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“Facing Race” in the Bike Movement, Part I
At bicycle gatherings over the past few years, I’ve attended discussions about building an inclusive movement, engaging more diverse communities in our work. We’ve started the sometimes difficult but absolutely critical conversation about race, class and bicycle advocacy.
But it’s not just about who’s at the table when decisions are made about our streets. It’s also about who’s engaged and how we’re doing our work within bicycle advocacy organizations themselves.
That’s why Hamzat and I went to the Facing Race conference last week. We know the League has a lot to learn.
Organized by the Applied Research Center — which addresses racial justice though media, research and leadership development — this national conference brought more than 1,400 people from the public, private and nonprofit sectors to Baltimore to learn how we can address social justice in our diverse work to build better communities.
Now, addressing racial inequity can be an uncomfortable topic, and, in my experience, that unease can push the conversation to the backburner as we scramble to fight the day-to-day fires of grassroots advocacy. So for the first session I went to a panel on “Changing the Conversation on Race.” Right away, Maya Wiley, founder of the Center for Social Inclusion, made a great distinction about how we even approach conversations about engaging diverse communities.
In many cases, “we’re conflating racism with race,” she said. “If you start with racism, people feel like you’re accusing them of being really bad people. But the vast majority of Americans consciously believe that racism is bad. What they don’t always necessarily see, in a visual way, is how there is structural racial inequity. That doesn’t require bad actors. We want to get at the structural underpinnings — how even when institutions operate race neutrally, they may be reinforcing inequity that continues to exclude communities of color.”
Rinku Sen, ARC’s executive director, took that explanation a step further, explaining that there’s a difference between diversity and equity. Think of it like a party, she said. If she’s invited to a gathering, sure, it adds diversity. “But if I get to the party and the music doesn’t suit me and there’s no way for me to change the music, then I’m not going to stay at that party very long… Diversity is about getting bodies into the room; equity is about what people are able to do once they’re in the room. Diversity can get people to come to the meeting, but, without equity, they won’t necessarily pay any attention to what you say. Diversity is a good start, but equity is the real prize.”
That’s certainly a key point to remember as we work to broaden the number of folks at our growing bike party: Not just opening the door but getting everyone’s input on the playlist.
In many cases, that kind of change isn’t just about shifting folks’ personal beliefs. Perhaps even more importantly, it’s about creating policy, too. “Policy is a fundamental way in which we change attitudes,” Wiley said. “What takes attitude change to scale is changing the policies that continue to drive the decisions.”
Certainly, bike advocates know plenty about the power of public policy — we all work for good laws and funding criteria that lead to better streets for bicyclists. Many organizations and coalitions — like the Community Cycling Center in Portland; City of Lights in Los Angeles; and Local Spokes in New York City — are extending the circle of stakeholders, making sure city leaders hear the voices and needs of day laborers, refugees, low-income people and communities of color.
Especially in tough economic times, Milley Hawk Daniels, from PolicyLink, said her organization emphasizes: “Equity is a superior growth model.” And that’s more than a catchphrase. To help advocates, across a range of issues, advance equity in their campaigns, PolicyLink produced a guide called “GEARs: Getting Equity Advocacy Results.” The resource charts, step by step, the benchmarks, frameworks, and tools for measuring progress in equity efforts for policy change; click here to download.
But policy isn’t just the domain of our city council and members of Congress. Advocacy organizations and clubs create norms and standards, too. That’s why I was particularly interested in the “Internalizing Racial Equity Institutionally” session, which addressed how the policies in our employee handbooks and the overall culture of our nonprofits can make or break our efforts at inclusion.
Gita Gultanti-Partee, of Open Source Leadership Strategies, framed the issue succinctly. “We’re all hoping to be agents of change, but we’re also units of change,” she said. “How can we embody the change we wish to see?”
We spent the better part of two hours exploring that complex question — and many others. How do decisions get made in your organization? How do resources get distributed? How does someone become a leader? As Maggie Potapchuk, of MP Associates, pointed out “If we’re not intentional or explicit, we’ll constantly go to the default — recreating and embodying the same power dynamics we want to change.”
I can’t share the assessment tool we used because it’s still in development, but I can say the interactive session definitely got me thinking. Check out the resources offered by Potapchuk and Gultantee-Partee to start an inquiry into your organization’s culture and process.
… And stay tuned for more insight from the conference tomorrow!
Carolyn Szczepanski
Communications Director
Carolyn joined the League in March 2012, after two years at the Alliance for Biking & Walking. In addition to managing the League's blog, magazine and other communications, Carolyn organized the first National Women's Bicycling Summit and launched the League's newest program: Women Bike. Before she crossed over to advocacy, she was a professional journalist for nearly 10 years.
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November 19th, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Nicely written, Carolyn.
Equity spans all sorts of activities besides race and class. For another example. My wife, of Indian origins, is a Hindu. There have been more than enough work events, usually involving food, that she has gone to where she is pressured to attend, but the food is inevitably meat-centered. She is more forgiving of that than I am (I have gotten to be militant about both food and bicycling infrastructure because otherwise, the prevailing paradigm misses the point). One is left with the notion that the people running the events want diversity, but lack the cultural sensitivity to know when they are being exclusive to their own identity and culture. Try being a Hindu (or a Muslim, or a vegetarian) and going to a company party where the managers order nothing but barbequed pig. “Oh,just scrape off the meat”. Yeah, sure…..
Likewise, when cities persist in concentrating on transportation diversity in the politically powerful gentrified areas, they too miss the point–we leave a lot of people heading for the exits rather than staying for the tunes.
I was a kid in the Inner City of Buffalo, N.Y. Before the Kensington Expressway was built, it was easy for us to walk to school. Once that huge ditch was blasted into the ground, there was a giant moat between our neighborhood and our school (School #39, now called the Martin Luther King Multicultural Institute) and it was tough to walk to school. Yet another example of cultural imperialism or cultural hegemony, sacrificing the neighborhoods of the inner city to the convenience of the more economically powerful ‘burbs.
Well, like most of the honkies in that neighborhood, my parents eventually joined the white flight to the ‘burbs. But that lesson of sacrifice and subsequent neglect imposed on the Inner City wasn’t lost on me entirely–I saw similar inequity in Honolulu for the same reasons. We have a lot to un-do and re-do. How do we learn to listen, create diversified solutions (equity), and share our resources, not to mention play other people’s music?
November 20th, 2012 at 4:22 am
This is really interesting, and these points are important. But I am intrigued that your discussion of race moves to class, but then presumes that the issues are about income/insecurity/long hours etc. A friend forwarded me the link to this post because of a very tentative conversation elsewhere, where I and others, commented that a preponderance of parents who insist on driving their kids to schools in our neighbourhood are of Asian origin. But I don’t think this correlates to them being refugees, or low-income workers or anything like that. they are at least as comfortable as the rest of the local area – many of them driving BMWs. So there is an issue about ‘culture’ as well as ‘class’. Elsewhere in our city there probably are issues akin to what you describe, and I’m not trying to diminish them, but it’s not the only set of issues linked to race and safer streets.
November 20th, 2012 at 10:30 am
[...] Carolyn mentioned in her post yesterday, we both attended a the Facing Race conference this past week(end). Why, you might ask, would two [...]
November 20th, 2012 at 11:06 am
Great blog post. I appreciate reading about discussions on achieving equity in the bicycle community. Inclusion and diversity is a step toward making progress. This community must work together to create structural change by first recognizing where the gaps are and what inequities exist. Here is where coalitions play a major role and leaders are needed. The League can facilitate opportunities for discussions to happen regularly and help translate the needs of the community to policy makers. With that said, I am willing to take on the task as an agent and unit of change. Please keep us in the loop and provide educational opportunities to build our capacity.
November 20th, 2012 at 11:33 am
I think race and class are both critical issues. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they do not. Both need to be addressed.