"Cities can move the needle"

“Equity” is kind of a buzzword these days in Democratic/progressive/liberal/left-wing circles, with racial equity often also being invoked. But while it’s at times overused, I think the underlying concept is important. That concept is that while white women, minorities, LBGT people and others are no longer formally banned from certain things (equality), women on average get paid less than men in similar jobs, black people have much less wealth than white ones, black people play professional football but can’t seem to get hired to coach it (equity.) 

What can cities do to increase equity? That’s part of the discussion Louisville has been having, particularly since the killing of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police and the protests that followed. I wrote a piece for the Washington Post in December arguing that the second-hardest job in government is being the mayor of a big city. (President! Obviously!) I focused on Mayor Fischer and Louisville but made some connections to other mayors and cities. For the piece, I interviewed, among others, Fischer and Cassie Chambers Armstrong, the city council representative who represents the Highlands area. Chambers Armstrong and Fischer are both deeply invested in equity and to their credit, are white elected officials who care a lot about racial equity in particular. 

So I talked to them (separately) about the city’s equity efforts. Here are some lightly-edited excerpts from those conversations, starting with Chambers Armstrong: 

Perry: Can cities do much about racial equity?

Cassie: I think they can. The fact that in Louisville, the life expectancy in some zip codes is more than a decade less than in other zip codes, is in part attributable to things that local government has control over. It's things like the built environment. It's making sure there are sidewalks and there are parks and there is access to libraries. All of these things that we know lead to better outcomes for folks.

It's making sure we're investing money in job training and in pre-K. The City of Louisville … The annual budget is the better part of a billion dollars. That's a lot of money that if you focus on goals and make sure that you are directing everything you do towards those goals, you can really start to make a difference, even on things as complicated as racial equity and poverty. So cities can move the needle. Of course, they can't move the needle all the way just by themselves, because you're dealing with state law, you're dealing with federal law, you're dealing with all of these other things that impact the landscape.

Perry: What will you be looking for in three years to conclude that we use this influx of money (from the economic stimulus passed last year) smartly on racial equity issues? How will you measure that?

Cassie: I think there are some objective things. Again, it's looking at life expectancy. It's looking at employment rates. It's looking at the crime rate. It's looking at the number of people who are unhoused, and the racial demographics around that. It’s looking at income. It's looking at all of the different quantitative measures we have that can approximate opportunity, and making sure that it's evenly distributed.

Perry: To talk about the policing issue …. Are the police here too aggressive? Do they treat black people unfairly?

Cassie: Yes. So I think there has been a history of problematic policing practices throughout every community in the country, and Louisville has not been immune to that. So when you look at things around aggressive use of traffic stops, when you look at the high rate of utilizing things like no-knock warrants, those things are concerning. And of course we know, particularly with the aggressive traffic stops,  those are linked to racially-disparate outcomes, and bad outcomes for black members of our community.

I am hopeful that in my conversations with Chief Shields, she is looking at data and best practices from other communities, because I think the way forward for cities is looking at what works in other cities. And the ways that you can get at crime, because crime is a real problem. Crime is something that is killing children in our community, and is killing black children in our community at a higher rate than it is killing white children in our community. And that is a racial equity issue in and of itself. And so it is a big problem, and we do need to do something about it and we have to be innovative about it. 

Perry: Is it hard to reform police when we're now experiencing this crime surge?  

Cassie: I think there's a knee jerk reaction in the middle of a crime surge to sort of immediately say, "Oh, we need more police. We need to more aggressively police.”  

I think that we need better police and we need police that are accountable to the community. It leads to better policing, whenever you have police members that are accountable to the community, have trust in the community, and can get information from the community. Sort of counteracting that impulse to act quickly and heavy-handedly is more difficult right now in this moment because the crime rate is high.

Perry: If I were going to list the policies in Louisville that have changed since June 2020, I know Breonna’s Law, but what else has changed? 

Cassie: Our investment of $100 million into affordable housing and homelessness I think is significant. I expect that we will invest a significant amount of money in workforce training, the creation of and the funding of the Office for Youth Development, the expanding of OSHN [the Office of Safe and Health Neighborhoods.] I believe that [in terms of] crime, the underlying root cause is poverty.

And I think that OSHN takes that more holistic, comprehensive view to crime prevention and, sort of building community. So I think the expansion of OSHN is really, really important. 

This isn't the largest policy, but I think the fact that we passed a law banning discrimination based on hair type is important. It’s a small thing, but it's also really important to show that we recognize all of the different sort of ways that discrimination can look in our community.

Perry: So the data point you gave is that in some areas of the city [heavily-black, lower-income ones] that the life expectancy is 10 years less than in some other areas [heavily-white, upper-income]?  

Cassie: I think it's 12.

Perry: 12. Okay. Yeah.  The question I'm coming back to is, I’m not saying a city can’t help with that, but that gap of 12 years, I don’t see city government reducing that to 0. Maybe you can reduce it to 11. So is racial equity even the right way to frame this? We would like to improve black people’s lives in Louisville. But framing that goal in terms of racial equity …if I call you back in four years, do you really think the city government can get that number down to even eight? 

Cassie: So I'm gonna disagree with you about the power of local government, because I too was skeptical about exactly how much local government could do before I was elected to serve in local government. And I believe that it is the closest to the people and it touches people's lives. And it does all of the tangible things for folks that they care about. A lot of what happens at the federal and state level is talking about ideas and directing money, but those real-close-to-the-people functions are local government functions.  

And so ... I don't think that you're going to get all the way from 12 to zero, just based on local government policies, of course. We don't have enough money to do that. But I do think that local government can significantly move the needle. And I don't know if significant is, you know, half of the goal, but at the end of the day, when you look at things like what creates those disparities in, in life outcomes or in job opportunities or in educational opportunities, those are things that local government has control over.

And a lot of what we can do is build community around those things as well. And that also has an important impact. So when we build a sense of community where we say everyone in our city deserves to have the same life expectancy, to have the same job opportunities, to have the same educational opportunities, when we make Louisville a place where citizens believe those things and treat each other in line with those goals, I think we have more power than any other level of government to do that, to create that tone, to create those bonds and that sense of care for each other.

And yes, that leads us to pass better policies and direct our dollars towards those goals. But it also generates charity and philanthropy and educational institutions and private citizens to act in line with those goals. 

Thanks for reading. Please flag me if there are typos, as I can fix those for the online version of the newsletter. If there is an issue you want to read more about, an important thing happening in Louisville or Kentucky that you know about but isn’t getting covered much or an interesting person that I should interview, you can reach me at perrylbacon@gmail.com. You can sign up for this newsletter here.