The New York Urban League (NYUL) was founded in 1919, at the start of the Great Migration, to connect blacks who left the agricultural South with jobs in the industrial North. At the time, descendants of slaves poured into a metropolis where they had to fight against housing discrimination and boycott stores where black job applications weren’t accepted. Nearly a century later, Arva Rice, a NationSwell Council member and president of the New York Urban League, is continuing to fight for equality within New York City’s education system and job opportunities. NationSwell spoke to her recently about the ongoing fight for civil rights, as the nation’s first black president leaves office.
New York Urban League is approaching its centennial. What issues are you anticipating will be core to the league’s next century?
One challenge for us is how the conversation about race has changed over time. When I meet with others, I talk about the importance of this particular time in history. The fact that when I first came to the Urban League in April 2009, President Obama had just been elected and we were hearing, “You all have a president. That’s the ultimate level of equality.” Unfortunately, in the last seven years, we have also had Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and all things in between, like the intentional voter-suppression laws and attacks on the Voting Rights Act. The work we do is more critical than ever. There’s a generation that cares about racial equity, but we need to engage them in different ways. Maybe they want to march and be involved in grassroots movements, some want to be engaged in policy discussions and some want to become part of the establishment themselves and run for office. All of those ways are correct and right, and we have to figure out how to support that going forward.
Besides equal access to education and employment, the NYUL’s mission statement references working toward a “living environment that fosters mutual respect.” What does that mean to you?
Envisioning a world of mutual respect means that folks can not only tolerate but appreciate difference. I’m fascinated by how we define diversity and inclusion. Diversity is inviting people to a party, where inclusion is getting everyone to dance. I think that distinction is important, because to get everyone dancing, you have to think deliberately. You need to think about what is going to include people across generations, and most importantly, you need to be intentional in order to create environments that bring others to the fore. You have to be thoughtful, because it’s not going to happen by accident.
The racial biases pointed out by Black Lives Matter and the rising economic inequality in American cities were both on the minds of many voters last year. In what ways does New York reflect and buck the trends of what we expect from cities?
New York is often leading the way. We’re the ones who were really pushing for higher wages, with the Fight for 15 campaign. We’re also second place for technology and innovation. That’s why the New York Urban League is focusing some of our work on STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics], giving young people the opportunity to not only play with technology but also be creators. There are some folks that say, “Oh, people of color aren’t interested in tech, because it’s not cool enough.” And I push back on that. This is not about being cool; this is about being accessible. Without having somebody who you know, any experience, any interaction with someone who works at Facebook, Google, Twitter, how can they know that’s something they can do? We’re helping to break through that, and then provide skills. The fact is that people of color will be passed over if, once again, they are not included in intentional ways. The reason why I feel privileged to lead a historic black organization is because you’re constantly focused on making sure that there really is equality. Until the day we feel like there truly is real parity, we’re not finished.
What have you learned about leadership during your time at NYUL?
I have learned that leadership is about doing things that make your stomach hurt. And that just because your stomach hurts doesn’t mean that you’re unusual. If you are doing it right and pushing yourself and the people that you manage and your stakeholders and your donors, there are going to be times when it’s uncomfortable. It’s a growth pattern. The other thing I’ve learned is that the only people who don’t make mistakes are the ones who aren’t doing anything. So I need to forgive myself for those times I made mistakes, figure out what I learned, dust myself off and go on to the next thing.
What are you most proud of having accomplished so far?
We have a program called Empowerment Days for our young people, which is basically Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work days. We take 200 girls and 150 boys on the first and last Friday of March, respectively. They’re able to go and meet people at places like O, The Oprah Magazine, black enterprises, the Yankees, Google and Microsoft. Basically, they spend the day with people who may look like them or have similar backgrounds and experiences, and find out how they got into those careers. And one of the reasons I’m so proud of that is because we have a level of access, as an organization that has a 97-year history of impact on communities. So I can call people and get my calls returned at a level that I wasn’t able to in any other position in my career. Every time we do an Empowerment Day, the young people are excited about a senior vice president or a receptionist that they met. That’s fantastic, because we would not be able to do that, if it were not for the relationships that the Urban League has within the city.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
Continue reading “For This Century-Old Civil Rights Nonprofit, the Real Work Is Just Beginning”
Tag: urban
Watch Our Q&A with City Year
The cofounders of City Year, a nonprofit that serves communities by bridging the divide between what schools and teachers can offer and what students actually need, have big plans for growth.
“We currently serve around 150,000 students,” says Michael Brown, City Year CEO, explaining that his goals include doubling the percentage of students on track to graduate, reaching a majority of students deemed as off track and expanding to new cities.
“We want to serve 850,000 students over the next 10 years, and we’ll need a corps of over 10,000 City Year AmeriCorps members to do it.”
As part of a series of live Google Hangouts On Air featuring service opportunities, NationSwell interviewed Brown and his cofounder, Alan Khazei, along with a current corps member and a City Year alumnus.
While City Year is creating thousands of opportunities to serve, this country lacks the expectation of service — something the organization hopes to address. Like the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute, which is looking to mobilize a million young people to serve, City Year envisions a future in which “the most commonly-asked question of an 18-year-old will be, ‘Where will you do your service year?’”
“It’s so important for young people to serve because it really connects us to the greater world,” says Lan Truong, a City Year corps member based in Boston, explaining that service connects us to something bigger than ourselves. “We get to make our country better and make our people better.”
“A year of service changes you,” adds Marissa Rodriguez, who went from City Year to become the Training & Operations Manager at Boston Scholar Athletes (which works to improve academic performance through sports). “For us to be able to sort of find the way that we can continue to make an impact is so key and will continue to grow the opportunity that a year of service provides.”
Khazei says that recapturing the service ethic in America would change our country in profound ways, adding that the Greatest Generation was that way because they served together. “If we had a year of service as a common expectation, every generation would become the Greatest Generation,” he says.
Watch the video above, then click the Take Action button to learn how you can join NationSwell and The Franklin Project to spread the word on service year opportunities, and make sure to tweet your thoughts and questions using the #serviceyear hashtag.
Cities or Suburbs: Which Area is Seeing a Population Boom?
Close your eyes and picture idyllic tree-lined streets in a cheery suburban neighborhood. If you open your eyes, however, you might still see that image — only there might be a lot of “for sale” signs posted in front yards or dark houses due to vacancy.
That’s because cities are now seeing a population influx. According to census analysis by William Frey of the Brookings Institution, this could be the decade of big-city growth.
Analyzing data from 2010-2013, Frey was able to figure out that cities themselves — not just their metropolitan areas — grew at a measurably faster rate than suburbs, with “primary cities” (those with a population over 1 million) growing 1.13 percent from 2011 to 2012. At the same time, suburban areas grew at only .95 percent.
While the difference (and growth rate itself) may seem minimal, it reflects more significant changes that are happening in a select number of cities such as New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; San Jose, California; Austin, Texas; Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina; Denver; and Seattle. All those cities have even faster growth rates even faster than the national average!
Although there are a variety of reasons that people may be migrating back to cities, one that we’ve mentioned before is the rise of the innovation district – urban areas that are easily accessible and combine a variety of organizations and people advancing ideas and promoting ingenuity. These areas attract not only jobs, but because of their cosmopolitan and integrated feel, residents too.
Another specific driver of growth could be the new transportation initiative in Minneapolis-St. Paul, another booming city, according to City Lab.
So, does this mean the demise of white picket fences and two-car garages? Hardly. As the study points out, the suburbs are continuing to grow, albeit at a slower pace. But with growth, comes innovation — giving cities the upper hand.
How Baltimore Successfully Moved Residents Out of the Inner City
It may surprise some to hear, but it takes a fair amount of convincing to get impoverished families to move to a middle-class suburb. Good schools, safer streets, and larger accommodations seem tempting, but many studies show that when given the chance, people tend to relocate to similarly disadvantaged, racially segregated areas.
But that’s not the case in Baltimore — anymore, that is. Two-thirds of the 2,000 families that moved to predominantly white, middle-class neighborhoods in 2005 are still living in their suburban neighborhoods up to eight years later. Those urban migrants kept their jobs in the city, sent their children to better schools, and somewhat miraculously, have experienced almost no racial friction in their new surroundings. So what did Baltimore do right? And what can other cities learn?
A new study in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management lays it all out. After tracking those 2,000 families for the past eight years, it discovered how a lawsuit eventually created an act that not only turned the tide of resistance in Baltimore, but ensured permanent, content residents outside the city’s notoriously gritty corridors.
It all started with a 1995 ACLU lawsuit, which charged that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Baltimore’s housing authority were running a program that didn’t encourage those on federal housing assistance to move. It wasn’t until 2005, though, that the court finally sided with the ACLU and created of a new voucher program.
The updated program required participants to move from hyper-segregated, hyper-poor neighborhoods to majority-white, suburban ones. Those neighborhoods had to be less than 10 percent poor and less than 30 percent black. But the inspired part of it all, and likely the portion that ensured its success, is that counseling was provided from move-out to move-in to picking a new school.
So while leaving behind family and friends and moving to unknown suburbia was intimidating, it seems that the counseling helped residents adjust and realize the benefit from leaving behind the neighborhood they knew. “These women had never experienced safe neighborhoods or good schools,” Stefanie DeLuca, associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins and fellow at the Century Foundation, says. She studied the families and did in-depth interviews with 110 of them to get a better idea of their experience. “They were so segregated from mainstream opportunities.”
Realizing their new potential, the new residents of suburbia could see the value in relocating. As Atlantic Cities reports, one originally hesitant women, Kimberley, says in retrospect that “it’s only in leaving that I started growing and wanting to do different things, learn different things and be something different.” In fact, DeLuca and her associates found that the families that did return to the city were the ones who were most hesitant to leave.
The case of Baltimore proves how a willing government and available funds aren’t enough to solve the problem of hyper-segregation; the problem is often cyclical. But with time, patience, and counseling resources, the cycle can be broken.