Hidden Truths

  Listen to Anne Price and Darrick Hamilton dissect the myths and misperceptions regarding the racial wealth gap and discuss potential policy solutions for addressing racial economic inequity. For this episode of Hidden Truths, Insight Center President Anne Price welcomed Darrick Hamilton, stratification economist and professor of economics and urban policy at the New School for Social Research, to take a hard look at the path, pitfalls, and way forward for efforts to close the racial wealth gap. Delving into the key drivers of racial economic disparities, Anne and Darrick discussed public policy, intergenerational wealth transfer, the changing nature of work, and how prevailing narratives draw attention away from the structural factors behind racial wealth differences. They also considered bold policy ideas like a Federal Job Guarantee, baby bonds, an economic bill of rights, and other proposals that could foster systemic change for racial economic equity. “It is a moral imperative for us to try to facilitate a society that allows all individuals to have the capacity to build up their economic security and also to define what is important to them,” said Darrick. To listen to the full discussion, use the audio player above or subscribe to the Hidden Truths podcast on iTunes. Click here to learn more about Darrick Hamilton’s research, including his joint work on baby bonds and a Federal Job Guarantee with William Darity Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Click here to read the June 2017 research brief, Returning to the Promise of Full Employment: A Federal Job Guarantee in the United States, co-authored by Darrick Hamilton of The New School for Social Research, William Darity, Jr. and Mark Paul of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, and Anne E. Price of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development. Click here to read Insight Center President Anne Price’s related post, Where We Went Wrong with the Racial Wealth Gap.

  Listen to Jhumpa Bhattacharya and Aleah Rosario discuss the CalSAC Leadership Development Institute and the value of diversifying leadership to support and advance communities of color. Aleah Rosario is the Director of Capacity Building Programs at the California School-Age Consortium (CalSAC), where she supports professionals and organizations in providing quality and affordable out-of-school time programs. She has also served CalSAC as an endorsed trainer, project leader, and chapter leader, and she is a graduate of CalSAC’s Leadership Development Institute (LDI) for Emerging Leaders of Color. The mission of LDI is to equip emerging leaders of color in the early education and out-of-school time field with the training and experience they need to advance into higher leadership positions within their organization. This field includes educational programs like expanded learning, after-school programs, child care, early learning programs, and summer programs. LDI hopes to create more responsive programs, policies, and services that reflect the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the young people who attend these programs. Established in 2012, LDI specifically works to support and strengthen leadership capacity and opportunities for people of color in order to address the stark disparity in racial and ethnic representation at executive levels in their field and the greater social sector. “We see, across the nonprofit field of the United States, there is a leadership gap,” shares Rosario. “I can count, often times on one hand, the number of people in these positions that are people of color. Only 16% of nonprofit executive leadership positions are held by people of color and only 14% of nonprofit boards are made up of people of color.” Rosario and her colleagues at CalSAC know firsthand the value and benefits of diversifying leadership to better reflect, connect with, and support communities and constituencies. “We know that the folks who are most likely to be recipients of these services are mostly people of color,” explained Rosario. “Here’s our huge opportunity – diversify the field and leadership within these programs. The people who are working in these programs, serving the children and families who attend these programs, often times represent the students. They all live and work in the same community.” LDI hopes to empower its graduates to diversify the broader workforce and both support and inspire younger generations with leaders who look like them and share similar backgrounds and experiences. “[As leaders] we’re making decisions that really impact the resources of their program, the policies that impact how their programs are run,” said Rosario. “If we’re not seeing the representation of the people that we’re serving in these decision-making processes…are we really serving the young people in the ways they need to be served?” CalSAC worked closely with LeaderSpring to create the curriculum for the multifaceted program LDI provides. A key component of the program’s training helps participants understand the larger systemic forces behind the racial and economic inequities. “We can’t create these trainings and opportunities in a vacuum; we need to collaborate and understand how they [power and oppression] play out in people’s lives and working experiences,” explained Rosario. “In order to combat the discrimination gap and challenge our current systems, we must understand power, privilege, and oppression. This is just as important as understanding the difficult leadership and ma...

  Listen to Jhumpa Bhattacharya and Alicia Walters discuss Echoing Ida and its work to amplify the voices and hidden truths of Black women and non-binary people.  Alicia Walters is the co-founder of Echoing Ida, a national program of Forward Together, that helps amplify the voices of Black women and non-binary people. Inspired by the work of civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells, Walters began Echoing Ida in 2012 to position Black women in media as the experts they are. “In many ways, Black women were at the bottom of the heap – when it came to health, when it came to wealth,” said Walters as she described how the project came about. “And when you turned on the TV or listened to the radio we weren’t being called upon as experts in our own lives.” Echoing Ida teaches Black women how to hone in on their lived experiences and expertise to become change makers and go-to thought leaders. Echoing Ida writers, or Idas, draw on their distinctive perspectives to provide effective and trusted analysis on issues impacting their communities. “We know as Black women and non-binary writers we come from a really strong legacy of truth tellers, of freedom fighters, who busted open and exposed issues like Ida B. Wells did with lynching,” said Walters. “We wanted to honor that legacy and also show that it’s not just a legacy, it’s living…There are those of us who continue in this work and are committed to being truth tellers for our communities.” Fueled by its growing network of more than 25 writers, Echoing Ida has published over 275 articles through more than 65 media outlets across the country. Idas not only publish articles, analysis, and anecdotes; they also present at conferences and provide trainings to other organizations to spread the mission and spirit of truth telling across diverse groups and communities. “This isn’t about exclusivity,” says Walters. “This is about making sure that this legacy is embodied by as many people as possible – of every race, of every gender – to be exposing these hidden truths.” Digging into the root causes of inequity in the U.S., Walters discussed how many public policies, from education to welfare reform, policing, and sentencing, are based in anti-Black racism and efforts to keep Black communities poor, undereducated, and repressed. By giving voice to these and other vulnerable communities, Idas, and others like them, can not only expose these hidden motives and mechanisms of power – they can identify solutions that serve their communities as well as the common good. “We miss so much of the story and so much of the solution…when we exclude folks who really live at this intersection of race, gender, income, economic status, immigration status – when we miss those intersections, we miss very real communities that are deeply impacted,” said Walters. “When the solutions come from those places, they actually benefit everyone. We often say when Black people win, everybody wins. And winning is not in terms of this scarcity model. It’s really in terms of what does it take for those who society deems to be at the bottom to actually thrive? What does it mean when Black trans women thrive? What does that open up for everyone else?” Rather than excluding or marginalizing certain groups socially and economically, communities that draw on their full resources through inclusivity, equal opportunity, and investment can become centers of prosperity rather than struggle. Empowering the hidden voices in these communities to share their truths and expertise can be the first step to actual...

  Listen to Anne Price and David Pate discuss his research on low-income Black men, toxic stress, and the social welfare system. David Pate, an Associate Professor at the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, is an expert on low-income Black men, fatherhood, and child support debt. David researches the challenges Black men face in the social welfare system and how they make ends meet. Most recently, Pate is examining the impact of  “toxic stress” on Black men. This stress results from early traumatic experiences or life changing events that have a lasting, negative impact throughout adulthood. “You’re walking around with your past childhood experiences that never got attended to as an adult,” explains Pate. As part of his research, Pate interviewed 200 Black men and examined their physical and mental health, access to health care, adverse childhood experiences, and other factors. After the interviews were conducted, he analyzed their profiles in respect to ten conventional components of adverse childhood experiences that contribute to toxic stress; five components relate to issues of child abuse and neglect and five pertain to family dysfunction. “If a man has four or more components present, they are more at risk for incarceration, low employment, and often times have a harder time maintaining a stable life. We are also seeing a direct correlation between these ten components and stress when it comes to paying child support.” Based on this research, Pate describes how existing public policies do not address the root challenges that these men face – the inequalities they were born into, their often traumatic experiences as children and teens, and the discrimination, oppression, and other challenges that compound these factors and greatly hinder their social and economic well-being as adults. For example, David explained how “our current social welfare policies only support the primary caretaker of the child, which makes it difficult for the father to really support their child.” Many of the men that were interviewed shared their desire to financially support their families and be the breadwinner. However, most are making less than $12,000 and cannot pay the monthly or weekly child support payments. The resulting fines, debt, and other sanctions they face for their inability to pay only exacerbate their problems, without actually helping the mother and child. “Often times the mother will be needed to support not only their child, but the father of her children too. Punishing the father doesn’t help the family, mother of their children, or generations to come.” Pate also shared a story that highlights the discrimination within our current social welfare system and what he referred to as “state sanctioned violence” that can further trigger toxic stress: “A Black man wanted to accompany the mother of his unborn child to her prenatal visit. However, due to the policies that are in currently in place, the mother’s transportation to the appointment was paid for, but not the father’s. Thus, the father had to walk to the prenatal visit… What message are we sending to fathers who are poor? We want you involved with your child, but we’re not going to support you? This doesn’t make rational sense.” Currently, in the U.S., Black males face a disproportionately high unemployment rate. “We as a country haven’t done really well to provide a safety net for Black men and women,” explained Pate. “The U.S. tells men ‘Go out and get a job.’ But in reality, when these men do go and look for jobs in their community, they may have to compete with over 400 other men looking for that same job.” In considering ways to address these issues,

  Listen to Jhumpa Bhattacharya and Jahmil Lacey discuss TRAPMedicine, a community-driven public health initiative designed to create accessible pathways to health literacy, services, and care. Jahmil Lacey, a public health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, is working to address health disparities among African American men in underserved locations around the Bay Area. A team of physicians, researchers, public health advocates, and community organizations have all come together to launch a new health initiative that cares for people, not profits. Lacey’s effort is called TRAPMedicine, which leverages the cultural capital of barbershops as an upstream strategy for addressing disparities in chronic disease and mental health among African American men and boys. “Culture and trust are the two pillars of this initiative and what we need to focus on to achieve equity,” says Lacey. From his previous experiences managing school-based health centers and running high school youth programs, he has learned that in order to see sustainable improvements the community must have trust in your understanding of their culture and, most importantly, in you. Understanding that men and their barber have a deep bond, Lacey plans to launch this initiative in barber shops across the Bay Area. “If a Black man trusts you with his hair line, they will trust you with their health,” chuckles Lacey. “I’ve always found [the barber shop] to be a unique, safe space for men to talk about everything, from the Warriors to safe sex.”   TRAPMedicine was designed to close the gap between the patient and the health care provider, with the barber acting as a convenor. “We’re going to focus on screening for conditions that we know are prevalent among black men – diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, and mental health.” Lacey hopes to provide not only upfront care and screenings but, most importantly, follow-up care and information to those who need it most. Lacey believes that “this is where you can lose trust – by not offering follow-up appointments or not providing more information later on to those in need.” On December 31, 2016, TRAPMedicine will officially launch the pilot program at Legends Barber Shop in East Oakland. On this day, members of the community can receive free health screenings from 10am to 4pm. The barber shop will also offer free haircuts for people who participate in the screenings. Food will be provided. The group plans to provide various support groups to Bay Area barber shops to further engage community members in nonjudgmental conversations. “People are more likely to be influenced by their peers than by a doctor,” explains Lacey. By operating outside the walls of a hospital, TRAPMedicine will encourage men of color to build a community around health. In these ways, Lacey’s initiative seeks to not only address health disparities, but the underlying economic inequities that give rise to them. “It’s stressful to be poor. This disease creates disease,” says Lacey. “Broadly speaking, I hope we can create and develop safe spaces for men to support each other, to share information about employment, mental health, manhood, and to ultimately increase health literacy in these communities.” TRAPMedicine is looking for volunteers who have experience in the medical field or public health research, and who have experience working with people of color. If you would like to learn more or get involved, email Jahmil Lacey at jahmil.lacey@gmail.com or trapmedicine@gmail.com. To stay-up-to-date about this initiative, you can follow TRAPMedicine on Facebook and Instagram.