tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/race-in-america-24176/articles
Race in America – The Conversation
2022-05-13T12:15:36Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177849
2022-05-13T12:15:36Z
2022-05-13T12:15:36Z
US schools are not racially integrated, despite decades of effort
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C43%2C4091%2C3224&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Court-ordered desegregation has happened in the U.S. as recently as 2015, when a federal judge issued a desegregation order to the Cleveland, Miss., school district.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DesegregationAfterBusing/8b893af637dc4f649c093e983c0d005f/photo">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly seven decades after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka">Brown v. Board of Education decision</a> in 1954, the court’s declared goal of integrated education is still not yet achieved.</p>
<p>American society continues to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/new-census-data-shows-the-nation-is-diversifying-even-faster-than-predicted/">grow more racially and ethnically diverse</a>. But many of the nation’s public K-12 <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/new-report-shows-increased-diversity-in-u-s-schools-disparities-in-outcomes">schools are not well integrated</a> and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8z4YFq0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">educational sociologist</a>, I fear that the nation has effectively decided that it’s simply not worth continuing to pursue the goals of Brown. I also fear that accepting failure could portend a return to the days of the case that Brown overturned, the <a href="https://supreme.findlaw.com/supreme-court-insights/plessy-v--ferguson-case-summary.html">1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision</a>. That case set “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson">separate but equal</a>” facilities for different races, including schools and universities, as the national priority. </p>
<p>The Brown decision was based upon a repudiation of that idea and the recognition that “separate but equal” was never achieved. I remain convinced it never will be.</p>
<h2>A historic push</h2>
<p>In many ways, it would be startling to declare the ideal of integrated schooling a lost cause. Integration was so important in 1957 that Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower <a href="https://www.npr.org/2007/09/24/14654126/little-rock-remembers-troops-arrival">sent federal troops</a> to Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure that nine Black students were safe when they enrolled in the city’s Central High School. </p>
<p>Despite the federal government’s intervention, in the 1960s and 1970s, many communities across the U.S. experienced <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-white-students-respond-to-school-integration-after-brown-v-board-of-education-164671">considerable conflict and even bloodshed</a>. Many white citizens actively and violently opposed school integration, which often came in the form of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-supreme-court-decision-that-kept-suburban-schools-segregated-120478">court-mandated busing</a> of Black students to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods. </p>
<p>Despite the opposition, many Americans <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/children-of-the-dream-why-school-integration-works/oclc/1080251375">worked incredibly hard</a> to make integration happen, and its <a href="https://tcf.org/content/commentary/school-integration-is-popular-we-can-make-it-more-so/?session=1">benefits are clear</a>: Many American children have experienced enhanced educational opportunities and improved academic success as a result of these efforts.</p>
<h2>Separated, if not segregated</h2>
<p>However, in 2018-2019, the most recent school year for which data is available, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/15/u-s-public-school-students-often-go-to-schools-where-at-least-half-of-their-peers-are-the-same-race-or-ethnicity/">42% of Black students attended majority-Black schools</a>, and 56% of Hispanic students attended majority-Hispanic schools. Even more striking, 79% of white students in America went to majority-white schools during the same period.</p>
<p>Those statistics signal the existence of what is, in fact, a racially separate educational system. But these statistics about race don’t show how common separation by socioeconomic status is in most urban schools throughout the U.S. Low-income Black and Hispanic students are most likely to attend schools where the <a href="https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/segregating-california2019s-future-inequality-and-its-alternative-60-years-after-brown-v.-board-of-education/">majority of children are poor</a> and the <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal">resources available to serve them are inadequate</a>.</p>
<p>Since 2001, education policymakers have made bold promises to close what has been called the “<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/broken-promises-what-the-federal-government-can-do-to-improve-american-education/">racial achievement gap</a>.” Yet they have largely ignored the fact that throughout the nation, poor children of color are most likely to attend schools where they are not only separated by race and class, but where the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/concentration-poverty-american-schools/471414/">quality of the education they receive is below</a> that of their white peers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young Black girl in a white dress walks through a crowd of white people" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461347/original/file-20220504-21-thv1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In 1962, Carolyn Roberson, at center in a white dress, was one of the first Black students to attend Pensacola High School in Pensacola, Fla.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CivilRightsSchoolIntegration/6a403b857a864b65bb23a9ed2ce41ffb/photo">AP Photo/Jim Bourdier</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Housing and school choices</h2>
<p>Several factors help to explain the degree of race and class separation and educational inequality that is now pervasive in America. To begin with, many communities throughout the United States continue to be characterized by a high degree of racial and socioeconomic separation. However, while residential patterns pose an obstacle, a 2018 study by the Urban Institute found that <a href="https://www.urban.org/features/segregated-neighborhoods-segregated-schools">neighborhood segregation does not in itself explain</a> current patterns of school segregation. The study identified several cities and suburban communities where schools are significantly more segregated than the neighborhoods in which they are located. </p>
<p>Policies that allow parents to choose which of their district’s public schools their children attend have done little to alter these trends and, in fact, may contribute to the problem. Several studies have shown that <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9030205">public charter schools</a> are <a href="https://www.educationnext.org/do-charter-schools-increase-segregation-first-national-analysis-reveals-modest-impact/">more likely to be intensely racially divided</a> than traditional public schools. </p>
<p>Furthermore, in most major American cities, affluent residents are <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgc">more likely to enroll their children</a> in private schools than public schools. This includes many affluent parents of color, who often choose to enroll their children in predominantly white independent schools in search of a better education, even when their children <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2021/11/24/growing-up-as-a-black-male-student-in-white-suburbia-what-i-learned/">experience race-related microaggressions and alienation</a>.</p>
<p>In the past 20 years, cities such as <a href="https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Harvard_JCHS_mapping_neighborhood_change_boston_january_2019.pdf">Boston</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/realestate/black-homeowners-gentrification.html">New York</a>, <a href="https://303magazine.com/2022/02/denvers-neighborhoods-changing/">Denver</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/04/15/washington-dc-gentrification-black-political-power-00024515">Washington, D.C.</a>, and <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/as-south-seattle-gentrifies-white-people-become-largest-racial-group/">Seattle</a> have seen affluent <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/10/01/more-big-cities-are-gaining-white-population-census-data-show/">white populations increase</a> – but the overwhelming majority of students in those cities’ public schools are from <a href="https://www.cgcs.org/domain/360">low-income Black and Hispanic households</a>. Those sorts of racial imbalances have increasingly become the norm.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A group of young Black people sit around tables in a classroom" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461348/original/file-20220504-11-ixl8f6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">High school medical students at the King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles await a visit from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy in 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/SurgeonGeneralCalifornia/fdcb374b648c4d7e8ed9c211cf628bcd/photo">AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes</a></span>
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<h2>Integration can succeed</h2>
<p>When the poorest and most vulnerable children are concentrated into particular schools, it is even more difficult to achieve racial equality in educational opportunity, either through integration as called for by Brown or by pursuing “separate but equal” as called for by Plessy.</p>
<p>There is good reason to be concerned. For decades there has been <a href="https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/65766/2000369-Child-Poverty-and-Adult-Success.pdf">consistent evidence</a> that when schools serve a disproportionate number of children in poverty, they are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.1475">less likely to improve students’ academic success</a>.</p>
<p>The evidence also shows that when Black and Hispanic children attend racially integrated schools, they tend to <a href="https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/?agreed=1">outperform their peers who do not</a>. For example, students who have participated in the <a href="https://metcoinc.org/">Metco program</a>, a voluntary desegregation effort that makes it possible for children of color from Boston to be bused to affluent schools in the suburbs, have <a href="https://pioneerinstitute.org/pioneer-research/education-pioneer-research/metco-merits-more/">fared better academically</a> than their counterparts who remained in Boston’s racially isolated schools. The research doesn’t show whether that is because of the superior resources available in predominantly white suburban schools or the fact that they have parents who are active enough to get them into suburban schools. It may be that both factors play a role.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://transformschools.ucla.edu/beyond-the-schoolhouse-digging-deeper/">2018 study</a> from UCLA found that all the schools that produce significant numbers of Black students who are eligible for admission to the University of California are racially integrated. Unfortunately, the study also found that most Black students in Los Angeles don’t attend integrated schools.</p>
<p>However, the study also found one notable exception: the <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/">King/Drew Health Sciences Magnet High School of Medicine and Science</a> in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. That school, which serves almost exclusively Black and Hispanic students, <a href="http://transformschools.ucla.edu/beyond-the-schoolhouse-digging-deeper/">sends more Black students to the University of California</a> than any other high school in the state of California. </p>
<p>At King/Drew, students have a <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=1526142&type=d&pREC_ID=1374191">rigorous, enriched education</a> that includes many honors and <a href="https://www.kingdrew.net/apps/pages/ap">Advanced Placement courses</a>. Those opportunities are the norm at many affluent suburban schools, but they are <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/article/closing-advanced-coursework-equity-gaps-students/">rare at public schools in urban areas</a>.</p>
<p>The scarcity of schools like King/Drew – well-resourced and serving a low-income or majority-minority student body – should serve as a reminder that racially separate schools are rarely equal. When Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP took the Brown case, they knew that <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-thurgood-marshall-paved-road-brown-v-board-education-180977197/">funding for education generally followed white students</a>.</p>
<p>That was true in 1954, and it is largely true today. A recent study found that nonwhite school districts in the U.S. receive <a href="https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion">US$23 billion less in funding</a> than predominantly white schools, though they serve the same number of students.</p>
<p>For this reason, on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the Brown decision, I believe it is important to remember why and how civil rights and educational opportunity remain so deeply intertwined. Despite its flaws and limitations, the effort to racially integrate the nation’s schools has been and continues to be important given the type of <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/comm/a-more-diverse-nation.html">pluralistic and diverse nation</a> the U.S. is becoming. It also plays a central role in the ongoing pursuit of racial equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177849/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pedro A. Noguera does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Though the 1954 Brown v. Board ruling required the integration of public education, US schools remain separated by race.
Pedro A. Noguera, Dean, USC Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/152746
2021-02-02T13:11:31Z
2021-02-02T13:11:31Z
What is food insecurity?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381339/original/file-20210129-13-1e60axw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C18%2C6174%2C4128&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. reliance on food assistance is rising during the coronavirus pandemic as more people grapple with economic hardship.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mother-and-daughter-wait-for-assistance-at-universe-city-a-news-photo/1257635151?adppopup=true">Spencer Platt/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the many striking images from the pandemic is an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/long-lines-at-food-banks-across-us-idUSRTX7EHU2">aerial photo showing cars</a> in seemingly endless rows lined up at a food bank in San Antonio, Texas.</p>
<p>A jarring awareness of <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/measurement/">food insecurity</a> in the U.S. has accompanied the health and financial concerns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, with <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-blog/covid-19-means-new-normal">record numbers of people visiting food banks</a> <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/food/americans-turning-to-food-banks-during-the-pandemic/">for the first time</a>.</p>
<p>Even those not immediately in need were made increasingly aware of food insecurity in 2020, amid conversations not only of the economic fallout of the coronavirus, but also how structural racism has <a href="http://doi.org/10.1097/FCH.0000000000000183">disproportionately left Black and Hispanic households at risk</a>.</p>
<p>This conversation is overdue. Long consumed with <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/cdctv/diseaseandconditions/lifestyle/obesity-epidemic.html">the obesity epidemic</a>, Americans have found it harder to <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16101804">grapple with the issue of food insecurity</a> as a wealthy nation.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VmCnHgYAAAAJ&hl=en">researcher of food policy</a>, I have seen how people have focused more attention on addressing the issue of food insecurity in recent years. In 2000, just seven research articles with “food insecurity” in the title or abstract were listed in the leading database of biomedical literature. The total rose to 137 in 2010 and to 994 by 2020.</p>
<p>I am currently conducting the first <a href="https://www.supershelfmn.org/evaluation">National Institutes of Health-funded study of the charitable food system</a>, which includes <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-food-banks-help-americans-who-have-trouble-making-ends-meet-we-can-workshop-this-headline-soon-148150">food banks</a> – nonprofits that procure, store and distribute food, usually to smaller agencies – and food pantries, which distribute food directly to households that need it.</p>
<p>Although awareness of food insecurity is growing, it is important to understand what is meant by the term and how it fits with other food access concepts, such as hunger and food sovereignty. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An aerial view shows volunteers loading cars with turkeys and other food." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381332/original/file-20210129-23-ffi0u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Laid-off Walt Disney World employees line up in cars at a food distribution center in Orlando, Florida.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-aerial-view-from-a-drone-volunteers-load-cars-with-news-photo/1230097449?adppopup=true">Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>What is food insecurity?</h2>
<p>According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture), <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/measurement/">food insecurity</a> occurs when households are unable to acquire adequate food because they have insufficient money and other resources.</p>
<p>Food insecurity is measured at the household level and reflects limited access to food. This makes it <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/measurement/">different from hunger</a>, which is a physiological condition experienced by an individual. The USDA does not measure hunger in the U.S. Instead, the agency sees it as a consequence of people having limited access to food.</p>
<p>The USDA has <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/survey-tools/">measured food insecurity</a> for 25 years. This metric captures both the uncertainty of not knowing where one’s next meal is coming from and the disruptions of normal eating patterns and reductions in food intake.</p>
<p>Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of food insecurity peaked at <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=45021">just under 15% of households</a> in 2011. Rates then steadily declined each year through 2019, when just over <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=99281">1 in 10 households</a> reported experiencing food insecurity. </p>
<p>But then came 2020.</p>
<p>Although official statistics have not been released yet, early evidence suggests that <a href="https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/documents/reports/ipr-rapid-research-reports-pulse-hh-data-10-june-2020.pdf">food insecurity rates hit unprecedented levels</a>, affecting perhaps <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aepp.13100">17 million more</a> Americans than in 2019. <a href="http://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2005638">Households with children</a> were struck at <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/07/09/about-14-million-children-in-the-us-are-not-getting-enough-to-eat/">alarmingly high</a> rates, exacerbated by the closure of schools and child care facilities. In particular, Black and Hispanic families with children were disproportionately affected. </p>
<p><iframe id="Kneyc" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Kneyc/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Food justice, sovereignty and apartheid</h2>
<p>That Black and Hispanic households were hit the hardest by food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic is part of a bigger picture. <a href="https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2017/05/what-is-health-equity-.html">Food insecurity is fundamentally an issue of health equity</a> – the fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible without facing obstacles like poverty and discrimination. Even in normal times, food insecurity <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=99281">disproportionately affects low-income households</a>, Black and Hispanic families, female-headed households and families with children.</p>
<p>Families struggling with food insecurity face not only insufficient food, but also <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/march/food-insecure-households-score-lower-on-diet-quality-compared-to-food-secure-households/">insufficient nutritious food</a>. Because of this, people who are food-insecure have higher risks of a range of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0645">diet-related chronic diseases</a> such as diabetes and hypertension.</p>
<p>Food insecurity can be exacerbated by living in low-income areas without access to sources of healthy and affordable food. These areas have often been referred to as “<a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/documentation/#definitions">food deserts</a>,” although this metaphor is being phased out by <a href="https://www.changefood.org/video/ladonna-redmond-food-justice-democracy/">food justice advocates</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.02.032">researchers</a>, and <a href="https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2013/03/11/updated-web-tool-maps-us-food-access-greater-detail">government agencies</a>.</p>
<p>Another term that has emerged – “<a href="https://pubmed-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/29135909/">food swamp</a>” – describes neighborhoods where sources of unhealthy foods outnumber sources of healthy food – for example, the number of fast-food outlets outnumbers grocery stores.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, several other terms bring civil rights into U.S. urban food activism. “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9625-8">Food justice</a>” is a food movement rooted in addressing class and race issues, often through local community food production. “<a href="https://viacampesina.org/en/the-jakarta-call/">Food sovereignty</a>” originates from indigenous and global agrarian communities, and refers to the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.</p>
<p>Another term, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/15/food-apartheid-food-deserts-racism-inequality-america-karen-washington-interview">food apartheid</a>,” even more explicitly identifies structural racism as a root cause of food-related inequalities.</p>
<p>What these terms – food sovereignty, food justice and food apartheid – have in common is that they prod citizens, researchers and policymakers to move beyond issues of geographic food access and “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0020731420913184">how to feed the poor</a>” and instead focus on how food systems can be reformed to address fundamental causes of food insecurity and health inequities.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s newsletter explains what’s going on with the coronavirus pandemic. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=coronavirus-going-on">Subscribe now</a>.</em>]</p>
<h2>A new era</h2>
<p>Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration tightened restrictions on <a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/work-requirements-policies">SNAP benefits</a>. Formerly known as food stamps, SNAP is the largest of the federal food programs, providing monthly benefits to supplement the food budget in income-eligible families. Food insecurity was a critical part of policy discussions of SNAP restrictions.</p>
<p>But the issue of food insecurity has seemingly seeped more broadly into the public consciousness in conversations about racial justice, economic hardship, school reopening, pandemic preparedness and the food supply chain that ramped up in 2020 – conversations that are continuing in 2021. </p>
<p>The recent rise in food insecurity has prompted a response that has at times <a href="https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-pop-up-food-shelves-transition-to-meet-neighborhoods-needs-after-floyd-death/571369952/">overwhelmed food banks and food pantries</a> and the providers of free meals. But more sustainable solutions, such as <a href="https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/antipoverty-policies-programs">anti-poverty policies</a>, are needed to address the problem’s root causes.</p>
<p>Food insecurity is not a new problem, but the current challenges come in an era in which more people are aware of the problem. My hope is that the long-overdue public exposure of America’s fault lines can be the catalyst for new efforts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caitlin Caspi receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. </span></em></p>
A food policy researcher helps make sense of the lexicon of US food policy terms, and explains how they relate to racial justice.
Caitlin Caspi, Professor of Public Health, University of Connecticut
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138085
2020-05-07T20:37:56Z
2020-05-07T20:37:56Z
The killing of Ahmaud Arbery highlights the danger of jogging while Black
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333504/original/file-20200507-49542-9audry.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C6%2C1414%2C776&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Footage captured the last moments of Ahmaud Arbery's life.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIve50vSeLQ&bpctr=1588882465">Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Youtube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Unsteady cellphone footage follows a jogger – an apparently young, black man – as he approaches and attempts to run around a white pickup truck parked in the middle of a suburban road. Moments later he lies dead on the ground. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/06/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-georgia">killing of Ahmaud Arbery</a> took place on Feb. 23, after the 25-year-old was confronted by Gregory McMichael, a 64-year-old former police officer and investigator for the Brunswick, Georgia district attorney’s office, and his 34-year-old son, Travis. It took 10 weeks to gain widespread attention with the circulation of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIve50vSeLQ&bpctr=1588880417">video footage</a> on social media, prompting <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/07/ahmaud-arbery-video-shooting-sharing-viral">revulsion</a> and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/496571-ocasio-cortez-calls-for-justice-in-shooting-death-of-ahmaud-arbery">calls for justice</a>. </p>
<p>Gregory and Travis McMichael were both taken into custody on May 7 on <a href="https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2020-05-06/ahmaud-arbery-death-investigation">charges of murder and aggravated assault</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fIve50vSeLQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Warning: This video includes graphic images.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Death in suburbia</h2>
<p>But the killing of Arbery by people with links to law enforcement raises important <a href="http://rashawnray.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Why-Police-Kill-Black-Males-with-Impunity_Gilbert-and-Ray.pdf">questions over why it took so long to make arrests in the case</a> and the so-called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/learning/editorial-winner-breaking-the-blue-wall-of-silence-changing-the-social-narrative-about-policing-in-america.html">blue wall of silence</a> that extends from law enforcement agencies to prosecutor’s offices and courtrooms.</p>
<p>But there is a separate question that needs to be asked: Why do these incidents seem to occur in certain types of neighborhoods? <a href="https://www.zipdatamaps.com/31523">Satilla Shores</a>, where Arbery was killed by the McMichaels, is predominately white and suburban. It evokes memories of the killings of <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/what-happened-trayvon-martin-explained/">Trayvon Martin</a>, <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/crime/article9165083.html">Jonathan Ferrell</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-killing-of-renisha-mcbride">Renisha McBride</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/us/fatal-shooting-of-black-woman-outside-detroit-stirs-racial-tensions.html">Tamir Rice</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/experts/rashawn-ray/">sociologist and public health scholar</a>, I have studied physical activity and how it varies by race and social class. I know that the exact behaviors that are encouraged to extend life for all are the exact ones that can end the life of men like Ahmaud – in short, jogging while black can be deadly. </p>
<p>In 2017, I published a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2017.03.008">study on physical activity</a> – focusing on where and how people exercise, and breaking this down by race and gender. I surveyed nearly 500 middle-class black and white professionals around the United States. The research also included in-depth interviews, focus groups and observations of public spaces in cities with varying racial and class compositions including Oakland and Rancho Cucamonga, California; Brentwood, Tennessee; Bowie, Maryland; and Forest Park, Ohio. </p>
<p>I found that race and place significantly inform where people engage in physical activity: White men, white women and black women living in predominately white areas were significantly more likely to engage in physical activity in their neighborhoods. Black men living in predominately white neighborhoods, however, were far less likely to engage in physical activity in the areas surrounding their own homes.</p>
<h2>Good neighbors?</h2>
<p>Black men I interviewed who had jogged in white neighborhoods where they lived reported incidents of the police being called on them, neighbors scurrying to the other side of the street as they approached, receiving disgruntled looks and seeing the shutting of screen doors as they passed. Similar experiences have been documented in public places <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/shopping-while-black-yes-bias-against-black-customers-is-real">like stores</a>, <a href="https://www.phillymag.com/foobooz/2018/06/30/black-dining-philadelphia/">restaurants</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/us/starbucks-arrest-agreements/index.html">coffee shops</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333484/original/file-20200507-49538-1i3zydh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial left at the site where Ahmaud Arbery was shot dead on a quiet suburban road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cross-with-flowers-and-a-letter-a-sits-at-the-entrance-to-news-photo/1212005350?adppopup=true">Sean Rayford/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Black men are often criminalized in public spaces – that means they are perceived as potential threats and predators. Consequently, <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674238145">their blackness</a> is weaponized. Moreover, black men’s physical bodies are viewed as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2095676?seq=1">potential weapons that could invoke bodily harm</a>, even when they are not holding anything in their hands or attacking. In fact, black people are <a href="http://rashawnray.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Why-Police-Kill-Black-Males-with-Impunity_Gilbert-and-Ray.pdf">3.5 times more likely than white people</a> to be killed by police in situations where they are not attacking nor have a weapon.</p>
<p>My research highlights that the <a href="http://rashawnray.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/What-If-He-Didnt-Wear-the-Hoodie.pdf">social psychology of criminalization</a> – the inability to separate concepts of criminality from a person’s identity or role in society – is important here. Often, physical features such as skin tone are used to guide attitudes, emotions and behaviors that can <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2332649214561306">influence interactions between people of different races</a> and lead to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103108000401?via%3Dihub">oversimplified generalizations</a> about a person’s character. For black men, this means that negative perceptions about their propensity to commit crime, emotional stability, aggressiveness and strength can be used as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103105000351?via%3Dihub">justification for others to enact physical force</a> upon them.</p>
<h2>Signaling or survival?</h2>
<p>Some black men attempt to make themselves less threatening. When it comes to jogging in white neighborhoods, some of the black men I spoke to wore alumnus T-shirts, carried I.D., waved and smiled at neighbors, and ran in well-lit, populated areas. </p>
<p>This is hardly surprising. Black men do this at work by thinking consciously about their attire, tone and pitch of voice, and behavioral mannerisms. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, many black men are going to great lengths to reduce criminalization by staying in the house, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/editorial/opinion--this-is-why-some-black-men-fear-wearing-face-masks-during-a-pandemic/2020/04/08/5a897b6a-78bf-4836-94cd-c3446dc06196_video.html">wearing colorful masks</a> and even forgoing masks altogether.</p>
<p>Sociologists call it a signaling process. Black men call it survival.</p>
<p>An irony in the case of Ahmaud Arbery is that it has set in motion a campaign that could see more black men putting on their running shoes. The #<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/us/ahmaud-arbery-run-support-demonstration/index.html">IRunWithMaud social media campaign</a> is encouraging people to jog 2.23 miles – a reference to the date on which Arbery was killed.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story was updated on May 7 following the arrests of Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rashawn Ray has received funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Brookings Institution. </span></em></p>
Research shows black men are less likely to exercise in white neighborhoods. Those who do jog report having police called and neighbors shun them.
Rashawn Ray, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/113164
2019-05-09T10:35:03Z
2019-05-09T10:35:03Z
Misery and memory in Glendora, Mississippi: How poverty is reshaping the story of Emmett Till’s murder
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271100/original/file-20190425-121249-1dtisv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some say Till's body was dumped from the Old Black Bayou Bridge in Glendora, Mississippi. Others dispute this detail.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cmhpictures/4539332897">cmh2315fl/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In August of 1955, Emmett Till was <a href="https://civilrightstrail.com/experience/sumner/">lynched in the Mississippi Delta</a>. The 14-year-old African American reportedly whistled at a white woman, violating the racial norms of the Jim Crow South. For this supposed infraction, he was abducted, tortured, shot and dropped in a river with a cotton gin fan tied to his neck.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271203/original/file-20190426-194606-1ct2co1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271203/original/file-20190426-194606-1ct2co1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271203/original/file-20190426-194606-1ct2co1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271203/original/file-20190426-194606-1ct2co1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=810&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271203/original/file-20190426-194606-1ct2co1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271203/original/file-20190426-194606-1ct2co1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271203/original/file-20190426-194606-1ct2co1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1017&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of Emmett Till, Christmas 1954.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Illinois-United-/3ad34d4268e4da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet for 49 years and 11 months, his murder was all but forgotten in the Delta – the first memorial to Till wasn’t dedicated until July 1, 2005. </p>
<p>Since then, however, the region has witnessed an unprecedented “memory boom.” More than US$4 million has been invested in dozens of roadside markers, a museum, two restored buildings, an interpretive center, a walking park and a community building.</p>
<p>But many details of what happened to Till on that fateful night remain murky, and the abrupt investment in his memory raises a series of questions. Who gets to tell this racially charged story? Who gets to decide what, exactly, happened? And what’s motivating the construction of these memorials? </p>
<p>My just-published book, “<a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo28300786.html">Remembering Emmett Till</a>,” addresses these questions head on. It suggests that as Till’s story has been passed down through the generations and taken up by a range of memorials, its plot has been shaped by forces like poverty as much as by fidelity to historical fact.</p>
<p>This is nowhere more conspicuous than in the village of Glendora, a small community 150 miles south of Memphis, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Beset by poverty, the village clings desperately to a version of Till’s story that few others seem to believe.</p>
<h2>A community mired in poverty</h2>
<p>Glendora is saturated with memorials. The tiny town of five streets boasts 18 signs dedicated to the memory of Emmett Till’s 1955 murder. In addition, Glendora is also home to the <a href="https://glendorams.com/">Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center</a>, a Till-themed park and the Black Bayou Bridge – a long-decommissioned bridge recently explored in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/20/us/emmett-till-murder-legacy.html">New York Times article</a> as the site from which Till’s body may have been dropped in the water. </p>
<p>Glendora is also marked by breathtaking poverty. In an application for federal assistance, town officials noted that the Glendora median household income is 70% below the state average, 68% of families live below the poverty line, and just 18% of the adults have earned a high school education. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=i4Y-DwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=stone+of+hope+google+books+thomas&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiiqd3RzIziAhVkm-AKHROmC2gQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">According to numbers published by Glendora Mayor Johnny B. Thomas in 2017</a>, 86% of children in the village live below the poverty line. Partners in Development, a nonprofit committed to helping the poorest of the poor, has chosen to focus on Haiti, Guatemala and <a href="http://www.pidonline.org">Glendora, Mississippi</a>.</p>
<p>The Glendora version of Till’s story is unique on two counts. </p>
<p>First, while virtually every 20th-century history of Till’s murder suggests that the murderers dropped the body in the Tallahatchie River, the commemorative work in Glendora suggests that Till was dropped into a tributary known as the Black Bayou from a bridge on the south side of Glendora. According to this account, the bayou then carried Till’s body for three miles to the Tallahatchie River, where it was recovered. </p>
<p>Second, while no historian has been able to say with certainty where the murderers obtained the fan they used to weigh down Till’s corpse, the Glendora museum claims that the fan was stolen from the Glendora Cotton Gin, presumably by Elmer Kimbell, a gin employee and the next-door neighbor of <a href="https://vault.fbi.gov/Emmett%20Till%20/Emmett%20Till%20Part%2001%20of%2002/view">confessed murderer J. W. Milam</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271078/original/file-20190425-121224-14bzoh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271078/original/file-20190425-121224-14bzoh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271078/original/file-20190425-121224-14bzoh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271078/original/file-20190425-121224-14bzoh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271078/original/file-20190425-121224-14bzoh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271078/original/file-20190425-121224-14bzoh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271078/original/file-20190425-121224-14bzoh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The building that once housed the Glendora Cotton Gin is now the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center, the only museum in the world entirely dedicated to Till’s murder.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/7f/5e/437f5eefc2dff68f7d71ad8feca01862.jpg">Pinterest</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Disputed details</h2>
<p>While these variations on the finer points of Till’s story may seem like minutiae, to Glendora residents they are matters so weighty that it sometimes seems as if the very future of the town hinges on where Till’s body was dropped in the water and what fan weighed it down. </p>
<p>In 2010, the <a href="https://www.mississippi.org/">Mississippi Development Authority</a> sent a team of economic development experts to Glendora. Their charge was to devise a plan to rescue the town from poverty – a tall order.</p>
<p>The team struggled to find solutions. Aside from the unrealistic suggestion that the town turn the snake-infested land along the bayou into “riverfront property,” the development authority’s only other proposal was that Glendora capitalize on its connection to the Till murder. More commemoration, they said, would bring tourists; tourism would beget economic development.</p>
<p>The viability of this suggestion, of course, turned on a version of Till’s story that maximized the relevance of Glendora. None of this was news to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jul-30-na-johnny30-story.html">Mayor Thomas</a>. Since at least 2005, he had been promoting a Glendora-centric narrative of the murder in which Till’s body was dropped in the Black Bayou tied with a fan from the local gin. </p>
<p>While plausible, these claims are difficult to prove. One key authority has refuted them: <a href="http://www.mdah.ms.gov/new/">the Mississippi Department of Archives and History</a>.</p>
<p>The state agency has invested more funds into Till’s commemoration than any other organization. </p>
<p>It restored the <a href="https://civilrightstrail.com/destination/sumner/">Tallahatchie County Courthouse</a>, the site of the Till trial, and even invested $200,000 in the controversial restoration of <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/675643">Ben Roy’s Service Station</a> in Money, Mississippi. Although the service station sits just 67 feet south of Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, the site of Till’s alleged whistle, it played no role in the Till murder, aside from unverified claims that customers discussed the murder from the porch.</p>
<p>The agency, however, is not convinced that Till’s body was dropped from the Black Bayou Bridge. Nor does the organization believe that the fan was stolen from the local gin. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271200/original/file-20190426-194637-1o4a9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271200/original/file-20190426-194637-1o4a9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271200/original/file-20190426-194637-1o4a9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271200/original/file-20190426-194637-1o4a9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271200/original/file-20190426-194637-1o4a9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271200/original/file-20190426-194637-1o4a9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/271200/original/file-20190426-194637-1o4a9v7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cotton gin fan is presented as evidence in the trial. Its origins remain a point of contention.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Mississippi-Unit-/b122a52368e4da11af9f0014c2589dfb/24/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, the agency has, in its files, a five-page “<a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/588/Summary_of_Research.pdf?1557325145">Summary of Research</a>” that’s dedicated to the contested veracity of these two claims. The document finds neither claim verifiable and has thus rejected every grant application the town has ever submitted. </p>
<p>Mayor Thomas has one state agency telling him to lean hard into Till’s story and another rejecting his every attempt to do so.</p>
<h2>The mayor gets creative</h2>
<p>Without the backing of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Thomas has nonetheless been able to erect tributes to Till’s legacy.</p>
<p>The work began on Sept. 27, 2005. On that day, the United States Department of Agriculture awarded a Community Connect Broadband Grant to Glendora. <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/589/USDA.pdf?1557325418">Funded at $325,405</a>, the grant was intended to bring broadband connectivity to Glendora.</p>
<p>After obtaining the grant, Thomas used the USDA money <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/592/USDA.pdf?1557325734">to convert the old cotton gin</a> into a community computer lab with internet access. <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/591/MCRH_Grant_Application.pdf?1557325519">But he also used some of the funds</a> to construct the world’s first Emmett Till museum – <a href="https://civilrightstrail.com/attraction/emmett-till-historic-intrepid-center/">the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center</a> – which was also located in the gin. Although the USDA approved the expenses, it is unclear whether they knew that their money was being used to build a museum. In the 647 pages of records preserved by the USDA – including the application, labor contracts, invoices and correspondence – Emmett Till isn’t mentioned once.</p>
<p>After the grant ran out, Glendora couldn’t pay the bills and internet service was discontinued. It has not resumed. The museum, on the other hand, is still in operation and visitors do occasionally stop in, though the majority of tourists go to <a href="https://www.emmett-till.org/">Sumner</a>, a town 12 miles north of Glendora and the site of the trial. </p>
<p>While the museum was initially funded by the USDA, it is maintained on a day-to-day basis by the Glendora Economic and Community Development Corporation, a 501(c)3 founded by Thomas. The town has assigned most, if not all, public business to the nonprofit. Glendora’s development corporation pays city workers, operates 24 Section 8 apartments and operates the Till museum. According to <a href="https://www.guidestar.org/">public records</a>, the public housing funnels about $100,000 a year of federal HUD money into the nonprofit. With this money, the nonprofit maintains the apartments, pays city workers and, critically, subsidizes the Till museum. </p>
<p>Yet the questions remain unanswered: Was Emmett Till actually dropped from the Black Bayou Bridge? Was the fan stolen from the local gin? Was Elmer Kimbell involved? </p>
<p>Perhaps. But it is impossible to separate the veracity of these claims from the poverty of the townspeople. Thomas has been able to leverage the town’s poverty to support the museum; the museum, in turn, supports Glendora’s plausible-but-unverifiable theories of Till’s murder. Had Glendora been wealthy, there’d be little incentive to stick so adamantly to this version of the story. The Black Bayou Bridge would be lost to memory and Elmer Kimbell would rarely appear in the stories of Till’s final night.</p>
<p>But Glendora is not wealthy. Instead, sustained by the poverty of the town, stories about Kimbell, the Glendora Cotton Gin and the Black Bayou Bridge continue to circulate – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/us/remembering-emmett-till-legacy-virtual-reality.html?login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock">sometimes from the highest echelons of media</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113164/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dave Tell wrote this article with support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p>
Scholars continue to debate what, exactly, happened to Emmett Till the morning of his murder. But that hasn’t stopped a poor Mississippi community from trying to profit off one version of the story.
Dave Tell, Professor of Communication, University of Kansas
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/94002
2018-04-30T10:45:19Z
2018-04-30T10:45:19Z
Black employees in the service industry pay an emotional tax at work
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216761/original/file-20180429-135837-f3fq1t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Starbucks workers in Seattle.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The arrests of two black men who were <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philadelphia-starbucks/starbucks-ceo-says-arrests-of-two-black-men-reprehensible-idUSKBN1HN2AL">waiting for a friend</a> at a Starbucks in Philadelphia last year raised questions about how race determines how customers are treated.</p>
<p>But does race also affect how the employees are treated within the service industry?</p>
<p>Prior research shows that black workers in people-oriented occupations – health care, service and sales – are <a href="http://amj.aom.org/content/53/2/238.short">rated lower</a> by customers and supervisors than are white workers, even when their performance is objectively the same. Because of this, black workers have a harder time obtaining competitive raises or promotions. But it is unclear why or what workers can do about it.</p>
<p>In the U.S. workforce, blacks are disproportionately represented in <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38168029/ns/business-careers/t/lowest-paying-jobs-america/#.WrmwjMPwbIU">low-paying</a> service jobs like cashiers, call center employees and food service workers compared to higher-status jobs. So this issue has serious implications for the financial and professional lives of a large segment of black workers.</p>
<h2>Race impacts perception of performance</h2>
<p>Friendliness is key to performing well in the service industry. My colleagues <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=w4HHMQwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Lawrence Houston III</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=C8ZuPScAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Derek R. Avery</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TYnFrXMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> found that negative stereotypes about blacks – that they are unfriendly, hostile or rude – explain lower performance evaluations of black service providers compared to white service providers.</p>
<p>We found that in order for the performance of black service providers to be rated equivalent to whites, blacks had to amplify and fake positive emotions to override those negative racial stereotypes. In other words, to be seen as good as white employees, black employees need to perform more “emotional labor,” a concept <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520272941">introduced by sociologist Arlie Hochschild</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps just like the two men at Starbucks, black service employees are assumed to have hostile intentions unless they put in extra effort to put forth a smile and show they are not a threat.</p>
<h2>Across three studies</h2>
<p>We drew these conclusions from <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0149206318757019">a series of studies</a> we conducted over several years. </p>
<p>In our first study, we asked a representative sample of people for their impressions of an employee described as holding an emotional labor job, a hotel desk clerk. They saw a photo of either a black or white person with a neutral expression, but otherwise the same job qualifications. Regardless of the respondents’ own race, education or income, they saw the black employee as less friendly and more hostile than the white employee.</p>
<p>In the second study, people watched a video of either a black or a white sales clerk ringing up sales in a home goods shop. They saw the clerk acting either warm and friendly or just polite. In all videos the sales clerk was efficient and knowledgeable. </p>
<p>When viewers saw the employee performing less emotional labor – just being polite and efficient – the black employee was rated as less friendly and a worse performer than the white employee. In contrast, after watching the friendly condition, the viewers rated the black and white employees similarly. </p>
<p>In short, just being polite was not enough for the black employee; putting on a big smile was necessary to get the same performance ratings as the white employee.</p>
<p>Both of the above studies were experiments. In a third study, we surveyed actual service employees and their supervisors.</p>
<p>Again, we found that supervisors rated black grocery store clerks as worse performers than white clerks, which could not be explained by job experience or motivation. Yet, black clerks who reported amplifying and faking their positive emotions when interacting with customers – more emotional labor – saw the racial disparity in the performance evaluations disappear. </p>
<p>Notably, white clerks were rated highly regardless of the frequency of their emotional labor. For black clerks to be rated as highly as the white clerks, they had to more consistently exaggerate their smile in customer interactions.</p>
<h2>High cost of ‘service with a smile’</h2>
<p>All service employees must sometimes put on a fake smile when having an off day, and sometimes they might let the mask slip. Our research shows that white employees who do less emotional labor can still be viewed positively, but black employees are not given the benefit of the doubt. Black employees constantly “fake it to make it” in service jobs.</p>
<p>Being a black service provider requires routinely putting forth more emotional effort – a bigger smile, a more enthusiastic tone of voice, maintained across time and customers – to be evaluated similarly to a white co-worker. If a black employee gets tired of faking that smile, there is a resulting decline in performance evaluation. This also means fewer opportunities for promotions, raises and career advancement.</p>
<p>Though putting on a smile might seem like a small price to pay to get ahead at work, <a href="http://amj.aom.org/content/46/1/86.short">research shows</a> that keeping up a friendly façade is a path to job burnout, a state of complete exhaustion linked to a desire to quit and health issues. Recognizing this situation is a first step to improving conditions for black employees and customers alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alicia Grandey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Three studies found that customers and managers rate black employee performance lower than white employees because they’re perceived as unfriendly or rude.
Alicia Grandey, Professor of Psychology, Penn State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/67721
2016-11-02T15:18:04Z
2016-11-02T15:18:04Z
Trump’s race problem could hand the Democrats a generation of voters
<p>Throughout the US’s 2016 presidential election, the polls have consistently shown that Republican candidate Donald Trump lags well behind Democratic rival Hillary Clinton among the country’s ethnic minorities. The 2016 electorate is <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/2016-electorate-will-be-the-most-diverse-in-u-s-history/">the most diverse in American history</a> and, if Clinton wins, this demographic change may be the deciding factor.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/the-demographic-groups-fueling-the-election/">Mid-October polling</a> showed that Clinton enjoyed a 79-point advantage over Trump among African-Americans, and is ahead by 28 points when it comes to Hispanic voters. Given what Trump has done over the past 18 months or so, this is anything but surprising. </p>
<p>Trump has accused undocumented Mexican migrants of rape, drugs and delinquency; questioned the integrity of a federal judge <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/03/politics/donald-trump-tapper-lead/">on the grounds of his Mexican heritage</a>; <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/12/politics/donald-trump-naacp-convention/">declined an invitation</a> to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; insinuated that the Black Lives Matter movement has <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/18/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter/">instigated police killings</a>; and for years attacked the very legality of Barack Obama’s presidency on the basis of “<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/donald-trump-birther/">birther</a>” conspiracy theories.</p>
<p>This sort of talk is naturally anathema to the US’s Hispanic and African-American people and in the run-up to the election it’s become a grave strategic concern for the Republicans. </p>
<p>This is especially true when it comes to the Hispanic vote. Four key battleground states – <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-florida-hispanic-poll-clinton-trump-20160922-story.html">Florida</a>, <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latino-vote-front-center-colorado-n664331">Colorado</a>, <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-early-vote-in-nevada-suggests-clinton-might-beat-her-polls-there/">Nevada</a> and <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mexican-americans-are-reshaping-the-electoral-map-in-arizona-and-the-u-s/">Arizona</a> – have populations more than 20% Hispanic. Combined, these states carry <a href="http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo">55 of the 270 electoral votes</a> Clinton needs to win, and so far, her prospects of capturing them all look good.</p>
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<p>Trump almost certainly cannot win the presidency without <a href="https://ig.ft.com/us-elections/florida-polls">Florida</a>’s 29 electoral votes. The so-called Sunshine State’s population is 41.3% Hispanic and African-American – meaning that Trump’s only hope is severely low turnout among black voters and newly arrived Hispanic people, many of whom <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-10-25/florida-puerto-rican-immigrants-clinton">have fled the Puerto Rican debt crisis</a>.</p>
<p>Trump also seems on course to lose <a href="https://ig.ft.com/us-elections/colorado-polls">Colorado</a>, which Obama carried in both 2008 and 2012. Several things make this one a tall order for Trump: <a href="http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/08">37.5% of its population is college-educated</a>, more than eight points higher than the <a href="https://ig.ft.com/us-elections/colorado-polls">national figure</a> of 29.3%, whereas Trump relies heavily on <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/03/01/a-divide-between-college-non-college-republicans/">less-educated voters</a> – and overall, more than a quarter of the state’s population is either Hispanic or African-American.</p>
<p>Clinton is running strong in neighbouring <a href="https://ig.ft.com/us-elections/nevada-polls">Nevada</a>, which has a substantial Hispanic population of 28.1% - and a state Obama carried twice. To the south, the usually deep red state of <a href="https://ig.ft.com/us-elections/arizona-polls">Arizona</a> has this year entered the “toss-up” column and the two main candidates are locked in a virtual tie. A recent Monmouth University poll indicated that <a href="https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2016/10/26/clinton-trump-neck-mccain-on-track-for-reelection/">65% of Arizona’s Hispanic voters favour Clinton over Trump</a>. </p>
<p>There’s also another critical state where non-white voters could make the difference. <a href="https://ig.ft.com/us-elections/north-carolina-polls">North Carolina</a> has an African-American population of 22.1%, and could certainly vote for Clinton if her campaign can drive up black turnout. Clinton has explicitly appealed to black voters throughout the campaign, lately <a href="http://wncn.com/2016/10/23/hillary-clinton-speaks-at-durham-church-holds-rally-in-raleigh/">accusing</a> Trump of not acknowledging the “vibrancy” within the African-American community in the process. <a href="http://heatst.com/politics/north-carolina-early-vote-numbers-show-huge-surge-for-hillary-clinton/">Early voting returns</a> show that her efforts may already be paying off.</p>
<h2>Long-term damage</h2>
<p>Since 2012, the number of eligible Latino voters has <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/14/key-facts-about-the-latino-vote-in-2016/">increased by 4m</a>, which accounts for 37% of the growth of eligible voters added to the US electorate. About 80% of the increase in the number of eligible Latino voters comes from the 3.2m US-born Latinos who’ve turned 18 since the last election.</p>
<p>These new voters will soon participate in the largest collective decision in American democracy for the very first time – and they are presented with a Republican candidate who has made a string of highly offensive remarks targeted specifically at them.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, young black voters who feel aggrieved over <a href="https://theconversation.com/policing-race-and-guns-a-criminologist-reports-from-charlotte-north-carolina-65982">police brutality</a> in America’s diverse inner-cities and <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-was-a-white-police-officer-in-the-us-i-know-how-deep-the-crisis-of-racism-is-62377">racial discrimination</a> in the criminal justice system are faced with a clear choice. One candidate has <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/20160709_Hillary_Clinton_cancels_Pa__event_after_Dallas_shooting.html">acknowledged the crisis</a> and articulated a <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/07/31/the-overlooked-promise-in-hillary-clinton-s-speech#.PbRN37Ndb">strong racial justice platform</a>; the other would instruct his attorney-general to <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/18/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter/">investigate Black Lives Matter</a>.</p>
<p>Clinton is not adored by the masses – and the recent news of a renewed FBI probe into her emails may harm her with some voters. But the sheer strength of anti-Trump feeling among battleground states’ non-white citizens should help her pull together the 270 electoral votes she needs to win. </p>
<p>Republicans’ chief worry will be that Trump’s race problem will give the Democrats a lasting advantage. In an ever-diversifying liberal democracy where <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2016/07/07/4-top-voting-issues-in-2016-election/">63% of voters</a> say the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities is a “top issue” for them, Trump isn’t just likely to lose; he has in all likelihood cost the Republicans a generation of voters. </p>
<p>The untold damage he has inflicted on his party by running a campaign like this in modern-day America may endure for years to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rakib Ehsan receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for his PhD.</span></em></p>
Donald Trump’s racist appeals to white fear may have doomed his campaign – and his party.
Rakib Ehsan, Doctoral Researcher in Political Science, Royal Holloway University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/54722
2016-02-16T14:03:20Z
2016-02-16T14:03:20Z
It’s not Beyoncé’s job to answer every question about blackness
<p>Race is very much on my mind at the moment. I am visiting the US and, as a black British academic, my attention is drawn to daily news reports about racism and suffering <a href="http://college.usatoday.com/2016/02/10/black-princeton-professor-arrested-for-traffic-ticket-says-police-releasing-video/">at the hands of the police</a>, even for minor infractions such as parking ticket violation and speeding. </p>
<p>I am also conscious of the absence of other black bodies when I visit beaches, tourist sites and restaurants in “nice” areas, and yet their heavy presence among the homeless sleeping under freeway bridges.</p>
<p>And as I’m researching the global beauty industry, I’m also interested in the very explicitly racialised marketing of cosmetic surgery procedures in the US. So I was gripped by Beyoncé’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5BPfRHX1SE&feature=player_embedded">performance of her new single</a>, Formation, at this year’s Super Bowl, and by the reactions that it provoked.</p>
<p>Here was an affirmation of black beauty and political power, live on prime time TV. It brought race into the living rooms of many white Americans for one-and-a-half minutes. And in a way that was discomforting for some, as she appeared to be taking pride in her blackness.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Saturday Night Live mocks those shocked by Beyoncé.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beyoncé sang about loving her “negro nose” and her baby’s afro hair. Her dancers, dressed as highly sexualised Black Panthers, reminded the audience of the ongoing history of police killings of black Americans by holding up a sign calling for justice for <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/12/mario-woods-autopsy-san-francisco-police-fatal-shooting">Mario Woods</a>.</p>
<p>For some white commentators, the performance was too political, and even <a href="http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/beyonces-halftime-show-inspires-ridiculous-criticism/?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FGiuliani%2C%20Rudolph%20W.&action=click&contentCollection=politics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0">disrespectful of the police</a>. But it has also raised more complicated questions. It has reinvigorated debates on the extent to which Beyoncé herself is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kenya-/the-unbearable-whiteness-_1_b_1215263.html">complicit in the valorisation of whiteness</a>).</p>
<p>Some feel Beyoncé has managed to stay at the top of her game because her hybrid looks (such as light skin and long hair) and popular music mean white audiences have not pigeonholed her as a “black” artist. They can therefore enjoy her music without feeling they are making a statement about race. For white people, being a Beyoncé fan is a comfortably “colour-blind” experience. </p>
<h2>Got hair dye in my bag, swag</h2>
<p>But this time she was picked up on the race radar. And this has caused <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/beyonces-bootylicious-over-sexualisation-of-black-women-isnt-inspiring-and-her-politics-leave-a-lot-a6867561.html">controversy</a> among black, as well as white commentators. The colour of her hair commanded particular attention. It has been gradually lightening over time to what, at the time of the Super Bowl, stood out as starkly blonde in contrast to the dozens of dancers who surrounded her. They all had their hair black or dark brown, and in afros.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"698263717373304833"}"></div></p>
<p>So is Beyoncé saying that blonde is best? Or is she implying that black women can just wear their hair how they want without it being a statement? Is she telling us that there is a wide range of different possible looks in the black beauty box?</p>
<p>These questions should remind us that blackness is itself a political category. There’s no such thing as “race”; the human beings who get put in the “black box” are not physically or characteristically homogeneous. Beyoncé is light skinned, her daughter is dark skinned, and the chances are she has people in her family right across the dark to light-skinned colour spectrum, just as I and many other black people do. </p>
<p>Whether we call it colourism, pigmentocracy or colour hierarchy, this obsession with skin tone is a powerful force in racist societies. And it has created divisions within the black community too – divisions that often go unacknowledged, but which always underpin judgements about female beauty.</p>
<p>What white racist societies reproduce is the assumption that all black people look alike, and that what is assumed to make them alike is the opposite of beautiful: darker skin, kinky hair, wider noses, fuller lips.</p>
<p>For women, to be beautiful is to be socially marked as black without having these features. This is known and exploited by the global beauty industry, which markets skin lightening and hair straightening products in black media. </p>
<p>There is also an expansion of cosmetic surgeons selling “racially enhancing” cosmetic procedures that are said to improve appearance and beautify by subtly narrowing noses and lips.</p>
<p>A person’s public mask matters in America. For black Americans, managing the mask in such a way as to be black and yet “not ugly” and “not dangerous” is a full time job. For women, straightening naturally curly hair is acceptable, if not required. But dying their naturally dark hair blonde, or using skin lightening products, is more likely to provoke a negative reaction and accusations of not taking pride in what is – supposedly – essential to being black. </p>
<h2>Made you look</h2>
<p>At the Super Bowl, Beyoncé drew attention to many of the ambiguities of race in contemporary America. She is a rich woman, with naturally light skin, and seemingly long blonde hair – characteristics usually associated with whiteness – who is apparently embracing black beauty and power. And though her performance referenced a black political movement of the 1960s and 70s, it was extremely timely. </p>
<p>There is growing recognition that large segments of the black population in the US, no matter what the tone of their skin, still live under the shadow cast by the country’s history of racial slavery. Despite even the concrete achievements of the civil rights movement, white privilege remains undented and large numbers of black Americans are excluded from political, economic and social power.</p>
<p>Beyoncé is not a political theorist or a political activist. She is no Nina Simone, and the lyrics of the song at the heart of the controversy are pretty trivial. But she knows how to use visual media to make people who wouldn’t normally be interested in questions about what blackness means sit up and take notice. Good artists don’t have to provide the solutions to the problems they reflect, express or embody. They simply have to make the audience think.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54722/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor has received funding from ESRC.</span></em></p>
Dressing like a Black Panther at the Super Bowl was always going to raise a few eyebrows – and that was the point.
Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor, Lecturer, University of Leicester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53026
2016-01-21T10:47:37Z
2016-01-21T10:47:37Z
Woody Guthrie, ‘Old Man Trump’ and a real estate empire’s racist foundations
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108650/original/image-20160119-29762-1bwnl12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Woody Guthrie lived in Fred Trump's Beach Haven apartment complex for two years.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nick Lehr/The Conversation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In December 1950, Woody Guthrie signed his name to the lease of a new apartment in Brooklyn. Even now, over half a century later, that uninspiring document prompts a double-take. </p>
<p>Below all the legal jargon is the signature of the man who had composed “This Land Is Your Land,” the most resounding appeal to an equal share for all in America. Below that is the signature of Donald Trump’s father, Fred. No pairing could appear more unlikely. </p>
<p>Guthrie’s two-year tenancy in one of Fred Trump’s buildings and his relationship with the real estate mogul of New York’s outer boroughs produced some of Guthrie’s most bitter writings, which I discovered on a recent trip to the <a href="http://woodyguthriecenter.org/archives/">Woody Guthrie Archives</a> in Tulsa. These writings have never before been published; they should be, for they clearly pit America’s national balladeer against the racist foundations of the Trump real estate empire.</p>
<p>Recalling these foundations becomes all the more relevant in the wake of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-bigot-and-a-racist/2015/12/01/a2a47b96-9872-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html">racially charged proclamations</a> of Donald Trump, who last year <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/10/the-middle-class-housing-empire-donald-trump-abandoned-for-luxury-building/">announced</a>, “My legacy has its roots in my father’s legacy.”</p>
<h2>A champion for equality</h2>
<p>By the time he moved into his new apartment, Guthrie had traveled a long road from the casual racism of his Oklahoma youth.</p>
<p>He’d learned along the way that the North held no special claim to racial enlightenment. He had written songs such as “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1nzojwEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:ISBN1258516411">The Ferguson Brothers Killing</a>,” which condemned the out-of-hand police killing of the unarmed Charles and Alfonso Ferguson in Freeport, Long Island, in 1946, after the two young black men had been refused service in a bus terminal cafe.</p>
<p>In “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=skT4nQEACAAJ&dq=Woody+Guthrie+Folk+Songs&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y">Buoy Bells from Trenton</a>,” he denounced the miscarriage of justice in the case of the so-called “Trenton Six” – black men convicted of murder in 1948 by an all-white jury in a trial marred by official perjury and manufactured evidence. </p>
<p>And in 1949, he’d stood shoulder to shoulder with Paul Robeson, Howard Fast and Pete Seeger against the mobs of <a href="http://www.trussel.com/hf/peekskill.htm">Peekskill</a>, New York, where American racism at its ugliest had inspired 21 songs from his pen (one of which, “<a href="http://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/My_Thirty_Thousand.htm">My Thirty Thousand</a>,” was recorded by Billy Bragg and Wilco).</p>
<h2>A postwar housing haven – for whites</h2>
<p>In the postwar years, with the return of hundreds of thousands of servicemen to New York, <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/55efq7hy9780252038181.html">affordable public housing</a> had become an urgent priority. </p>
<p>For the most part, low-cost housing projects had been left to cash-strapped state and city authorities. But when the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) finally stepped in to issue federal loans and subsidies for urban apartment blocks, one of the first developers in line, with his eye on the main chance, was Fred Trump. He made a fortune not only through the construction of public housing projects but also through collecting the rents on them.</p>
<p>When Guthrie first signed his lease, it’s unlikely that he was aware of the murky background to the construction of his new home, the massive public complex that Trump had dubbed “Beach Haven.” </p>
<p>Trump would be <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/23/ike-didn-t-like-trump-s-dad-at-all.html">investigated</a> by a U.S. Senate committee in 1954 for profiteering off of public contracts, not least by overestimating his Beach Haven building charges to the tune of US$3.7 million.</p>
<p>What Guthrie discovered all too late was Trump’s enthusiastic embrace of the FHA’s guidelines for avoiding “inharmonious uses of housing” – or as Trump biographer <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Trumps/Gwenda-Blair/9780743210799">Gwenda Blair puts it</a>, “a code phrase for selling homes in white areas to blacks.” As Blair points out, such “restrictive covenants” were common among FHA projects – a betrayal, if ever there was one, of the New Deal vision that had given birth to the agency.</p>
<h2>‘Old Man Trump’s’ color line</h2>
<p>Only a year into his Beach Haven residency, Guthrie – himself a veteran – was already lamenting the bigotry that pervaded his new, lily-white neighborhood, which he’d taken to calling “Bitch Havens.” </p>
<p>In his notebooks, he conjured up a scenario of smashing the color line to transform the Trump complex into a diverse cornucopia, with “a face of every bright color laffing and joshing in these old darkly weeperish empty shadowed windows.” He imagined himself calling out in Whitman-esque free verse to the “negro girl yonder that walks along against this headwind / holding onto her purse and her fur coat”: </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> I welcome you here to live. I welcome
you and your man both here to Beach Haven to love in any
ways you please and to have some kind of a decent place to
get pregnant in and to have your kids raised up in. I'm
yelling out my own welcome to you.
</code></pre>
<p></p><p></p>
<p>For Guthrie, Fred Trump came to personify all the viciousness of the racist codes that continued to put decent housing – both public and private – out of reach for so many of his fellow citizens:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project ....
</code></pre>
<p></p><p></p>
<p>And as if to leave no doubt over Trump’s personal culpability in perpetuating black Americans’ status as internal refugees – strangers in their own strange land – Guthrie reworked his signature Dust Bowl ballad “I Ain’t Got No Home” into a blistering broadside against his landlord: </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Beach Haven ain't my home!
I just cain't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain!
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven looks like heaven
Where no black ones come to roam!
No, no, no! Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!
</code></pre>
<p></p><p></p>
<p>In 1979, 12 years after Guthrie had succumbed to the death sentence of Huntington’s Disease, <em>Village Voice</em> reporter Wayne Barrett published a <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/how-a-young-donald-trump-forced-his-way-from-avenue-z-to-manhattan-7380462">two-part exposé</a> about Fred and Donald Trump’s real estate empire. </p>
<p>Barrett devoted substantial attention to the cases brought against the Trumps in 1973 and 1978 by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. A major charge was that “racially discriminatory conduct by Trump agents” had “created a substantial impediment to the full enjoyment of equal opportunity.” The most damning evidence had come from Trump’s own employees. As Barrett summarizes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>According to court records, four superintendents or rental agents confirmed that applications sent to the central [Trump] office for acceptance or rejection were coded by race. Three doormen were told to discourage blacks who came seeking apartments when the manager was out, either by claiming no vacancies or hiking up the rents. A super said he was instructed to send black applicants to the central office but to accept white applications on site. Another rental agent said that Fred Trump had instructed him not to rent to blacks. Further, the agent said Trump wanted “to decrease the number of black tenants” already in the development “by encouraging them to locate housing elsewhere.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Guthrie had written that white supremacists like the Trumps were “way ahead of God” because</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> God dont
know much
about any color lines.
</code></pre>
<p></p><p></p>
<p>Guthrie hardly meant this as a compliment. But the Trumps – father and son alike – might well have been arrogant enough to see it as one. After all, if you find yourself “way ahead of God” in any kind of a race, then what else must God be except, well, “a loser”? And we know what Donald Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/08/08/losers-a-list-by-donald-trump/">thinks about losers</a>.</p>
<p>One thing is certain: Woody Guthrie had no time for “Old Man Trump.” </p>
<p>We can only imagine what he would think of his heir.</p>
<p><em>“Racial Hate at Beach Haven,” “Beach Haven Race Hate,” “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home” and Guthrie’s untitled notebook writings: all words by Woody Guthrie, © copyright Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc., all rights reserved, used by permission.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Will Kaufman received funding from the Broadcast Music Industry Foundation (BMI-Woody Guthrie Fellowship).</span></em></p>
In the 1950s, Woody Guthrie lived in one of Fred Trump’s buildings. In newly discovered, never before published writings, Guthrie bitterly rails against the developer’s color line.
Will Kaufman, Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of Central Lancashire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.