The Ground Game: Cities and Racial Equity
On Sunday March 11th, I took the stage at SXSW to lead a discussion on how mayors are advancing racial equity in America. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Leon Andrews from the National League of Cities, and Dr. Atyia Martin, former Chief of Boston’s Office of Resilience and Racial Equity, joined me to discuss local powers, progress and stumbling blocks.
The goal: Where outcomes aren’t determined by race.
I asked our panelists to reflect on what cities and mayors are actually working toward. The ultimate goal, as Mayor Schaaf noted, is the elimination of “disparities based on race in all the measures of success.” “We, as government, need to start holding ourselves accountable to outcomes, not just policies, not just intentions. Not just does a policy look fair, but is it actually creating a fair outcome.”
We aren’t there yet, and mayors know it.
Our team at Boston University conducts an annual survey of American mayors, with the support of Citi Community Development and The Rockefeller Foundation. This year we asked mayors questions about their perceptions of racial inequality and discrimination. We shared a preview of the findings at SXSW and will release a full report with the National League of Cities later this month. Where do mayors perceive discrimination in their cities? They believe residents of color face unequal access to critical services like education, housing and healthcare, as well as job opportunities, and unequal treatment by the courts and the police.
Mayors also believe that transgender, immigrant, Black and Muslim residents face the most discrimination in their city.
What now? City leaders must be intentional about dismantling the status quo.
The panelists highlighted the importance of intentionality, both in dismantling the status quo and creating new systems and processes to inculcate inclusion and equity. Mayors need to acknowledge problems exist and understand where and how they manifest.
Cities should use data to drive decision-making, but beware the double edge.
As Mayor Schaaf noted, cities need to scrutinize data to identify bias in how they treat and serve constituents. When the City of Oakland analyzed arrest and incarceration rates for cannabis related crimes, they discovered significant disparities in the treatment of whites relative to residents of color. It was well known that white residents were running illegal lounges, but almost all marijuana related arrests were of young African-American and Latino men. In response, Oakland devised a system for cannabis business permits that sought to redress prior disparities and avoid doubly penalizing residents of color. Half of all permits will be issued to “equity applicants” including those who are lower income and were convicted of prior cannabis crimes or live in neighborhoods with disproportionately higher cannabis related arrest rates. With the California recreational cannabis market predicted to total $5.1 billion by 2019, this is no small gesture.
Yet while data can shed light on disparities, it can also help perpetuate them. Leon noted that Seattle had been relying on residents to report streetlight outages. But not every neighborhood knows about, uses or trusts 311 systems. By using citizen-generated data to identify broken streetlights, the city was overlooking outages in lower income neighborhoods that were less likely to call.
Boston is confronting similar disparities with sidewalk quality, having realized citizen reports are not the best method for identifying where to invest. Under Atyia’s leadership, Boston’s Office of Resilience and Racial Equity helped shine a spotlight on the tremendous inequities in sidewalk quality between neighborhoods. The team called for a more systematic remediation plan, which is now underway.
Mayors must also send a message that all residents matter.
In the U.S., a mayor’s remit is typically the day to day operations of a city: trash removal, sidewalk and street repair, policing. Still others have broader powers like control over schools or transit systems. All offer opportunities to advance racial equity.
But their soft powers are also essential, because that is how they shine a spotlight on inequity. How and where mayors spend their time, and whose stories and which issues they elevate are central to affecting change.
