http://www.washingtonpost.

com/local/md-politics/local-governments-are-trying-to-fix-racial-inequity-but-the-path-forward-isnt-
clear/2019/08/18/4a7d93ee-beb6-11e9-9b73-fd3c65ef8f9c_story.html
Racial gaps prove hard to reduce
Rebecca Tan, The Washington Post Published 8:07 pm CDT, Sunday, August 18, 2019
On a cool summer night, 200 people filed into a community center deep in the Maryland suburbs for an atypical
town hall. On the agenda: race.

Armed with Sharpies and poster boards, uniformed police officers, elected officials and students were asked to "take a
deep, big cleansing breath" before sharing their experiences with racial inequity in Montgomery County.

The disparities in this liberal, majority-minority suburb were glaring. The poverty rate for black and Latino residents is
nearly triple that of white residents; Latinos are more than five times as likely as whites to lack a high school diploma or
GED; black youths make up one-fifth of the school-age population, yet theyaccount for 3 in 5 juvenile arrests.

The conversation, awkward at times, was revealing overall. At the end, though, the path forward remained unclear. In this
way, it epitomized the growing trend of local governments trying to undo generations of racial inequity with ambitious,
sometimes vaguely defined initiatives.

The movement began on the West Coast a decade ago, but has accelerated in recent years as elected officials - mostly
from Democratic strongholds - confront mounting evidence of racial disparities and attempt to distinguish themselves
from what they see as the racially divisive policies of the Trump administration.

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From Washington state to the suburbs of the nation's capital, officials are diving into uncharted territory, experts say,
with little clarity on how their efforts will translate into policy or whether they will effectively bridge gaps in income and
education.

In Seattle, where its city council has spent millions supporting racial equity programs in public schools, the achievement
gap between black and white students has persisted, and in some areas, worsened. In Virginia's Fairfax County, leaders
appointed a chief equity officer and trained "equity leads" in each department, but have yet to adopt significant policy
changes.
"I couldn't say which jurisdiction is doing better than the other, because every jurisdiction is fumbling," said Temi
Bennett, director of policy and communication at the nonprofit Consumer Health Foundation, which is working on equity
initiatives with policymakers in Montgomery and the District of Columbia. "I can tell you this: no one has any idea what
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"And how could they?" Bennett continued. "It's never been done before."

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The Government Alliance on Race and Equity has seen paid membership double annually since it started work four years
ago, peaking this year at 162 jurisdictions, said co-director Julie Nelson.

Fairfax joined as a core member in 2015, paying $10,000 in annual dues. Montgomery (Maryland) and Alexandria
(Virginia) followed suit this year, while the District Council recently became an associate member.

The Alliance says the first step to achieving equity is to normalize conversations on race, which involves teaching
government officials and their constituents to embrace terms like "systemic racism" and "implicit biases."

At Montgomery's community conversation in June, a middle-aged Latino immigrant argued that all people of color in the
county were impacted by racially biased systems; beside him, an African-American couple originally from Mississippi
disagreed.

They had worked hard to afford the life that they had now, they said, and they believed others should too. Besides, they
added, Montgomery was the most racially equitable place they had ever seen.

"This is part of the squishiness of equity - everyone has their own point of view," said Elaine Bonner Tompkins, a senior
legislative analyst at Montgomery's Office of Legislative Oversight and a lead researcher in the county's equity efforts.

The county's Department of Health and Human Services launched its own racial equity working group a decade ago. It
took three years to agree on what racial equity meant, and several more to communicate the definition to staff, said
Betty Lam, the chief of the department's office of community affairs.

Two years ago, the department began evaluating senior managers and supervisors on how active they have been in
learning about racial equity and incorporating it into their work. It is the only department-wide initiative so far, Lam said.
Smaller efforts, such as redistributing a $36,000 grant for hepatitis B treatment to better serve Asian-American
residents, took weeks of meetings to ensure community buy-in.

"It's nice to throw that word, 'equity,' around, but what does it mean?" said Uma Ahluwalia, who led the department until
2018. "It took us years, to be honest with you, just to teach ourselves the language."

---

King County, the most populous county in Washington state, passed an Equity and Social Justice ordinance in 2010.
Today, its equity office operates with nine full-time staff and a biennial budget of $4 million.

Director Matias Valenzuela said there has been tangible progress, including a change in school suspension policies that
he says has led to fewer youths in jail.

But he also said internal pushback has stymied some efforts, particularly when initiatives go beyond training to policy
changes and resource reallocation. For example, he said, some hiring managers resisted his office's efforts to broaden
government recruitment beyond a few recognized institutions and graduate schools.
"We have particular pipelines that have existed for jobs," he said. "And when you try to dismantle that . . . some people
see it as a loss."

In 2013, Seattle's school board introduced "racial equity teams" as part of a five-year plan to tackle achronic X
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achievement gap. The plan expired without making a significant impact, critics say. Recent research from Stanford
University found that from 2016 to 2017, the gap in test scores between black and white students in Seattle actually
increased; in a self-released scorecard for the 2017-2018 school year, the district said it failed to meet three out of four
racial equity targets.

In the District area, Fairfax is the furthest along. After the county joined the Alliance in 2015, leaders launched "One
Fairfax," which mandates the consideration of equity in policymaking. In 2018, they hired Chief Equity Officer Karla Bruce
and equipped her with two policy advisers and a budget of more than $480,000.

Fairfax has not set outcome deadlines for its equity work, Bruce said, instead focusing onhelping agencies incorporate
equity considerations into decision-making.

Equity efforts have also sparked explicit backlash in some places, including Minnesota, where conservative writer
Katherine Kersten wrote that a push to investigate biases in student discipline records will bring "increased violence" to
classrooms. The state education commissioner called Kersten's arguments "flat-out racist."

In New York, Deroy Murdock, a contributing editor for National Review, wrote that a $23 million effort to provide implicit
bias training for 125,000 city schools employees was wasteful, adding that the money should have been used to hire
more teachers.

And in Montgomery, some parents say proposals aimed at addressing racial inequity in schools, such as redrawing
attendance boundaries or offering honors classes for all students, are too extreme. Aleksandra Rohde, a retired Army
lawyer, said changing boundaries will end up "dumbing down" all schools and is unfair to residents who can afford to live
near the highest-performing schools.

"When people buy into a neighborhood, they've invested money," Rohde said. "And when you take away boundaries,
you're telling people that you're taking away that money."

Such criticism, and the slow pace of change so far, has left advocates like Bennett feeling frustrated. A former aide to
District Council members Brandon Todd, D, and Kenyan McDuffie, D, she began working for the Consumer Health
Foundation in 2018.

"It's all good to talk about [inequity], but nobody wants to shift resources," said Bennett, who is African-American. "The
moment you start shifting resources, it starts to feel to white people like oppression."

Laurel Hoa, co-founder of Montgomery's chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice, dismissed the county's efforts so far
as "a PR stunt," pointing out that no concrete changes have emerged since the Montgomery County Council passed its
racial equity resolution in 2018.

Council President Nancy Navarro, D, the driving force behind the resolution, countered that officials chose to spend the
initial months fielding ideas from residents.

"We have hundreds of years of structural issues to work through," Navarro said. "The timeline is very specific, and we are
on target."

In the fall, the council plans to introduce legislation that will call for, among other things, the creation of an equity office
similar to Fairfax's and a requirement for future legislation to include a statement that details potential implications on
racial inequities.

County Executive Marc Elrich, D, said he anticipates more resistance will emerge as the bill is considered.

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"You can't wait for people to be ready for this," Elrich said. "We don't have the luxury of waiting for everybody to get
there."

McDuffie is also planning to introduce racial equity legislation in the District this fall. Like other government officials, he
sees the biggest challenge as figuring out which measures actually work.

"People believe there's going to be a favorable impact, and I believe that too," said Bonner-Tompkins, the legislative
analyst in Montgomery. "But if we're being honest, there is no evidence yet to bear that out."

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