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Event summary reproduced
from The Minneapolis Foundation's Catalyst
newsletter (Winter 2007
issue)
"Where you live determines
whether you are going to be exposed to a host of models of success,
what kind of schools you will go to, and whether you’re going to have
employment opportunities,” stated Sheryll Cashin, keynote speaker at
the September Minnesota Meeting. “And in America, in 2006, where a
person lives is heavily influenced by race and
class.”
That wasn’t always the case,
Cashin reminded the audience, describing the heterogeneity of early
20th century American cities, when people of different races,
ethnicities, and incomes lived in close proximity to one another. “It
was only after seven decades of very intentional public policies that
we got to the point where separation by race and class seems like what
is
natural.”
Unfortunately, she asserts,
we continue to promote that segregation through contemporary policy
choices.
Building an integrated
society was the focus of the September Minnesota Meeting, which capped
a three-part series on racial disparities in Minnesota. Keynote speaker
Sheryll Cashin is author of The Failure of Integration: How
Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream, as well
as a professor of Law at Georgetown
University.
She introduced the topic with
some explanation as to how we got to where we are today. That
public and private policies value homogeneity over
inclusion was one of three main factors Cashin
identified as contributing to racial segregation in America. Major
racially segregating policies have included:
Local autonomy.
Zoning laws, introduced in the 1930s, perpetuate
homogenous communities.
Redlining.
The FHA underwrote mortgages only in predominantly white
neighborhoods, excluding blacks from the “largest wealth-building
program in the history of our
country.”
Interstate
highways. This federal public works program divided
thriving black, latino, and ethnic white neighborhoods, the effects of
which remain
today.
Urban
renewal. In moving people from homes to public housing
projects, the government created the modern black ghetto, in which
people live in poverty-saturated neighborhoods “where a range of
destructive behaviors are incubated.” Although uncommon, these
behaviors “loom large” in American race relations, rationalizing fear
and making integration more difficult to achieve.
Private actors.
Many realtors continue to steer people to different
neighborhoods according to their race; a national database rating ZIP
codes informs developers and retailers where and how to
invest.
Other major contributors to
our segregated society
include:
The pull of
personal preference. While Americans say in the abstract
that they want to live in integrated neighborhoods, in practice they
choose to live near people who look like
them.
Research shows members of all
racial/ethnic groups would prefer 50-50 integration with whites over a
neighborhood in which their group overwhelmingly dominates. Yet for
blacks especially that 50-50 ideal is a “rare, elusive option.” African
Americans generally have to choose between living in a virtually all
black neighborhood or one in which blacks are few. And many Black
Americans have simply grown “integration weary,” she
says.
The push of discrimination.
Despite the Fair Housing Act and other laws designed to eradicate
discrimination in housing, “there is still a lot of garden-variety,
rank discrimination,” Cashin said. She cited a study showing people of
color facing discrimination in housing, with Latino renters facing the
greatest amount of
discrimination.
However, although race
relations are no longer viewed through the “binary” dynamic of black
and white, Cashin noted, African-Americans still shoulder the heaviest
burden. “In brutal terms,” she said, Americans have “not yet come to
terms with black people in large numbers – especially when they are
poor.”
Still, Cashin states,
“individuals acting on personal preferences couldn’t create the
systemic segregation that we have in American
society.”
Why it matters
Cashin said she set out to
write a book about opportunity, but she could not identify one advance
towards equity that didn’t require integration. Segregation sets up a
society with winner and loser tracks in communities, schools – even
within schools – until everybody is competing for a shot at the
winner’s column. Meanwhile the country loses an opportunity to educate
children of color, whom Cashin called the “fastest growing resource in
American
society.”
She believes we should strive
towards “cultural dexterity” In contrast to assimilation as the path to
integration. Dexterity means that everyone contributes to our shared
culture, that white people have to make some accommodations, as well,
rather than always expecting people of color to make concessions in
order to “fit in.” Cultural dexterity means a person can walk into a
room in which everyone else is of a different race and he or she can
feel absolutely comfortable.
Dr. Cashin began her address
by acknowledging the greatest success of the civil rights movement:
that today the vast majority of Americans say they believe no one
should be discriminated in any way based upon race. However, she
observed, “we have not yet made that vision true for people in their
daily lives.”
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Listen to a webcast of
Ms. Cashin's speech on Minnesota Public Radio.
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