Title of the presentation

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Pathways Out of Poverty True Integration Through
Coalition Building and Public Solidarity john a.
powell Executive Director, Kirwan Institute for
the Study of Race and Ethnicity Williams Chair in
Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Moritz College
of Law The Ohio State University October 25, 2007
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American Narrative on Poverty

• Self sufficiency and anti-government (ownership
  society)
• Responsibility tied only to the individual
• Deserving (children/innocence) and undeserving
  poor (mostly people of color)
• Resulting in durable, persistent and racialized
  poverty

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Attitudes Toward the Poor

• Perceived causes of poverty
• Internal controllable causality (e.g., lack of
  effort)
• gt personal responsibility
• Internal uncontrollable causality (e.g., illness)
  
• gt no one is responsible
• External controllable causality (e.g., government
  policy)
• gt others are responsible
• External uncontrollable causality (e.g., bad
  luck)
• gt no one is responsible
• Perceptions regarding the poor (worthy or
  unworthy, deserving or not deserving, and moral
  or immoral) guide disparate emotional reactions
  and pro- versus anti-social behavioral responses.

Source Weiner, Bernard. When Poverty is a Moral
Failure.
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Attitudes Toward the Poor

• Why Americans hate welfare (Gilens)
• Racial attitudes toward welfare recipients as
  undeserving
• The undeserving poor are assumed to be black,
  lazy, and lacking in commitment to the work
  ethic.
• Media overrepresentation of the level of black
  welfare dependence
• Ethnic and racial fractualization (Alesina
  Glaeser)
• Racial fractualization correlated with income
  differences
• All poor are lazy racial differences
• between rich and poor facilitated
• the propagation of this view

Sources Alesina, Alberto and Glaeser, Edward L.
Fighting poverty in the US and Europe A world
of difference Gilens, Martin.
Why Americans Hate Welfare Race, Media, and the
Politics of Antipoverty Policy
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Attitudes Toward the Poor Matter

• Programs developed for addressing poverty
• Direct benefit give-away gt produces hostility
• Programs creating opportunity gt get more support
• How they think about
• themselves (the sense
• of self)

Source http//www.ibiblio.org/prism/mar98/facts.h
tml
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Individual vs. Collective Responsibility

• Poverty viewed as personal/cultural failure
• Emphasizing poverty as a result of personal or
  family failure to take advantage of opportunities
  or lack of motivation
• System Justification
• The poor deserve to be poor
• A highly racialized perspective
• Linked to the narrative of the American Dream

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Individual vs. Collective Responsibility

• Poverty viewed as structural failure
• Recognizes poverty as the result of inequitable
  access to opportunities
• A Failure of Opportunity
• The dominant frame of the left
• Current debates of the left are lacking, focusing
  more on class not race
• Ignores the fact that most structural
  arrangements producing poverty are racialized

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Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle
Class Lost Its Mind?

• Cosbys assault on the black poor for personal
  responsibility
• Dyson notes systematic/structural reasons
• Afristocracy blaming "Ghettocracy, a growing
  cultural divide within the African-American
  community
• Challenges us all black and white to confront
  the social problems that the civil rights
  movement failed to solve
• Come on, People On the Path from Victims to
  Victors by Bill Cosby Alvin F. Poussaint
• Acknowledge systematic and institutional racism
• But this cant be an excuse for individual
  irresponsibility

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Individual and Collective Responsibility

• Its not either/or but together
• Need programs that bring about change in the
  sense of self and change in responsibility
• Make an effort to have different understanding
  and then bundle things together
• Start with a few things that are in the pathway
  blocking opportunity and membership

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What do we mean by Addressing Poverty?

• What are human needs?
• Needs of persons
• Needs to maintain order and stability (Hobbes,
  Nozick)
• Need for Legitimacy gt Membership (powell)
• What is poverty?
• Income or wealth
• Freedom (Sen)
• Membership (powell)

Sources Sen, Amartya. Development as Freedom
powell, john a. The Needs of
Members in a Legitimate Democratic State
Source Klein, David G.
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Expanding our Understanding of Poverty

• Poverty (and wealth) is measured by more than
  income, but by the capability to live the life
  one can value and contribute to society, a stable
  and sustainable existence
• Poverty is the deprivation of basic capabilities,
  including health and education
• People in poverty cannot fully exercise their
  freedoms
• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999)

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What is Freedom?

• Freedoms are many and varied, and
• they complement and strengthen
• one another
• Sens Five Freedoms
• Political freedoms
• Economic facilities
• Social opportunities
• Transparency guarantees
• Protective security
• Economic development and social development are
  complementary, not competing, freedoms
• Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999)

Image Rendering of the Freedom Tower released
June 27, 2006.
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Membership in a Legitimate Democratic State

• 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

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Capability Inequalities and Needs of Members

• Individual responsibilities and capabilities are
  affected by health, gender, income, geographic
  location
• What people need to become full members of the
  society is, everything!
• We need to look not just at income inequality,
  but at inequalities in education, health care,
  housing, geographical (regional) inequalities

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Who are Members?

• And who are not real members?
• Theory of citizenship
• Race, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
• What about poor women of color?
• Separating people and isolating the poor
• Affects everybody. Everybody is on their own!
• Problems with social welfare in the US.
• Privatizing public issues (eg. healthcare, global
  warming, poverty, education, prison, etc.)

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Racialization of Poverty

• Many feel that this racialization of concentrated
  poverty has improved in recent years.
• 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 7.3 times more likely.

Fact Sheet from the Opportunity Agenda, Housing
Neighborhoods and Opportunity. http//www.opportun
ityagenda.org/site/c.mwL5KkN0LvH/b.1433711/k.B7BA/
Housing_Fact_Sheet.htm
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Cycle of Cumulative Causation

• Racism exists not in individuals.
• Race is a web, or matrix of several factors of
  disadvantage culminating, and feeding off each
  other creating a vicious cycle of cumulative
  causation.
• The structure we inhabit
• distribute material benefits and burden across
  society
• also distribute meaning
• which in turn shapes racial attitudes and
  influences the formation of racial identities

Source powell, john a. Structural Racism
Building Upon the Insights of John Calmore
(tentative title)
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The Cumulative Impacts of Racial and Opportunity
Segregation
Segregation impacts a number of life-opportunities
Adapted from figure by Barbara Reskin at
http//faculty.washington.edu/reskin/
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Programs Addressing Poverty

• Strategic mistakes of separating the poor from
  everybody else
• Programs that enjoy the most support are the ones
  targeting the non-poor (eg. social security)
• Programs targeting a particular racial group
  separate them from the other
• Not much attention paid to why whites should care
  about integration
• What about us? - poor white middle class
  reacting to social justice work
• Need programs that link the poor and the non-poor

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Targeted Universalism

• Through collective imagination, we need to define
  what the future should look like
• A New Paradigm! Targeted Universalism
• What is our alternative vision?
• A model where we all grow together
• A model where we embrace collective solutions
• This vision requires collective action and will
  require coalitions to be successful

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Integration

• Integration is often conflated with
  desegregation, assimilation and diversity
• One without the other is incomplete
• Just the universal ignores the marginal.
• Just the particular ignores connectedness.

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Integration into Opportunity

• Segregation is more than just the physical
  isolation of people
• Segregation is isolation from opportunity or
  opportunity structures
• Integration is not just about bringing in more
  people.
• Integration into opportunity

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Integration

• We are constantly making our commonality.
• It is there and not there.
• Because we are both the same and different,
  dialogue is necessary and possible.
• If we were all just the same, dialogue would not
  be necessary.
• If we were just different, dialogue would not be
  possible.
• This project is not just one of
• distributing benefit but also identity.
• It is a deeply political, practical
• and spiritual issue.

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True Integration

• Creative and respective of inter-group relations
  based on mutuality, equality and fairness
• Transformative rather than assimilative
• Transforms and enriches the mainstream
• (cf. desegregation, at best, attempts to
  assimilate minorities into the mainstream)

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Coalition building

• Move from transactional level to a deeper level
• Coalition across groups, space, ideology
• Ethics of connectedness and linked fate
• We are seeing us as disconnected.
• Structure in our society is disconnecting us (eg.
  public utility, public transportation)

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Transformative View of Race

• Strategic and transformative use of race requires
  that we show how all groups, including whites,
  are helped and harmed by our current
  institutional arrangements.
• Structural analysis enables us to understand race
  as a transformative instrument for change.

Source powell, john a. Race and Transformative
Agenda
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Milwaukee, A Snapshot

• The 7th poorest city in the Nation (U.S. Census
  2004)
• 45 of black males unemployed (CEDUWM 2006)
• The 3rd worst city for African-Americans (Black
  Enterprise 2007)

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Concentrated Poverty in Milwaukee

• In 2000, 600,000 people in Milwaukee
• 37 black, 12 Hispanic
• In 2006, 26 of Milwaukeans live below the
  poverty threshold
• 38 of African American population and 34 of
  Latino population in poverty

Source COWS (Center on Wisconsin Strategy),
Moving Outward The shifting landscape of
poverty in Milwaukee
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African American Population in the Milwaukee
Region
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The Dynamics of Opportunity in Milwaukee
Population by Race by Neighborhood Opportunity
Level

• Who is living in low opportunity communities in
  Milwaukee?
• Nearly 85 of the Milwaukee regions African
  Americans live in low and very low
  opportunity neighborhoods
• 2/3s of the regions Latinos can be found in
  these communities
• Approximately 200,000 Whites are found in low
  and very low opportunity communities
• 225,000 African Americans and 70,000 Latinos live
  in these communities as well

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• Subsidized Housing and Poverty in the Milwaukee
  Region 1998 is concentrated in higher poverty
  areas.
• Milwaukee needs approximately 28,000 units of
  housing for extremely low income families.
• (Comprehensive Housing Affordability Survey,
  HUD, 2004)

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Milwaukee Initiatives

• A Review of the Milwaukee
• Workforce Development System
• Low level of business involvement
• Separation of Workforce Development funding
  streams
• Lack of employment and training service
  coordination
• Inadequate transitional support of new workers
  and
• Meager career development opportunities

Source A Review of the Milwaukee Workforce
Development System and Recommendations for
Improvements
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Milwaukee Initiatives

• Residents Preference Program (1991 )
• Requires 25 of all hours worked on city public
  works contracts be performed by residents in poor
  areas of the city
• New Hope Project (1994 )
• Income supplement, subsidized health and child
  care, job search assistance
• Housing Trust Fund (2006 )
• Assist in the construction and rehabilitation of
  affordable housing for both for-profit and
  non-profit developers
• Need for collaborative initiatives

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Examples of Successful Programs

• Chicago, IL - Center for Working Families
• A new approach to help low-income families
• increase their earnings and income ("Earn It"),
• reduce their financial transaction costs ("Keep
  It"),
• and build wealth for themselves and their
  communities ("Grow It")
• Portland, OR
• Assign recipients to adult education, vocational
  training, or life skills classes depending on
  their skills and needs.
• An employment focus, the use of both job search
  and short-term education or training, and an
  emphasis on holding out for a good job
• Suggests a need to bundle things together

Sources A Review of the Milwaukee Workforce
Development System and Recommendations for
Improvements, 2007 Moving People
from Welfare to Work Lessons from the National
Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies, 2002
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Pathways Out of Poverty

• Think about how to serve the poor without
  isolating the poor
• Identify, test and help sustain pathways out of
  poverty
• See people move along a road to self-sufficiency
• Ensure access to meaningful opportunity is shared
  fairly, giving all children, adults, and families
  and communities a chance to live free of poverty

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Public Face of Love is Solidarity

• We are all caught up in an inescapable network
  of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
  destiny. Whatever effects one directly effects
  all indirectly.
• - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• What Are Community Values? (Video clip)

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www.KirwanInstitute.org
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Addendum

• Our current paradigm and its effects on social
  justice work
• Race and Class
• Integration vs. Desegregation (Dr. Martin Luther
  King, Jr.)

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Our Current Paradigm

• Hobbesian, isolated, radically individualistic
• Perceives individuals as autonomous-independent
  selves
• Egoistic, possessive, separate, isolated,
  rational
• Role of state protect individualism and
  individual property

Addendum
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Our Current Paradigm

• This has led to increasing isolation and fear of
  the other
• This framework creates and marginalizes the
  racialized other
• Creates false separations negates shared
  humanity
• As a result we are a nation divided, and have
  failed to achieve true democracy

Addendum
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Effects of Current Paradigm on Social Justice
Work

• Within this framework, social justice work
• Overlooks opportunities for coalition building
• Is more fragmented and isolated
• May be competitive and divisive
• Can lead to guilt or disempowerment
• Is not connected to an overarching set of shared
  values
• Lacks a cohesive and unified vision!

Addendum
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Race and Class

• From this nations inception, the race line was
  used to demarcate and patrol the divide between
  those who constituted the We in We The
  People.
• Race is a critical part of the construction of
  class-as-merit. It is this individualistic
  ideology that helps to defeat class solidarity.
• According to economists Alberto Alesina and
  Edwans Glaeser, much of the difference between
  America and European welfare systems can be
  explained by racial heterogeneity.

Addendum
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Race and Class

• Many today argue that class, not
  race, is the greatest cleavage in American
  society
• There is a fear that talking about race will take
  away from class and economic concerns
• Race and class, however, cannot be so easily
  separated

Addendum
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Race and Class

• As related sociological phenomena, race and class
  analyses are strongest when employed together
• Race and class are mutually constitutive
• Differential treatment of indentured servants and
  black slavesled to barriers in collective
  organization
• Led to racial distinctionmiddle class
  individualism and the black underclass as
  unworthy

Addendum
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Race and Class

• Race left a heavy footprint on class
• Entrenched racial divide continues today
• White face on the suburban middle class, allowed
  for stereotyping of the black welfare
  queenwhich prevented the development of a
  welfare state similar to Europe or Canada
• Racial associations made with certain
  occupationsexample of class and race interacting

Addendum
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Connecting Race and Class

• Class may be understood even less than race, but
  it is important to recognize it as equally a
  cultural and economic formation
• Transformative potential lies in realizing the
  link between race and classapply the knowledge
  of the limitations of middle-class merit thinking
  with the best scholarship on race
• A progressive agenda must account for race and
  not use class as a proxy. The most successful
  multi-racial, multi-class progressive movements
  in the United States tackled race directly

Addendum
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Integration vs. Desegregation

• The word segregation represents a system that is
  prohibitive it denies the Negro equal access to
  schools, parks, restaurants, libraries and the
  like. Desegregation is eliminative and negative,
  for it simply removes these legal and social
  prohibitions.
• Integration is creative, and is therefore more
  profound and far-reaching than desegregation.
  Integration is the positive acceptance of
  desegregation and the welcomed participation of
  Negroes into the total range of human
  activities.
• Integration is genuine intergroup, interpersonal
  doing. Desegregation then, rightly, is only a
  short-range goal. Integration is the ultimate
  goal of our national community.

Addendum
Source Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Ethical
Demands of Integration. December 27, 1962.