Recap of 3rd Summit for Civil Rights, co-sponsored by CURE, held remotely on July 30 and 31

CURE co-sponsored the 3rd Summit for Civil Rights which was held remotely, and presented by the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, The Workers’ Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law School, The Journal of Law and Inequality at the University of Minnesota Law School in Minneapolis, and Building One America.

The online event featured many powerful speakers, including:
• Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minnesota,
• Congressman Robert C. Scott, U.S. House of Representatives, Virginia,
• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Ph.D., author, activist, & Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University,
• Richard L. Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO,
• Prentiss Dantzler, Assistant Professor in the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University, graduate of the PhD program in Urban Affairs at Rutgers University in Camden/ his dissertation was supervised by CURE director Paul Jargowsky), and many others. For a complete list of speaker and their bios,

visit: https://summitforcivilrights.org/speakers/2020


For the past three years, the Summit for Civil Rights has convened multi-racial and intergenerational gatherings of some of the nation’s top civil rights leaders from labor, faith, academia, law and government to respond to the dangerous intersection of enduring racial disparities, widening economic inequality, and rising political polarization in our society. The 3rd national Summit for Civil Rights continued to focus on these timely topics that have only intensified with the pandemic and been courageously amplified by the protesters.

The Summit was broken down into four distinct but interrelated discussions over the course of the two days (see topics below). While much of the attention was appropriately aimed at calls for sweeping police reform, the Summit for Civil Rights examined some of the deeper, historical
structures of racial apartheid in American’s institutions and their meaning, especially at this critical time, for working people of all backgrounds, for political action, multi- racial power, and a meaningful and transformative policy agenda.

We have witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of anger, outrage and solidarity across the nation, sparked by the killing of an unarmed Black man by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25. This movement for radical change is coming at a time of a global health crisis, political turmoil, and a massive economic catastrophe deepening existing inequalities while accelerating economic trends already devastating workers
and communities. Some of the topics, building on the past two Summits and attempting to learn from and draw on the new energy, anger and desire for change, included:

THE STATE OF MULTI-RACIAL AMERICA AND BLACK POWER

The national election/s,The Black electorate and the rise and fall of populist insurgencies of both the left and right, From Black lives to Black Power

THE TWO AMERICA’S – THE STATE OF AMERICAN APARTHEID

The consequences of our inaction and our acquiescence to a racially divided society, 52 years since Kerner Commission, 57 since March on Washington, Pandemic as microscope and telescope

WHO’S PROFITING?

Racial segregation as a lucrative and anti-worker business model, How America’s enduring ”Color Line” drives economic inequality and racial oppression

WHAT IS TO BE DONE? HOW CAN WE HELP?

Is America ready for a 2nd Reconstruction? A 3rd “Founding”? What would a Civil Rights Restoration Act Look Like in 2020?

An agenda for Economic Opportunity, Racial Justice, Freedom, and Inclusion A highlight of this year’s summit was a verbal commitment [via zoom] from Congressman Bobby Scott, U.S. House of Representatives, Virginia, to work together with the Building One America consortium on furthering the Economic Opportunity, Racial Justice, Freedom, and Inclusion agenda. As such, Congressman Scott agreed to include recommendations and strategies laid out by BOA in his Civil Rights and Voting Rights taskforce on the Hill!!

 

Dismantling the Architecture of Segregation

Dismantling the Architecture of Segregation

A Conference Sponsored by the Center for Urban Research and Education, the Department of
Public Policy and Administration, and the Scholars Strategy Network

Multipurpose Room, Rutgers University-Camden Student Center
Camden, New Jersey, October 11, 2019

Thank you to our presenters and all who attended!


About the Conference:

Recent land use and zoning proposals around the United States directly attack the “Architecture of Segregation” – the public policies and institutional practices that further spatial inequality. Single- family zoning, for example, has effectively been used to keep lower-income people out of certain neighborhoods. To address this inequity, Minneapolis has eliminated single-family zoning throughout the city. Oregon and Seattle are considering similar measures. Several 2020 Presidential candidates, including Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren, have offered significant proposals to break down exclusionary zoning. Segregation will not be solved through reform of land use policies alone, but the recent attention to the role of unwise public policies in creating and sustaining spatial inequality is a welcome first step.

This one-day conference will bring together leading academics, practitioners, and policymakers to develop an anti-segregation policy agenda. Speakers and panelists will articulate, analyze, and debate policy changes to finally begin to dismantle the Architecture of Segregation. We invite research papers on topics such as: 1) land use and housing policies that contribute to the persistence of segregation in the United States; 2) policy analyses of proposed policies intended to promote racial and economic integration; and 3) analyses of the implementation and evaluations of the impact of such policies.

This conference is necessary because the persistence of segregation by race and class casts a long shadow on the nation. In the average metropolitan area, 60 percent of blacks would have to move to a different neighborhood to achieve full integration. In some major metropolitan areas, such as New York, Detroit, or Milwaukee, the figure is nearly 80 percent. Black and white children enrolled in school are even more segregated than adults. Segregation of blacks from Asians, while lower on average, is growing. The nation is segregated by income as well as race, with more than 11 million persons residing in high-poverty areas – 56 percent higher than in 2000. A growing body of research confirms the detrimental effects that socially and economically isolated neighborhoods have on the health, safety, and life chances of those who live in them, particularly children.

There is a growing realization that segregation by race and ethnicity and concentration of poverty are not inevitable, but rather result from public policies and institutional arrangements that have governed the growth and development of metropolitan areas for decades:

  • The federal government subsidized suburban development that depopulated urban cores, allowed suburban jurisdictions to exclude low-income families, and tolerated blatant racial discrimination in suburban housing markets and housing finance.
  • Fragmented governance allowed suburban jurisdictions to set local development policies with no regard for the larger metropolitan areas within which they were embedded.
  • Tax policy rewarded construction of large homes while housing policies reinforced segregated patterns of public and assisted housing.

Every social and economic problem is both harder and costlier to solve in the context of vastly unequal neighborhoods. Thus, reducing segregation is an essential first step to fixing failing schools, improving health and education outcomes for low-income children, and improving spatial access to opportunity. Moreover, moving towards more integrated living patterns will help break down the walls of distrust that contribute to racial animosity, growing inequality, and political polarization.

In addition to research papers, the conference will feature presentations by public officials, policymakers, and advocates actively engaged in efforts to promote integration through changes to land use regulations, housing finance reform, fair housing enforcement, and affordable housing development. The event will be livestreamed and broadcast on social media via the CURE Twitter account, @CURECamden.

Agenda

8:30-9:00am: Registration and Continental Breakfast.

9:00-9:10am: Welcoming Remarks. Chancellor Phoebe Haddon, Rutgers-Camden.

9:10-9:30am: Introduction and Overview of the Day. Paul A. Jargowsky, Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE), Rutgers-Camden.

9:30-11:00am: Panel 1 – Zoning and Land Use.

Paul Gottlieb and John Borrmann, Rutgers-New Brunswick. The Suburban Wall:  Zoning Restrictions in the New Jersey Highlands and their Effects on Economic Stratification Across Space.

Andre Comandon, UCLA. Fragmenting Los Angeles: An Historical Institutionalist Approach to Exclusionary Urban Development and Policy.

J. Rosie Tighe, Cleveland State University. The Intersection of Land Use Regulations and Community Attitudes in Determining Housing Choice and Access.

Richard Sander, UCLA and Yana Kucheva, CCNY. How Does Metropolitan Desegregation Come About?

11:00-11:15am: Break.

11:15-12:45pm: Panel 2 – Race and Power.

Hilary Silver, George Washington University. “Race, Homelessness, and Shelter Siting Disputes:  Implications for Segregation.”

Norrinda Brown Hayat, Rutgers – Newark. Section 8 Is the New N-Word: Policing Integration in the Age of Black Mobility.

Kanika Khanna, Cornell. “Examining Claims of Spatial Segregation in New York City’s Affordable Housing Policy Administration.”

Maria Krysan, Allison Helmuth, Sha’Kurra Evans, University of Illinois at Chicago. “Cataloging Racial Residential Integration Efforts: A Preliminary Report.”

12:45-1:45pm: Lunch Discussion. Richard Sander et al., “Disrupting Segregation: The National Moonshot Initiative.”

1:45-3:15pm: Panel 3 – Housing and Community.

Stefanie DeLuca, Johns Hopkins University. “Creating Moves to Opportunity.”

Joni Hirsch, Mark Joseph, Amy Khare. National Initiative on Mixed-Income Community. “Promoting Inclusive, Equitable Mixed-Income Communities:  An Analysis of San Francisco’s Hope SF and Washington, DC’s New Communities Initiative.”

Kathryn L. Howell, VCU. “Building Bridges and Digging Moats:  The Infrastructure for Affordable Housing Preservation in Washington, DC.”

Willow S. Lung-Amam, University of Maryland. “Metropolitan Planning in a Vacuum: Lessons on Regional Equity Planning from Baltimore’s Sustainable Communities Initiative.”

3:15-3:30pm: Break.

3:30-5:15pm: Panel 4 – Boundaries.

Christian Hess, University of Washington and Rutgers-Camden. How Suburban Is Racial Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas?

John Lauermann, City University of New York. “Luxury Real Estate and Residential Segregation in New York City.”

Ryan W. Coughlan, Molloy College, and Julia Sass Rubin, Rutgers-New Brunswick. “The Segregating Effects of Charter Schools.”

Ariel Bierbaum and Gail Sunderman, University of Maryland. “Dismantling the Architecture of Segregated Schooling: School Re-zoning as Land Use and Growth Management Policy.”

Russell M. Smith, Winston-Salem State University. “Boundaries, Borders, and Spatial (In)Justices.”

5:15-5:30: Break

5:30-6:30pm: Keynote Address. Gregory Squires, George Washington University. “Inequality, Segregation, and the Right to the City.”

6:30-7:00pm: Hors d’Oeuvres and Conversation.

Ida Wells-Barnett Annual Lecture: Reflections on 400 Years of African-Descended People in the New World

Ida B Wells Lecture flyer

Join us on Monday, February 4 for the Ida Wells-Barnett Annual Lecture.

Rutgers Alumnus, Prentiss A. Dantzler, PhD, is this year’s Ida B. Wells-Barnett speaker. Prentiss is an assistant professor of sociology and Mellon Faculty Fellow at Colorado College, and earned a doctorate in public affairs from Rutgers–Camden.

Date and Time
Monday, February 4 2019 at 6-8 PM
 
Location
Rutgers–Camden, Multi-Purpose Room

Next CURE seminar: Dr. Michael Hayes, Friday, Dec. 7

This talk will present new findings on the unintended consequences of the New Jersey Superintendent Salary Cap (NJSSC). Starting in 2011, New Jersey set a salary cap for all future superintendent contracts based on student enrollment. This is one of the first state-imposed tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) placed directly on local public managers. The salary cap caused large reductions in base salaries for future superintendent contracts in the majority of NJ school districts. Using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, the current study estimates the effect of NJSSC on superintendent turnover following the 2010-11 school year. Specifically, this study finds that an additional $10,000 reduction in base salary due to the NJSSC corresponds to a 4.0 percentage point increase in the likelihood of superintendent turnover for school districts with an expiring contract relative to those school districts without an expiring contract. Additionally, this study finds this increase in the likelihood of superintendent turnover following the enactment of NJSSC was largest for the least affluent school districts in New Jersey.

Michael Hayes

Dr. Michael S. Hayes received his PhD in Public Administration & Policy from the School of Public Affairs at American University. His research interests include public budgeting & finance, K-12 education finance, summer learning loss, value-added models, and state and local tax policy. He has been honored with the Emerging Scholars Award by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs & Administration. His research has been published in various academic journals including the American Journal of EducationEconomic LettersEducational PolicyJournal of Economic Geography, and Public Budgeting & Finance. He also has been interviewed and cited in numerous media outlets including The Brookings InstituteChalkbeatEducation WeekPolitico, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street JournalProfessor Hayes teaches Quantitative Methods, Foundations of Policy Analysis, and Financial Management of Public Programs.