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Community members look to turn report on black lives into action

Say need for greater relationship building in and across communities

Jule Pattison-Gordon
Community members look to turn report on black lives into action
Barbara Lewis, Director of The Trotter Institute, introduced the panel.

Last Thursday, researchers, elected officials and community members gathered in the Bruce Bolling Municipal Building to discuss how to turn a recent report on the state of black lives in Massachusetts into action. Attendees included Rep. Byron Rushing, City Councilor Andrea Campbell and Rep. Russell Holmes.

The wide-ranging report, released in December, touches on topics such as unemployment rates, population characteristics, educational attainment and health characteristics of the black population in Massachusetts, compared to other races. Written by James Jennings, professor emeritus at Tufts University; Rachel Bernard, independent researcher and public policy consultation; Linda Sprague Martinez, assistant professor at Boston University School of Social Work, and Russell Williams, Chair of economics at Wheaton, the “Blacks in Massachusetts: Comparative Demographic, Social and Economic Experiences with Whites, Latinos and Asians” represents a rare instance of collaboration between black researchers.

Thursday’s meeting was titled “Persistence Against the Odds: A 21st Century Comparative Analysis of Diversity in Massachusetts.” Theme of the night was identifying local resources and opportunities to effect change.

“We have a responsibility with this report to do something with the information that has been given,” Bridgette Wallace, founder of SkyLab, said.

Youth power

Among the report’s findings: The state’s black population is relatively young.

Over 25 percent Massachusetts’s black females are age 17 or younger, and nearly 29 percent of black males are 17 or younger. The median age for blacks in the state is 31.6 years, compared to 42.7 years for non-Hispanic whites and 26.3 years for Latinos.

The energy of youth may be a great advantage, said moderator Bithiah Carter, president of New England Blacks in Philanthropy: “We are a very young population. That is a tremendous asset.”

Several panelists spoke of the power of young people, including referring to the activism of two seniors at Boston Latin School whose campaign calling for action and systemic reform in response to racism at their school won the attention of the Boston Public School superintendent and the mayor.

Community connections

Another resource is the community itself, panelists said, which needs to be harnessed more strongly and intentionally.

According to the report, while white, non-Hispanic males age 16-64 have a 9.4 percent unemployment rate and white females 6.6 percent, the rate for black males in that age group is 16.5 percent and for black females, 15 percent. Unemployment rates may be even higher because census data — used in the report — does not count as “unemployed” part-time workers or those who have been without a job for a long period of time and have given up searching, cautioned Williams.

Social networks are immensely powerful tools for finding jobs, Russell Williams said.

“Fifty percent of jobs are found through people that we know. If we don’t know people who are employed, people who have access to jobs, we don’t have the same access as others.”

Sprague Martinez spoke of what she called a “foot-in-the-door responsibility” to extend opportunity to community members. For example, she said she hires local high school students to do graphic arts and provides internships.

Newcomers need to be given opportunity, as well. Richard O’Bryant, director of the O’Bryant African American Institute, said that far too often black people come to Boston for postsecondary education, get their degrees and, not seeing a way to engage with or find opportunity in Boston’s black community, move away.

“The biggest challenge for us is trying to retain black talent,” O’Bryant said. “[We need to find ways to] grow the black community in Boston. Not just black professionals, but all levels. To make them feel welcomed, support them and help people grow and advance.”

Meetings like “Persistence Against the Odds” represent important opportunities for connecting with other community members, one audience member said during the Q&A.

“If you leave here without having met someone that you don’t know, that’s a lost opportunity to be part of the solution,” she said.

Black vs. Latino

Although black and Latino communities often work together on issues — one notable example being the joint Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus — there is still too much division, said panelist Yvette Modestin, founder and director of Encuentro Diaspora Afro.

“When we do ‘black’-‘Latino’, that leaves me out. I walk as both. We keep using the same narrative that creates this division,” she said. “We are disconnected as a people, and more as a people of African descent. … There is a deep disconnect, especially between the African American and the Latino communities.”

She pointed to the tendency of many Dominicans and Puerto Ricans to identify as white on the census, despite many being of African descent, and called for coming together as common members of the African diaspora.

Paul Watanabe, director of the Institute of Asian American Studies at UMass Boston, also called for greater relationship-building both across the state, potentially working together with towns that have large populations of color, and across lines within racial groups.

“We’ve got to see them as a relationship to build together and not as a zero-sum game.”

Control the narrative

Several panelists said taking control of the stories told of and about the black community is a significant empowerment tool. Narratives can frame issues in a way that gives clear image of the issues’ roots and leads to a way forward.

Rahsaan Hall, director of the racial justice program for the ACLU of Massachusetts, said that when discussing the disturbing statics around the quality of life of black people in Massachusetts, one must also acknowledge the reason for them: institutionalized and structural racism.

“We have to acknowledge and name the things that have created the situations we find ourselves in, name how structural and institutional racism has created the problems we have,” Hall said. “[That knowledge] can be used to empower the community, to say there’s a reason for these statistics.”

Narrative can also be framed to emphasize the shared experiences of communities of color and promote connectedness, Trina Jackson, Inclusion Initiative program coordinator for Third Sector New England.

“We can start to use culture in the form of storytelling or the arts to help facilitate conversations and relationship-building among us, so we can start to see and make the connections and the dots between our lived experiences as people of color, especially as black people coming from many different contexts.”