethos

The Seventh Generation Ethos

“When you in sit in council for the welfare of the people, you counsel for the welfare of that seventh generation to come. They should be foremost in your mind, not even your generation, not even yourself, but those that are unborn. So that when their time comes here they may enjoy the same thing that you are enjoying now.”

--Oren Lyons

The Seventh Generation Ethos

“As early as 1598, and long before Cesar Chavez started organizing farm workers, Latinos in the Southwest formed ‘mutualistas’ and lay brotherhoods to assist members with their basic needs. Long before deTocqueville, Benjamin Franklin became so enamored of the political and civic culture of the Native Americans he met in Pennsylvania that he advised delegates to the Albany Congress in 1754 to emulate the civic habits of the Iroquois.

“Long before Martin Luther King wrote his ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ or gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, African Americans in the 19th century formed so many voluntary groups and mutual aid societies that some Southern states enacted laws banning black voluntary or charitable activity.”

--Ambassador James A. Joseph

Civic Traditions

Making Others’ Condition our Own

The opportunity to contribute can change behaviorand build community

Rosenwald Schools

How do we cultivate and encourage an ethos of generosity and engagement so that talents are used for the common good and the seventh generation?

Who contributes?

To be of use

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used.

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

--Marge Piercy

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Three Dimensions of Opportunity

307 West Main StreetDurham, NC 27701-3215

Phone: 919.381.5802Fax: 919.381.5805

www.mdcinc.org www.stateofthesouth.org

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