Taking a New Look at Discrimination in New York
by Ejim Dike, Gotham Gazette, March 29, 2008
LINK

Last month, New York City paid $21 million to settle a class action lawsuit (see below article - Ed.) for race-based employment practices in the city Department of Parks and Recreation. At the time of the lawsuit, more than nine in ten of the parks employees making less than $20,000 a year were black or Latino, while only 14 perent making $50,000 to $60,000 were black or Latino. When the Bloomberg administration agreed to the settlement, it nevertheless claimed it did not and does not discriminate.

Earlier this month, Senator Barack Obama called for open and honest action to address inequality, and in that spirit it is time for New York City's government to examine its own approach to practices. Instead of officials clamming up and insisting categorically that the city does not discriminate, what if policymakers, advocates and residents addressed the problem head on and agreed that policies that further racial and gender disparities -- intentionally or not -- are unacceptable?

This is the approach proposed by the Human Rights in Government Operations Audit Law (Human Rights GOAL) introduced earlier this month by Councilmembers Helen Foster and Darlene Mealy. This measure would put us one step closer to real equality for all New Yorkers.

To fend off inadvertent discrimination, Human Rights GOAL would do three things:

--Track how its policies affect different populations
--Remedy disparities as they emerge, rather than wait for a lawsuit to challenge them; and
--Include the affected, marginalized populations in implementing the law.

While New York City does have a stated policy of non-discrimination, it lacks the requisite tools to determine if that policy is being adhered to. No standard mechanism exists for knowing when or how government policies have disparate, negative impact on historically marginalized groups. And aside from the occasional audit by the Equal Employment Practices Commission, the only way discriminatory policies get fixed is when people undertake lengthy and costly lawsuits -- after the damage has been done.

The lawsuit settled by the parks department a few weeks ago, for example, might have been prevented if Human Right GOAL had been in effect. The lawsuit, dating back to 1999, was brought by over 3,000 black and Hispanic employees who charged that the department had passed them over for promotion in favor of white employees and paid them less.

After 14 months of negotiation, the Bloomberg administration agreed to pay more than $21 million and make "major changes in certain of its personnel practices." But the city staff and resources spent to defend the parks department in this lawsuit - and the anguish suffered by the victims of discrimination - is a much higher price than the stated settlement amount. And the open-ended promise to make changes and prevent something like this from happening again can only be fulfilled if it is accompanied by a concrete plan.

Explicit discrimination may be less common now than it once was, but, as Obama indicated in his speech, discrimination persists in seemingly neutral policies that create obstacles to equality.

The Precedent for Need
The discrimination documented in the park employees' suit was not an isolated incident. The City of New York has found itself in this position before.

--In 2005, the parks department settled a separate, federal discrimination lawsuit claiming that it routinely bypassed black and Hispanic employees for promotion.

--A year ago, a lawsuit by the U.S. attorney's office named the Department of Transportation for discriminating against women in its hiring practices. In the last 10 years, the lawsuit alleged, the department never hired a single female bridge painter despite the applications of a number of qualified women. The transportation department claimed to have a "gender neutral" hiring policy.

--Last year the federal Department of Justice sued the Fire Department of the City of New York charging that its written examinations discriminate against blacks and Hispanics applying to be entry-level firefighters.

Less documented but even more pervasive are the disparities reflected by the unequal application of municipal services. For example, while black and Latino youth are arrested more for use of illegal substances like marijuana, the city's own health department reports that white youth are more likely to use marijuana. In the child welfare system, black and Latino youth comprise an overwhelming 87 percent of the children in foster care. In 2006, 43 percent of black students and 41 percent of Latino students in New York City graduated on time, compared to 67 percent of white students and 68 percent of Asian students.

In one of the saddest facts, the infant mortality rate of children citywide is 5.9 per 1000 births, compared to 10.5 per 1000 for African American children.

It's not the official New York City policy to under-employ or under-serve certain groups, but as a result of seemingly benign policies and their implementation, men, women and youth wind up the repeated victims of de facto discrimination.

Setting a GOAL
Human Rights GOAL addresses disparities by drawing on two human rights treaties signed by the U.S.: the International Conventionon the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Notably, both treaties prohibit any policies and practices that are discriminatory in effect even if that is not in purpose. This definition of discrimination is broader than the definition in the existing civil rights law, which requires evidence of intent - and often a lawsuit - to determine the presence of discrimination.

Upon passage, Human Rights GOAL would mandate that all city agencies undergo an audit to determine what kind of data they already collect, what existing mechanisms are in place to address discriminatory practices, and to what extent agencies engage those most affected by their policies in evaluating and improving them. Based on the idea that the first step to remedy discriminatory practices is to identify and determine the extent of the problem, the bill requires all city agencies to collect and publish data on employment and service delivery, then use this data to analyze their programs to identify if they have a discriminatory effect.

While some agencies do track certain numbers -- hiring practices have gradually become better documented thanks to Equal Employment Opportunity policies -- it is notoriously difficult to know what kind of information the city tracks in other areas, and, if so, how one gets that information. Indeed, many advocates supporting Human Rights GOAL list getting access to data -- numbers on race, gender, immigration status, religion and more -- as the biggest obstacle they face in conducting research about the very communities they seek to help. These groups have filed Freedom of Information Act requests, only to be repeatedly ignored by the city.

Last year, the New York Civil Liberties Union, New York Times and several others filed a lawsuit against the police department for not sharing electronic data on police stops. The department has since released the data -- but sent it to a third party in another state. Meanwhile, in its annual firearms report, the police break down information on dogs that have been harmed by police gunfire by breed but neglects to do the same by race for people it has harmed.

Judging from departmental reports and the Mayor's Management Report, other agencies fare better. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, for one, collects disaggregated data and makes it available. This should be a practice for all departments -- parks, buildings, transportation, education, environmental protection, children's services and more.

With data in hand, these agencies would then publish a human rights analysis, and develop an action plan targeted at fixing trouble spots. The action plan might entail hiring more broadly, offering better housing or legal services to certain communities, or expanding access to good schools.

Finally, to oversee implementation, Human Rights GOAL would create a human rights taskforce of civilians and city representatives. The taskforce would do some of the heavy lifting to carry out the audits, the assessment of areas for improvement, and what an action plan should look like.

Freedom from discrimination is a basic human right, one New York City has a history of recognizing. But it should not rest on its laurels - a progressive city remains progressive only by constantly searching for ways to expand equality and hold itself accountable.

Across the country, San Francisco passed a version of Human Rights GOAL in light of unfair hiring and service practices. The city has now increased the number of women hired in non-traditional positions and even appointed the first woman to its airport commission.

For the sake of New York and its residents, it is time we employ policies that protect our basic human rights before agencies get slapped with hefty law suits. It is time to turn this human rights bill into law.

Ejim Dike is director of the Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center.

February 26, 2008, 1:29 pm
City Settles Parks Bias Suit for $21 Million
By Sewell Chan
LINK

After 14 months of negotiation, New York City has agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle a federal class-action discrimination lawsuit filed against the Department of Parks and Recreation and will make “major changes in certain of its personnel practices” as part of the settlement, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund announced today. The settlement, which is expected to be ratified by Judge Denny Chin in United States District Court in Manhattan, includes $11.9 million in back pay and compensatory damages to a group of about 3,500 former and current workers.

“We decided that it would be better to settle than to litigate,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told reporters at a news conference in Chinatown today. “It was something that took place a long time ago and I think we are satisfied that our procedures today in that department, and I think in all departments, do not discriminate against anybody.”

The settlement could signal the end of a case that dates to 1999, when 20 black or Hispanic parks workers filed complaints with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asserting that the department — under the Giuliani administration and the parks commissioner at the time, Henry J. Stern — had illegally discriminated on the basis of race and national origin in assigning and promoting employees. In February 2001, the E.E.O.C. found “reasonable cause” to believe the discrimination had occurred, clearing the way for the lawsuit.

The suit was a particular blow to Mr. Stern, a colorful former City Council member who served as parks commissioner under Mayor Edward I. Koch and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, uses the name StarQuest and sends out regular e-mail messages with political commentary through a small nonprofit group he established, New York Civic. The plaintiffs complained that they were bypassed by promotions because of a recruiting program Mr. Stern had started to recruit young graduates of elite colleges — nearly all of them white — to fill positions in the agency. Embarrassed by the publicity, the Giuliani administration for a while ordered Mr. Stern to remain silent.

Then, in June 2002, the Parks Department — now under a new commissioner, Adrian Benepe, reporting to a new mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg — received another blow: a Justice Department lawsuit that accused the agency of of discriminating against black and Hispanic workers for the past seven years by favoring whites for promotions — including those who were part of the special recruiting program. Time and again, the suit contended, the Parks Department failed to follow any objective guidelines for determining promotions and filling management positions, failed to post notices of job openings, and ‘’rarely, if ever'’ conducted the required interviews for vacancies.

The department said its practices had changed, but documents provided as part of the federal lawsuit detailed the extent of the discriminatory practices. In June 2005, the city settled the federal lawsuit, agreeing to broad changes in its promotion practices, including posting job vacancies so that all employees would be aware of them and making promotions on the basis of positive performance evaluations and other proof of merit.

Meanwhile, the original 2001 employees’ lawsuit, known as Wright v. Stern, continued to drag on.

“Today’s settlement is a clear victory for those who were denied equality in the workplace for so long,” said Theodore M. Shaw, director-counsel and president of the defense fund, which uses the initials L.D.F. and is independent of the NAACP fund. “L.D.F. commends the black and Latino workers of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation who stood up to this injustice and had the courage to fight for change.”

Since December 2006, the defense fund worked with several lawyers — including Cynthia Rollings of Beldock Levine & Hoffman and Lewis M. Steel — to reach a settlement with the city.

The settlement announced today includes just $11.9 million to be distributed to the class of plaintiffs, which includes about 3,500 former and current parks employees; about $8 million in lawyers’ fees, and about $1 million in litigation expenses.

Under the settlement, the city has agreed over the next three years to establish ways for employees to obtain review of salary differences that they believe are discriminatory; to obtain adjustments in those salaries if disparities are not justified; to increase pay in certain specific job titles; to train interviewers to ensure that employees who apply for promotions are treated fairly and objectively; and to examine the process by which managers are selected in the future.

Robert H. Stroup, head of the economic justice group at the legal defense fund, said the pay disparities arose in large part because the Parks Department had used a system of provisional promotions that often ended up being permanent and were less transparent than promotions made through regular civil service procedures. The settlement calls for the Parks Department to show greater transparency in promoting managers. Also, as a result of the settlement, employees feel they are not being paid as much as a colleague for the same work, they will be able to bring the matter to the department for a formal review.

Georgia Pestana, chief of the Labor and Employment Law Division at the city’s Law Department, said in a statement:

This agreement should not be construed as an admission of wrongdoing by the Parks Department. The City defended the Parks Department in this litigation for almost a decade, because we do not believe it discriminated or retaliated against its African-American and Hispanic employees. Nonetheless, the City must evaluate the risks presented by a lengthy, multi-phased trial and seek to attain a result in its best interests. We believe this proposed settlement achieves that objective.

Mr. Stern, who was parks commissioner from 1983 to 1990 and again from 1994 to 2002, said in a phone interview today, “We never practiced discrimination on the basis of race, except for affirmative action.” He added, “We deny any discrimination and thank the corporation counsel.”

Mr. Stern said of the recruiting program: “The program was to get young college graduates to work long hours at low salaries. The problem was you couldn’t black graduates to work for $22,000 or $25,000, either because they had loans or were offered better jobs by companies that wanted them. Nonetheless, we never turned one down – we accepted every black graduate that applied to the program. We went out of our way to recruit at historically black colleges. Any black employee who wanted to could have asked to be in this program. None of them asked to because they were being paid more.”

ebruary 26, 2008

New York City Agrees to Settle Discrimination Claims Against City Parks Department

Multi-million dollar settlement secured by NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) along with cooperating attorneys in historic discrimination suit.

(New York, NY) — In a groundbreaking action, New York City has agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle a federal class action lawsuit alleging race and national origin discrimination against the New York City Parks Department. The City has also agreed to major changes in certain of its personnel practices as a result of the settlement. The settlement agreement was filed today in federal court in Manhattan asking Judge Denny Chin to schedule a fairness hearing and to approve the settlement.

"Today's settlement is a clear victory for those who were denied equality in the workplace for so long. LDF commends the Black and Latino workers of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation who stood up to this injustice and had the courage to fight for change," said Ted Shaw, LDF Director-Counsel and President.

LDF along with co-counsel from the firms of Beldock Levine & Hoffman and attorney Lewis M. Steel negotiated the agreement over the course of fourteen months beginning in December 2006. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation is agreeing to pay nearly $12 Million in back pay and compensatory damages to current and former employees who meet eligibility requirements established in the settlement agreement. The back pay and damages are to remedy past discrimination in promotion and pay, and retaliation against employees who filed charges of race, color or national origin discrimination.

Going forward, the settlement agreement creates new mechanisms for employees to obtain review of salary differences that they believe are discriminatory, and to obtain adjustments in those salaries if disparities are not justified. The City has also agreed to increase pay in certain specific job titles. Further, the City will establish rigorous training for interviewers to ensure that employees who apply for promotions are treated in a more fair and objective manner. The City has agreed to examine the process by which managers are selected in the future to safeguard against discrimination. The City has also agreed to conduct its own review of the experience of persons who file charges of discrimination against Parks, to ascertain whether they experienced any retaliation after they filed charges. Portions of the agreement will remain in effect for a period of three years, during which time the City will file reports of its compliance with the agreement and the plaintiffs will be able to monitor progress.

The lawsuit, Wright v. Stern, was originally filed in 2001, and alleged that the Parks Department engaged in widespread and systemic employment discrimination against its African-American and Latino employees between 1997 and 2004. Parks employees in the case also alleged that they were retaliated against for filing discrimination complaints against their superiors. By agreeing to settle the claims, the City avoided a trial on the allegations. Just prior to the start of mediation, Judge Chin had ruled that the plaintiffs had presented substantial evidence to merit a trial on the allegations of class-wide discrimination in pay, promotions and retaliation.

"This has been a long and difficult struggle, and we have obtained significant relief for our clients, both in terms of damages as well as in changes to Parks practices going forward. This is a win for the African-American and Latino employees as well as for the City of New York. We have closed the door on an unfortunate period of unlawful conduct in the Parks Department," said Robert Stroup, Director of LDF's Economic Justice Program and one of the attorneys representing the African-American and Latino employees.

"This case and this settlement should provide inspiration to all employees subjected to unfair and discriminatory treatment on their jobs. The settlement should also provide a precedent for those employers willing to confront the reality of workplace discrimination. While it was a long time coming, it is a significant step in the direction of equal employment opportunity for African-American and Latino employees of the City of New York," said Cynthia Rollings of Beldock Levine & Hoffman, LLP, another of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.

"What the plaintiffs and their attorneys achieved proves that courageous African-American and Hispanic employees, when united, can stand up to insidious racial and national origin prejudice and can break through a glass ceiling which relegated them to second class status no matter what their individual qualifications. Now that the Parks Department has opened its leadership and managerial ranks to African-American and Hispanic employees, we hope that the City will send a message to other City agencies to review their pay and promotion practices as well. The health of our City is based upon equal employment opportunities and this settlement is certainly a step in the right direction. Working with both the Beldock firm and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was a great experience and I am thankful that I had the privilege of working with them to achieve this fine result," said Lewis M. Steel, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs.

The Court is expected to schedule a fairness hearing for May 12, 2008 and class members will receive individual notice about the settlement in the next 30-45 days.

March 18, 2008
Transcript
Barack Obama’s Speech on Race
The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia, as provided by his presidential campaign.

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

June 9, 2005
Parks Dept. Settles U.S. Suit Alleging Bias in Promotions
By JULIA PRESTON, NY TIMES

The New York Parks and Recreation Department agreed yesterday to broad changes in its promotion practices, reaching a settlement in a federal discrimination lawsuit claiming that the agency routinely bypassed its black and Hispanic employees in awarding jobs.

In a consent decree approved yesterday by a federal judge in Manhattan, the department pledged to post job vacancies so that all employees would be aware of them and to make promotions on the basis of positive performance evaluations and other proof of merit.

The settlement, in a civil-rights lawsuit that the Justice Department filed in 2002, brings the parks department a step closer to overcoming accusations of discrimination that have been hanging over it for years. Lawyers for New York City said the agreement reinforced new promotion policies the department put in place last July, and they noted that the federal government did not require any financial damages.

The federal suit dealt with promotion practices at the department under Henry J. Stern, who was commissioner for 15 years before stepping down in February 2002. One focus was a program Mr. Stern started, called "Class of," to lure college graduates with outstanding academic records. Black and Hispanic employees said the program allowed young white professionals to vault to high positions, leaving behind nonwhites who had been patiently working their way up the ladder.

Mr. Stern welcomed the settlement but insisted that the department had been falsely accused. "We went out of our way not to discriminate," he insisted. He praised Michael A. Cardozo, the city's top lawyer, for pushing for the settlement. Mr. Stern, who is now chairman of the Liberal Party and runs his own city watchdog group called New York Civic, called the settlement "an excellent result because it means the federal government has withdrawn from the case."

The settlement specified that the city had made no admission of guilt and continued to deny any discrimination charges. It was approved by Judge Denny Chin of Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Lawyers in a separate class-action lawsuit on behalf of black and Hispanic employees of the department said yesterday that the agency continued to treat those workers unfairly and vowed to press forward with their suit. The class-action suit was filed in May 2001 on behalf of 11 current and former employees who claimed that they were forced to work in a "racially hostile environment" and said that white managers were systematically preferred for promotion to top positions.

The class-action suit came after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found four months earlier that there was "reasonable cause" to believe that the parks department was discriminating against black and Hispanic employees. The class-action suit gained considerable weight from the federal civil rights suit when it was filed a year later.

The federal suit focused almost exclusively on promotion issues. It charged that whites were routinely handpicked for high-level positions, with job notices never posted and no competitive process followed to give other employees a chance.

In the settlement, the department agreed to announce job openings to the whole work force and to improve its performance evaluations so they could serve as the basis for promotion decisions. The department also agreed to provide training and job counseling for all employees. The federal government will monitor the department for three years to ensure that the settlement is respected.

The settlement is "a good idea, and its saves the federal and city governments a good deal of money" in legal costs, said Barbara Butler, one of the lawyers who handled the suit for the city.

Shortly after Adrian Benepe succeeded Mr. Stern as commissioner, he appointed Kevin Jeffrey, an African-American, to be deputy commissioner. The department employs 2,000 workers, about half of whom are black or Hispanic. It manages parks, playgrounds, beaches and skating rinks throughout the city, many of them in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

One issue raised in the class-action suit, which was not covered by the settlement, is the charge that black and Hispanic managers were regularly assigned to sites in minority neighborhoods, while plum positions in Manhattan and other predominantly white communities went to white managers.

Robert Stroup, a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, joined the team working on the class-action suit after it was filed. The group charges that blacks and other minorities continue to be seriously underrepresented in high levels of city government in general.

One charge made in papers filed in the class-action suit was that Mr. Stern had appeared to make light of a noose that was hung in a parks department building in 1998, although he did order it removed.

"Blacks and Hispanics remain at a disadvantage, because the system by which promotions are made is very subjective," said Lewis M. Steel, a lead lawyer in the class-action suit. "While some changes have been made, there's a long way to go, and we intend to pursue this case until these matters are rectified."