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March 24, 2006
Response to "Why Racial Disparities Matter" (Minnesota Journal, Facts Unfiltered, Jan/Feb 2006)
Kenneth Ford, a long-time Citizens League member, submitted this commentary on our recent Facts Unfiltered piece "Why Racial Disparities Matter." You can find the original piece in the January-February 2006 edition of the Minnesota Journal.
Does This Fact Matter?
“Why Racial Disparities Matter” heads the first “Facts Unfiltered,” (Journal, Jan/Feb). Why indeed? It’s a question that has haunted me for years, especially every time my city planning work required compilation and publication of demographic information. The MN Journal’s unfiltered fact gave me no clue to an answer. Do we create “minorities” by defining them? Does it matter only because we say it does by our tabulation? Are we thus contributing to the problems we’d like to think we are addressing?
There are African Americans who confront their deep and distinctive heritage of discrimination and its cumulative impact on their relationships and opportunities in our culture daily. There are refugees from the chaos of war-torn Laos with a strong cultural base in the Twin Cities, a cultural history and challenges for the most part quite different from those of African Americans. There are Native Americans with their unique histories and cultural realities. There are Mexicans with a strong community base, long history in our cities and issues related to growth and discrimination; there are Vietnamese and Chinese and ...
Within each group there is some variety of unemployment, poverty, unhealthy cultural patterns for young people alongside “successful” leadership, strong community, courageous achievement and magnificent cultural contribution to our diverse society. (As there is too some extent in any of the minorities—more blurred now to be sure—that fall under the big abstraction of “Caucasian,” the implied “majority.”) Discrimination in its many forms is broadly shared within these groups. But what help is it to any of them, to any of us interested in policies that might do some good, to hold up this looming abstraction of a growing “minority” population? Such a label of convenience, it seems to me, is an insult to any cultural group and to any individual within them. However well meaning, it perpetuates a subtle sense of threat and helps us avoid the complex realities.
The two population pyramids tell me that the group of minorities called “minorities,” a variety of denser skin tones, is going to be growing more than the group of minorities that make up the implied “majority,” a variety of lighter skin tones. Does that matter? What if we were simply to decide that this isn’t useful anymore; that Mexicans and Norwegians among us have aspects of cultural heritage that are significant and some that no longer are; that problems shared across cultural and ethnic divisions need to be more accurately delineated; that discrimination takes many forms besides skin color and needs to be addressed in real terms; that we have never come to terms with our African American or Native American or Latino (or…) histories and never will by lumping them as “minorities?”
Others in policy work say to my question that we need to know what’s going on so we can direct resources in a helpful way. No doubt, if our policy is going to be sensitive to the cultural realities faced by the Somali population in the Twin Cities, it is helpful to have good information on the numbers and the trend for the Somali population in the Twin Cities (though even at this level, we know that our categories help desensitize us to the differing human realities they encompass). But “minorities?” When the statistics are compiled after each census and we take a new look at our composition--poverty, education, race and so forth--my hunch has been that “growing minorities,” or even “increasing racial disparity” reads at a subtle level “increasing social problem.” For much of the span of my career, it has meant, particularly, “increasing urban problem.” And that, perhaps, has in itself been harmful discrimination.
In the end, the filters I apply to this “fact” suggest that it is time to expunge such a category from our tabulation and our dialogue. I’d be happy to learn more about why it matters, and I hope we’ll carefully consider that it may not.
Kenneth Ford
Posted by Victoria Ford at 03:39 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2006
Citizens League Board Member Stan Donnelly recovering from car accident
Citizens League Board Member Stan Donnelly is in the hospital recovering from a car accident. His family has set up a website where friends can check up on his progress and send Stan their thoughts.
Click here and type "standonnelly" under "site name" to go to Stan's site.
Posted by Victoria Ford at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2006
Citizens League launches new Immigration & Higher Education Study Committee
The Citizens League is proud to announce our upcoming Study Committee on Immigration and Higher Education. We are currently gathering information and meeting with stakeholders. Read the draft charge to the committee and find out more here.
Posted by Victoria Ford at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)
March 06, 2006
Citizens League Project Leads to Proposal to Transform Mental Health System
The Citizens League is pleased to announce that Governor Pawlenty is recommending over $100 million in new and redirected government investments to transform the way the state provides mental health services and improve mental health care and treatment for children and adults. This announcement builds on the recommendations of the Minnesota Mental Health Action Group.
Read the governor's press release to find out more about his recommendations.
Posted by Victoria Ford at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)