November/December 2004
Volume 13: Number 6
Racial Inequality and the Black Ghetto
by Alexander Polikoff
R
eading Jason DeParle’s new
book American Dream (Viking), one
is struck once again by the unremitting, intergenerational persistence of
ghetto poverty. From W.E.B. DuBois
through James Baldwin, Kenneth
Clark, and Douglas Massey and Nancy
Denton, in compelling reportage by
Nicholas Lemann, Alex Kotlowitz and
DeParle, in endless statistical analyses, ethnographic studies and academic
research papers, the point is made over
and over again: The concentrated poverty of urban ghettos condemns generation after generation of black
Americans to what Clark called lives
of impotence and despair.
Yet, some may object, only 2.8
million black Americans live in concentrated urban poverty — metropolitan census tracts with poverty populations of 40% or more. That’s only
1% of Americans. Sad, to be sure,
but not a big enough deal to get worked
up about unless you’re a bleeding heart
liberal. The country has more pressing matters to attend to.
Some 170 years ago, Alexis de
Toqueville called racial inequality
“the most formidable evil threatening
the future of the United States.”
Toqueville went on to prophesy that
the evil of racial inequality would not
be resolved — indeed, that it would
eventually bring America to disaster.
How could that be? How could 1%
of Americans, confined to ghettos, be
a nation-threatening matter? Bear with
me, and I’ll try to explain.
First, take small comfort from
small numbers. In an earlier New York
Times piece, DeParle makes this point
about the small ghetto population:
The poverty and disorder of
the inner cities lacerate a larger
civic fabric, drawing people from
shared institutions like subways,
buses, parks, schools and even
cities themselves.... Perhaps
most damaging of all is the effect that urban poverty has on
race relations. It is like a poison
in the national groundwater that
is producing a thousand deformed fruits...
What deformed fruits? Among
them is nothing less than breaking up
the coalition that birthed the New Deal
and the Civil Rights Movement, a
political sea-change that began in the
World War II years, gained strength
over the next two decades, then led to
Richard Nixon’s election in 1968, followed in 1980 by the triumph of
Ronald Reagan. In November 1968,
American character changed. From a
nation concerned with equality we
became a nation that closed the doors
on school and housing desegregation.
Under Reagan, we became an uncaring nation, obsessed with the free
market and with crafting rules to fos-
ter still more personal acquisition by
the most favored.
There is no single explanation for
America’s character change. But a
major factor was disaffection by white
ethnics and blue-collar workers, long
core elements of the New Deal coalition. Disaffection over what? The
answer is over blacks trapped in ghettos trying to penetrate white neighborhoods. Hubert Humphrey, civil rights
champion, not Richard Nixon, with his
coded anti-black speeches and shameless pandering to Southern segregationists, suffered the consequences.
There were other 1968 election issues,
to be sure, but a number of historians
make a powerful case that it was fear
of blacks from ghettos “invading”
white neighborhoods that finally sun(Please turn to page 2)
CONTENTS:
A National
Gautreaux Program .. 1
Voting Rights
and Race ................... 3
Voting Rights
for Immigrants .......... 5
Our New Board
Members ................. 19
Resources ................. 20
Index to Volume 13 .. 26
Poverty & Race Research Action Council • 3000 Connecticut Avenue NW • Suite 200 • Washington, DC 20008
202/387-9887 • FAX: 202/387-0764 • E-mail: [email protected] • www.prrac.org
Recycled Paper
(GHETTOS: Continued from page 1)
dered the coalition that had given
America its reigning consensus liberalism creed.
Another example of a deformed
fruit is the War on Drugs, targeted on
black ghettos. Since Reagan assumed
office, we have built over 1,000 new
prisons and jails, many crowded beyond capacity. Crowded with whom?
The answer is blacks from ghettos. By
1990, nearly one of every four young
black males in the United States was
under the control of the criminal justice system, more in major cities (over
40% in Washington, over 50% in Baltimore). In his book, Malign Neglect,
Michael Tonry observes that the rising levels of black incarceration were
the foreseeable effect of deliberate
policies: “Anyone with knowledge of
drug-trafficking patterns and of police
arrest policies and incentives could
have foreseen that the enemy troops
in the War on Drugs would consist
largely of young, inner-city minority
males.” Part and parcel of our mass
incarceration policy are “three strikes”
laws that mandate long prison terms
for third convictions. California has
meted out a 25-year sentence for the
third strike theft of a slice of pizza,
another for pilfering some chocolate
chip cookies. Thirteen-year olds have
received mandatory, life-without-pa-
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© Copyright 2004 by the Poverty
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role sentences.
In short, as a nation we are doggedly pursuing a ghetto-targeted mass
incarceration policy that is both mindless and destructive of traditional
American values. It is mindless because at enormous cost we insist on
sticking with a policy that is having
no demonstrable effect on drug availability, drug crime rates or crime rates
generally. It is destructive of values
because it has driven us to extremities
that no fair-minded person can defend.
A final example of disfigured produce is the demise of welfare, but without the jobs supposed to have been part
of the deal. At the heart of Newt
Gingrich’s successful, dump-welfare
The concentrated
poverty of urban
ghettos condemns
generation after
generation of black
Americans to lives of
impotence and despair.
campaign, was a stick-figure caricature of the ghetto: “You can’t maintain civilization with twelve-year-olds
having babies and fifteen-year-olds
killing each other and seventeen-yearolds dying of AIDS” (Gingrich, as
quoted in DeParle’s new book).
Can these deformed fruits be blamed
solely on black ghettos? No, they cannot. Ending black ghettos wouldn’t
end anti-black attitudes any more than
ending Jewish ghettos ended antisemitism. But it is not easy to find
anything in American society that
matches the black ghetto for its poisoning effect on attitudes, values and
conduct.
Sixty years ago, Gunnar Myrdal
wrote: “White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards
of living, health, education, manners
and morals. This, in its turn, gives
support to white prejudice.” Decades
later, sociologist Elijah Anderson’s
studies of a ghetto and an adjacent nonghetto neighborhood led him to conclude: “The public awareness is color-
2 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
coded. White skin denotes civility,
law-abidingness, and trustworthiness,
while black skin is strongly associated
with poverty, crime, incivility, and
distrust.” In American society at large,
most whites act like the ones Anderson studied — their public awareness
is also color-coded, and they steer
clear of poor blacks and keep them in
their ghettos. Predictable ghetto behavior then intensifies whites’ sense of
danger, validates their color-coding
and drives their conduct.
Urban economist George Galster
describes a self-reinforcing “ghettoizing cycle.” First, ghettoization induces “behavioral adaptations” by
ghetto dwellers. Widely reported by
the media, ghetto behavior is then seen
as validating and legitimizing whites’
prejudicial attitudes toward blacks.
The prejudices translate into withdrawal from blacks, and into discriminatory conduct in housing, zoning,
employment and institutional arrangements of all sorts, which in turn lead
to more ghettoization.
Ghettoization is growing, in spite
of many reasons to have expected the
contrary (the Kerner Commission admonition; passage of anti-discrimination laws; the substantial growth of the
black middle class; the unprecedented
good times of the 1990s). From 1970
to 2000, the number of metropolitan
ghetto census tracts (40% or more poverty population) doubled, from around
1,100 to over 2,200, and the number
of blacks in metropolitan ghettos increased from under 2.5 to over 2.8
million. And there’s every reason to
believe the problem has grown since
the 2000 Census.
In a nutshell, that is why I think
we’d be well advised to play it safe
with respect to Toqueville’s prophecy.
Color-coded poison continues to flow
into our groundwater, with disfiguring results that are plain to see. Disaster may not come in the form of
riots and race wars, as Carl Rowan
predicts in his recent book, The Coming Race War in America. But it will
be disaster no less if American values
are sufficiently deformed.
(Please turn to page 8)
From Slave Republic to Constitutional
Democracy: The Continuing Struggle
for the Right to Vote
by Jamin Raskin
“Why is George Bush in the White
House? The majority of Americans did
not vote for him. I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him in there.”
Lieutenant-General William
Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of
Defense for Intelligence, United
States Department of Defense
I
n their indispensable book, Radical Equations, Bob Moses and Charles
Cobb describe the epiphany the 26-year
old Moses had in 1960 when he arrived as a volunteer in Mississippi and
got to know Amzie Moore, president
of the NAACP in Cleveland, Mississippi. Moore was not interested in sitins to desegregate restaurants or lawsuits to enforce Brown v. Board of
Education. In an area where violence
and oppression had left 98% of African Americans off the voter rolls and
too terrified to register, Moore “had
concluded that at the heart of
Mississippi’s race problem was denial
of the right to vote,” Moses writes.
“Amzie wanted a grassroots movement
to get it, and in his view getting that
right was the key to unlocking Mississippi and gaining some power to initiate real change. I had not given that
idea any thought at all; I didn’t know
before I began talking to Amzie that
the Mississippi where he lived was a
Congressional district that was twothirds black.”
The voting rights movement
launched in Mississippi nearly got
Moses killed, but it led to the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 and the creation of
some long-suppressed majority-African American and Hispanic Congressional districts (that would later be attacked by the Rehnquist Court).
Knocking on doors in apartheid Mississippi, Moses developed the visionary rhetoric of “one person, one vote.”
This “radical equation” captured the
imagination of the Warren Court in the
early 1960s redistricting cases like
Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims,
and later infused democratic movements from Poland to South Africa.
The many thousands of college and law
students who just went out to monitor
the polls and participate in “election
protection” in 2004 are part of this
legacy of struggle for democratic
rights.
The mechanisms of
disenfranchisement
have grown more
complex and insidious.
That struggle is as important today
as it was four decades ago, but the
mechanisms of disenfranchisement
have grown more complex and insidious. Racial minorities are no longer
disenfranchised by white primaries,
poll taxes and literacy tests, but rather
by a series of background structural
exclusions and dilutions, as well as the
resilient dirty tricks and sleight-ofhand that reappear at election time.
Moreover, convincing people of the
efficacy of voting remains a problem:
While basic voting rights remain necessary to generate upward social motion for people at the bottom of the
society, they hardly seem to be sufficient to do so. Indeed, Bob Moses himself has thrown his own magnificent
energy over the last many years into
the Algebra Project, whose thesis is that
movement-style math education is a
key project for social change in the age
of high technology.
Even if other concerns, like algebra education and health care for all,
command urgent attention today, voting rights remain not only the paradigmatic expression of first-class citizenship and social standing, but also
the crucial currency of democratic politics and the precondition for instrumental public action on other problems. But
achieving universal suffrage, as we
shall see, is still a maddeningly elusive goal, with millions of American
citizens, a majority of them AfricanAmerican and Hispanic, disenfranchised by law, and basic democratic
principles in constant danger on the
ground. To understand why basic voting rights are still contested terrain, we
need to revisit the basic dynamics and
institutions of our political history.
A Slave Republic of
Christian White Male
Property-Holders
Our last great Republican President
— Abraham Lincoln — gave poetic
definition to the American vision of
democracy: a government “of the
people, by the people and for the
people.” But this tantalizing ideal has
little to do with our beginnings, as Lincoln knew. We began as a slave republic of wealthy Christian white male
property owners. The Constitution
established no popular right to vote but
left suffrage requirements up to the
state legislatures, which imposed a
gauntlet of race, gender, religious,
property, wealth and age qualifications. It also vested in each legislature
the power to appoint two United States
Senators for the state, thus giving
smaller slave states like South Carolina or Alabama the same U.S. Senate
representation as large Northern states
like New York, Pennsylvania or Massachusetts.
The character of the U.S. House of
Representatives was defined by Southern resolve to entrench slavery in the
Constitutional fabric. The first trick
(Please turn to page 4)
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 3
(VOTING: Continued from page 3)
was to count slaves in the process of
determining how many seats in the
U.S. House of Representatives each
state would be apportioned. So millions of slaves, none of whom could
vote (obviously), were used to inflate
the size of the Southern Congressional
delegations controlled by their masters. Indeed, the Southern states argued that slaves should be counted as
full persons in the census, while the
Northern states argued that the slaves,
being disenfranchised, should not be
counted at all. The two sides settled
on the infamous “Three-Fifths” provision — counting each slave as threefifths of a person for the purposes of
reapportionment, a clear and ominous
victory for political white supremacy.
As Garry Wills has shown in The New
York Review of Books, the resulting
Southern delegations to Congress,
swollen with the “slave power,”
checkmated any moves against slavery.
With both the House and Senate
institutionalizing America’s original
sin, Article II of the Constitution fused
and reproduced these pro-slavery features in the design of the Presidential
selection process. The Electoral College system awards each state a number of Presidential electors equal to the
number of U.S. House members it has,
plus an extra two “add on” electors
for its U.S. Senators. In the event of
a failure of any candidate to assemble
an Electoral College majority, the
President is chosen in a “contingent
election” in the House of Representa-
The Passion
of My Times
PRRAC Board member William L. Taylor’s memoir (subtitled
An Advocate’s Fifty-Year Journey
in the Civil Rights Movement) is
now out (Carroll & Graf, 251 pp).
You can order it directly from us
at a discounted price of $20, s/h
included (it lists for $26). We’re
sure Bill will be happy to inscribe
it, if you let us know.
tives where each state, regardless of
size, casts one vote, thus again making the states, rather than the people,
the functional base of the system.
Southern blueprints to rig our political architecture worked like a
dream. The “slave power” proved
extremely effective at both dominating Congress — which for decades enforced a rule against even raising slavery as an issue — and also winning
and manipulating Presidential elections. Four of the first five U.S.
Presidents were Virginia slave masters
who brought their household slaves
with them into the Presidency: George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James
Madison and James Monroe. And the
reign of slave power continued on and
off until the nation plunged into Civil
War.
Because of the Electoral
College and our racial
geography, most votes
cast by African
Americans in
Presidential elections
will count literally for
nothing.
Even after the Civil War, the Electoral College propped up white supremacy and thwarted its opposition.
In the 20th Century, Southern politicians cleverly used the Electoral College to block civil rights for African
Americans. Racist Southern Democrats like Strom Thurmond (1948),
Harry Byrd (1960) and George
Wallace (1968) practiced the quadrennial art of leaving the Democratic Party
to run for President as Independents,
taking substantial chunks of Presidential electors with them and sending a
sharp message to the national Democratic Party about the political perils
of racial integration. LBJ presciently
remarked after passage of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 that the Democratic
Party would lose the South for a generation — and so it has.
Today, the Solid South provides a
majority of Electoral College votes in
4 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
the Republican Party’s Presidential
coalition. If you glance at a red-blue
map of 2000, you will find that the
old Confederacy is the beating heart
of George W. Bush country. Furthermore, because of the nation’s racial
demography and geography and the
winner-take-all method of allocating
electors still used by all states except
Maine and Nebraska (and perhaps
Colorado, as I write), most votes cast
by African-Americans in Presidential
elections will count literally for nothing. In 2000, more than 90% of African Americans voted for Democrat
Al Gore, but 58% of all African
Americans lived in states that gave
100% of their electoral college votes
to Bush. This means that, in 2000,
most African Americans voted in states
where their ballots ended up having
no effect on the election outcome. The
one Southern state where the AfricanAmerican vote clearly could have
made a critical difference in 2000 was
Florida, which makes all of the devious strategies to cancel out AfricanAmerican votes there both entirely
comprehensible and deeply appalling.
• The Civil Rights Struggle Dismantled American Apartheid But
Did Not Establish an Affirmative
Constitutional Right to Vote.
Through the process of social and
political struggle, the American people
have taken down many barriers to voting. The most significant changes have
been embodied in Constitutional
amendments, although often that alone
has not been enough to overcome elite
resistance to voting by the poor and
racial minorities. The 15th Amendment banned race discrimination in
voting (1870), but we still had to follow through with the Voting Rights
Act of 1965; the 17th Amendment
gave us direct election of U.S. Senators (1913) — a populist victory that
Justice Scalia recently lamented at
Harvard Law School; the 19th Amendment banned sex discrimination in
voting (1920); the 23rd Amendment
gave citizens living in the District of
Columbia the right to participate in
(Please turn to page 13)
Voting Rights for Immigrants
by Catherine Tactaquin
Throughout this past year, the no-
tion of immigrant civic participation
has emerged time and again as a significant trend in community enfranchisement. In cities around the country, especially where there are significant concentrations of immigrants,
community organizations and immigrant rights coalitions have mustered
energy and resources to conduct voter
registration drives and to mobilize immigrant voters. The evident growth of
the immigrant population has been the
key factor fueling these and other initiatives, including proposals for “noncitizen” voting in local elections, such
as school boards.
A report released in mid-October
by the Immigration Policy Center, a
division of the American Immigration
Law Foundation, called attention to
the potentially significant role an energized immigrant electorate could
play in local, state and national elections. In “Power and Potential: The
Growing Electoral Clout of New Citizens,” author Rob Paral wrote: “In
highly competitive electoral environments, the rapidly growing ranks of
‘new citizens’ — foreign-born individuals who become ‘naturalized’
U.S. citizens — are increasingly important political players.”
That report describes the dramatic
growth of immigrant populations over
the last decade: Some 13 million
people immigrated into the U.S. during the 1990s. In the 2000 elections,
6.2 million new citizens had registered
to vote, and over 85% of them voted
— a proportion far highter than turnout among all voters.
The National Association of Latino
Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund, which has predicted
Latino voter turnout quite closely in
the last two Presidential elections, has
projected that “one million more
Latinos will vote in November 2004
than in our last Presidential election,
a new record for the Latino community.” NALEO and other Latino
groups state that naturalized Latino
voters — the new immigrant voters —
may be key, given the increased numbers of newly registered voters and the
pattern of these voters actually going
to the polls on Election Day. NALEO
projects that nearly seven million
Latinos nationwide will vote in November.
Asian Pacific Islander communities
are also expected to significantly gain
new voters and presence at the polls.
With over 12 million people, API
communities are poised to become a
formidable electoral force. API immigrants have a fairly high rate of natu-
The growing ranks of
“new citizens” are
increasingly important
political players.
ralization — over 40% — a source of
potential new voters. Between 1996
and 2000, the number of Asian voters
increased by 22%.
Despite these trends, certain factors
continue to diminish the potential participation of immigrant voters. Jeffrey
Passel of the Urban Institute’s Immigration Studies Program notes: “About
62 percent of Latinos could not register to vote in 2000 because they were
either too young or not U.S. citizens;
59 percent of Asians could not register. In contrast, only 35 percent of
blacks and 25 percent of whites could
not register to vote for demographic
reasons.”
Presence in Swing States
While the overall foreign-born
population is just over 11% of the entire U.S. population, the concentration of immigrants in several states has
produced considerable political interest for tapping into a rapidly increasing pool of votes. In the 2004 Presi-
dential race, immigrant voters in the
traditionally large foreign-born states
of California, Florida, Illinois, New
Jersey, New York and Texas are
largely expected to contribute votes to
the Democratic Party. In the swing
states, however, the impact of immigrant votes is less certain, although the
so-called battleground states may reappear in future elections – and they
are all states where new immigrant
voters can impact an election outcome.
According to Rob Paral: “In all, six
battleground states may be identified
where new-citizen voters can make a
difference in a two-candidate race even
if the difference in percentage points
separating the candidates is as high as
five points. These states are Arizona,
Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington.”
Although the overall foreign-born
vote is only about 5% of the entire
electorate nationwide, it is in particular areas of the country where the vote
will have increasing impact. However,
in the 2004 Presidential election, immigrant community organizers were
often frustrated by the fleeting recognition given to potential immigrant
voters. As political strategists typically
zeroed in on likely and undecided voters in swing states, resources for voter
registration, education and mobilization did not, as a whole, flow to immigrant communities.
Increasing the Voice
of Immigrants
Facing this reality, groups committed to both short-term and long-term
goals of increasing immigrant community voices at the polls nonetheless rallied to build initiatives that would support immigrant civic in the elections
and beyond. These initiatives have
given attention to the significant challenges and barriers to engaging immigrants from numerous ethnic and lan(Please turn to page 6)
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 5
(IMMIGRANTS: Continued from page 5)
guage backgrounds and homeland experiences. Many initiatives build on
ongoing organizing and advocacy, particularly on always controversial immigration policy issues.
Many groups recall the upsurge in
naturalization applications and immigrant voter registrations prior to and
after California’s infamous anti-immigrant ballot initiative, Proposition 187
in 1994. At that time, many immigrants raised their concerns about important decisions being made about
their lives, but without their voice.
That concern has been repeated in Arizona, where the anti-immigrant Proposition 200 is on the November ballot
[results unknown at the time of this
writing], and would require proof of
legal status from anyone applying for
a public service or registering to vote.
Organizers against the initiative have
included new citizen voter registration
as a key component of their strategy.
The state’s population is about 13%
foreign-born, and during the 1990s,
the Latino population grew by 88%.
Last year’s Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride produced a campaign called
“Freedom Summer,” building on the
historic work of the Civil Rights Movement in the South, to conduct voter
registration work in the key states of
Arizona and Florida. For two months,
50 predominantly young activists
worked with local organizations to register new voters, particularly among
new citizens. Civic participation campaigns have been organized in several
states by regional and state immigrant
rights coalitions, as well as by such
groups as the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium
(NAKASEC), National Council of La
Raza, Center for Community Change,
Gamaliel Foundation [see article on
Gamaliel in the Sept./Oct. 2004
P&R], ACORN and many more.
The Northern California Citizenship Project (NCCP) is leading a new
California collaborative — Mobilize
the Immigrant Vote (MIV) 2004 — to
reach diverse immigrant communities.
Although California was not identified
as a swing state, its large and diverse
foreign-born population — over 26%
of the total population and almost 15%
of the state’s voters — is ripe for voter
engagement. Generations of U.S.born members of immigrant families
— a major demographic factor in California — are also targets for registration and get-out-the-vote activities. As
with initiatives in other states, MIV
identified the need to reach particular
language groups, working with community-based organizations and oth-
In the 2000 elections,
6.2 million new citizens
had registered to vote,
and over 85% of them
voted.
ers to produce multi-lingual “palm
cards” on voting rights and information, and easily accessible voting
guides with information and recommendations on ballot initiatives of particular concern and relevance to immigrant communities. MIV and others are also providing new voters with
“how to” information, understanding
that a lack of familiarity with the actual voting process — including where
to find the correct polling location —
can hinder participation.
According to Maria Rogers Pascual,
NCCP Executive Director: “We will
not only be increasing voter turnout
from immigrant communities, but we
will be helping to strengthen immigrant community leadership for ongoing organizing on critical issues.” This
has been a consistent theme of initiatives such as that of “One Voice, One
Vote” in Massachusetts and “New
Americans Vote ‘04” in Illinois,
where the state immigrant rights coalition has pledged to register at least
25,000 new voters and is giving focus
to the large Muslim community whose
civil liberties were particularly threatened by the 9/11 backlash.
The outcome of many of these efforts — in terms of voter turnout and
impact — will be described post-election in numerous reports being planned
to spotlight the significance of immigrant civic participation and voting pat-
6 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
terns. One such report will be issued
by the DC-based New American Opportunity Campaign (NAOC), a new
umbrella group focusing on immigration reform. Partners within NAOC
believe that the voting power of immigrant communities will strengthen
their presence on critical immigration
policy issues and will encourage
greater civic engagement.
Some groups have already called attention to some of the real problems
facing potential immigrant voters. The
New York Immigration Coalition
(NYIC), which has successfully spearheaded immigrant voter registration
activities, has decried the loss of voting opportunities for immigrants
whose citizenship applications have
been bogged down in lengthy background checks in the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS). According to NYIC, almost half of the more
than 126,000 immigrants in New York
with pending citizenship applications
will find they are not be able to vote
in November due to the processing
backlogs. In moving immigration servicing into the DHS when it was established in the wake of 9/11, President Bush had set a six-month standard for citizenship application processing, but in New York and elsewhere, the wait is much longer. In
Miami, there is a 21-month backlog;
in Arizona, 13 months.
Renewed Interest
in Non-Citizen Voting
Problems such as these in moving
towards citizenship, as well as a current impasse on setting up a new legalization program for undocumented
immigrants, have stirred renewed interest in “non-citizen” voting — generally, the opening of voting rights in
local elections, such as for school
boards, to all residents of a given locale, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.
Particularly during the last decade
or so, non-citizen voting initiatives
have emerged throughout the country,
and there are a few places where noncitizens can vote — such as in Takoma
Park, Maryland, and even in the
school board elections (at least until
recently) in New York City.
San Francisco voters are having an
opportunity to weigh in on the issue
on November 2 [again, results unknown at the time of this writing].
Proposition F would allow non-citizens to vote in school board elections.
Proponents say it is only fair; at least
one-third of the children in the school
district have at least one immigrant parent. The school board voted unanimously to support the proposition.
Detractors claim the proposition is just
a backdoor tactic — a “Trojan Horse”
— to give citizenship rights to undocumented immigrants, under the
guise of supporting education.
The issue of non-citizen voting will
no doubt be a long and protracted debate with uneven results. Political scientists Ronald Hayduk at the Borough
of Manhattan Community College argues that non-citizens should have voting rights and says: it’s legal (not precluded by the Constitution); it’s rational — with good reasons for enfranchisement, such as notions of equal
rights and treatment articulated in the
suffragette and Civil Rights Movement; and it’s feasible.
Hayduk and other proponents have
pointed out that until the 1920s, in
fact, non-citizens could vote in local,
state and even national elections in 22
states! Then, the anti-immigrant
movements and xenophobia following
World War I ended the practice. Opposition to non-citizen voting went
hand-in-hand with racist movements
against the influx of darker-skinned
immigrants, fanning fears about the
progressive political influences these
new immigrants might inspire.
Current calls for non-citizen voting certainly seem much more benign:
Giving all parents the right to vote in
school board elections gives them an
opportunity to decide key issues in
their children’s education, and, it is
argued, will encourage greater participation in their community — isn’t that
a classic “American” ideal?
Hayduk, as well as Wendy
Shimmelman, offer three critical arguments for non-citizen voting — ar-
guments that could just as well apply
to the encouragement of today’s new
citizen voters. These arguments include: 1) Democracy will thrive when
it enfranchises all of its members —
when they have representation (remember “no taxation without representation” — non-citizens, including
the undocumented, do pay taxes); 2)
Discrimination and bias: Lacking voting rights, non-citizens are at risk of
discrimination and bias by the majority, and their interests can be more
easily ignored; and 3) Common interests: Other members of society, particularly from the working class and
communities of color, face many of
the same issues immigrants face, and
would benefit from non-citizen participation and integration. Their concerns and political power would be
strengthened — certainly an argument
against the wedge politics of the Right
that have sought to align working
people and other communities of color
against immigrants over jobs, housing and so forth.
Whether non-citizen voting becomes a “right” for immigrants at any
noticeable level, or whether new citizens are rallied to register and vote,
the scope and scale of immigration currently and in the foreseeable future
demands that these issues of enfranchisement be addressed — and soon —
in yet another test for American democracy.
Catherine Tacqatuin (ctactaquin@
nnirr.org), a PRRAC Board Member,
is Executive Director of the National
Network for Immigrant and Refugee
Rights in Oakland, California. ❏
Resources on Immigrants and Voting
“California’s Minority and Immigrant
Voters,” June 2004 brief from the Public Policy Institute of California, at
www.ppic.org
“Election 2004: The Latino and Asian
Vote,” by Jeffrey S. Passel of the Urban
Institute Immigration Studies Program,
2004. Available at www.urban.org/
urlprint.cfm?ID= 8938
Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. Website at
www.gcir.org provides facts and figures
on immigration at state, national and international levels.
Immigrant Voting Project at http://
www.immigrantvoting.org/index.html. A
resource network promoting discussion of
non-citizen voting in local elections. Based
at New School University’s World Policy
Institute.
“Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical, Constitutional and Theoretical
Meanings of Alien Suffrage,” by Jamin
Raskin, Univ. of Pennsylvania Law Review, 1993.
“Local Voting Rights for Non-U.S.
Citizen Immigrants in New York
City,” by Wendy Shimmelman, July
1992. An unpublished report for the Center for Immigrant Rights in New York.
Available from the National Network for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights:
[email protected].
Mobilize the Immigrant Vote 2004,
California campaign website provides
immigrant voting rights materials in six
languages, lists resources and website links
for civic participation information. www.
immigrantvoice.org/miv2004/index.htm
“Non-Citizen Voting: Pipe Dream or
Possibility,” by Ronald Hayduk, October 2002, appears in Drum Major Institute for Public Policy e-journal at http://
www. drummajorinstitute.org/plugin/template/dmi/55/1694
“Political Apartheid in California:
Consequences of Excluding a Growing Noncitizen Population,” by Joaquin
Avila, in Latino Policy & Issues Brief,
No. 9, December 2003 for UCLA
Chicano Studies Center. Can be found at
http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press/
briefs/archive.html
“Power and Potential: The Growing
Electoral Clout of New Citizens,” by
Rob Paral, in Immigration Policy IN FOCUS, Vol. 3, Issue 4, October 2004, from
the Immigration Policy Center, a division
of the American Immigration Law Foundation. Available at www.ailf.org
“Voting Rights,” from the Asian Pacific American Legal Defense and Education Fund at www.aaldef.org/
voting.html
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 7
(GHETTOS: Continued from page 2)
A National
Gautreaux Program
So what can we do about it? One
answer is the Gautreaux lawsuit’s housing mobility program writ large (high
quality pre- and post-move family
counseling, coupled with housing
search assistance and unit identification, to enable inner-city families to
move with housing vouchers into
middle-class neighborhoods far from
the ghetto). Let me lay out the elements of what I believe would be a
workable program, and then respond
to some of the multiple objections that
will probably flood your minds — a
sketch only: A full rendition would
take more than the allotted space.
Suppose 50,000 housing choice
vouchers were made available annually, were earmarked for use by black
families living in urban ghettos, and
could be used only in non-ghetto locations — say, census tracts with less
than 10% poverty and not minority
impacted. Suppose that the vouchers
were allocated to our 125 largest metropolitan areas. Suppose also that to
avoid “threatening” any receiving community, no more than a specified number of families (an arbitrary number
— say, ten, or a small fraction of occupied housing units) could move into
any city, town or village in a year.
If an average of 40 municipalities
in each metropolitan area served as
“receiving communities,” the result
would be — using ten as the hypothetical annual move-in ceiling — that
50,000 families each year, or 500,000
in a decade, would move “in
Gautreaux fashion.” Notably, the
500,000 moves would equal almost
half the black families living in metropolitan ghetto tracts.
We cannot, of course, assume that
half of all black families in metropolitan ghettos would choose to participate. But neither would it require the
departure of every black household to
change radically the black ghetto as we
know it. With enough participants,
radical change would be inevitable.
Whatever the time frame, we would
at last be treating a disease that has
festered untreated in the body politic
for over a century.
The hypothetical is plainly intended
only to show that a national Gautreaux
program could operate at a meaningful scale; it is not a real-life working
model. Metropolitan areas vary in size
— in 2000, the 35 largest of the 331
metropolitan areas contained over half
the metropolitan ghetto tracts. An actual program would be tailored to these
Housing expenditures
“the Gautreaux way”
would give us the
double payback of
ameliorating both our
affordable housing and
our black ghetto crises.
variations, operating at greater scale
in big ghetto areas and at lesser scale
(or not at all) in metropolitan areas
with small black ghettos.
Several Questions
The hypothetical raises several questions. Would 50,000 vouchers a year
be feasible? Could such an enlarged
mobility program be administered responsibly? Would enough families
volunteer to participate? Could 50,000
private homes and apartments be found
each year for the program?
The answers are necessarily speculative because mobility on such a scale
has never been tried, but answers there
are. The 50,000 annual vouchers, an
arbitrary figure chosen for purposes of
the hypothetical, really contemplates
100,000 new vouchers each year, with
50,000 of them earmarked for the
Gautreaux-type program. The point
would be to leave 50,000 new “regular” vouchers for other entering families ineligible for the mobility program
or who, for a multitude of perfectly
understandable reasons, were unable
or unwilling to participate in it. Fairness to non-participants would make
8 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
the “extra” 50,000 vouchers a necessity. However, 100,000 new vouchers per year is not a fanciful figure;
Congress authorized more than that
number as recently as the year 2000.
But the hypothetical program could
be run without issuing any new vouchers at all. Currently, about 2.1 million vouchers are in circulation. The
annual “turnover rate” is about 11%,
meaning that for various reasons (for
example, a family’s income rises above
the eligibility ceiling), some 230,000
vouchers are turned back to housing
authorities each year for reissuance to
other families. A Congressional enactment could direct 50,000 of these
turnover vouchers to the hypothetical
program.
The cost of assisting mobility moves
must of course be included in the calculus. But at an average of $4,000
per family — a reasonable, even generous, figure based on the Gautreaux
experience — we are talking about
$200 million a year, $2 billion over
ten years (excluding inflation). To put
that figure in perspective and address
the question of whether we could “afford” it, consider that for a single year
(FY 2004), the Bush Administration
proposed a military budget of some
$400 billion, which (excluding inflation) would amount to $4,000 billion
over ten years.
It is true that almost any program
can be viewed as affordable by comparison with our military budget. But
we aren’t talking about “any” program. We are talking about a program to end the successor to slavery
and Jim Crow that is perpetuating a
caste structure in the United States and
threatening incalculable harm to
American society. Achieving that, for
a negligible fraction — .0005 — of our
military budget, would be our best
bargain since the Louisiana Purchase.
That negligible fraction is the
pricetag for mobility assistance only;
it does not include the cost of the
vouchers themselves. At the current
annual cost of about $6,500 per
voucher, the ten-year voucher tab for
100,000 new vouchers each year
would be just under $36 billion (again
excluding inflation). Adding roughly
7% for the administrative fee HUD
pays to housing authorities brings the
total to about $38.5 billion, less than
1% of the $4,000 billion military figure. Our affordable housing crisis is
so severe that, entirely apart from
mobility and ghetto-dismantling, we
should be — and politics will some
day dictate — making affordable housing expenditures of this magnitude.
Housing expenditures “the Gautreaux
way” would give us the double payback of ameliorating both our affordable housing and our black ghetto crises.
Suppose, however, that the country isn’t ready to spend $38.5 billion
over ten years for new “double payback” vouchers. Running the hypothetical program with turnover vouchers instead would eliminate entirely the
$38.5 billion cost of new vouchers.
This would mean that the only additional tab for the hypothetical program
— beyond the costs we are today already incurring for the existing
voucher program — would be about
$200 million a year, taking us back to
that .0005 fraction of our military
budget. It is mind-boggling to think
that, for an infinitesimal expenditure
in budgetary terms, we could mount a
program that could — to use a storied
locution — end the ghetto as we know
it.
What about administration? Under
a consent decree in a housing desegregation case, the Dallas Housing Authority in a little over two years assisted some 2,200 families, most of
them black, to move to “non-impacted” areas (census tracts in which
few Section 8 vouchers were already
in use, but in practice the receiving
areas turned out to be predominantly
non-black). Dallas was a case of direct administration by a housing authority. The Gautreaux Program was
administered by a nonprofit organization. Moving to Opportunity, HUD’s
five-city Gautreaux-like demonstration
program (using poverty, however, not
race, as the measure), involves partnerships between housing authorities
and nonprofits. These varied and
largely positive experiences suggest
that we could handle the administra-
tive challenge of a nationwide
Gautreaux-type program.
Would enough families volunteer to
participate? We will not know until
we try, but the Gautreaux experience
suggests that they may. An average
of 400 families moving each year in
each participating metropolitan area
would be required to reach the hypothetical goal (a smaller average number if more metropolitan areas were
used). The 400-per-year number was
surpassed more than once by the
Gautreaux Program even though the
For an infinitesimal
expenditure in
budgetary terms, we
could mount a program
that could end the
ghetto as we know it.
number of entering families was artificially limited, not by lack of demand
or market factors but by the funding
and staff that could be extracted from
HUD in the Gautreaux consent decree
bargaining process.
Finally, could 50,000 homes and
apartments be found each year? The
Gautreaux Program was able to place
families in over 100 cities, towns and
villages in the Chicago area, while the
hypothetical assumes an average of
only 40. The Census Bureau counts
331 metropolitan areas in the country,
while the hypothetical assumes that the
mobility program would operate in
only 125. Each assumption is conservative with respect to unit supply.
Most importantly, the potential supply of units is not a fixed-sum. More
fine-tuning of Fair Market Rents (increasing them in low vacancy times and
places, reducing them where they exceed market rents) and more creativity about responding to landlord concerns (for example, paying rent for the
several weeks it sometimes takes a
housing authority to “clear” a family
for an apartment being held off the
market) can make a big difference. If
the 50,000 annual goal were made a
bureaucratic imperative, and if local
Go, Florence
Our esteemed founding Board
member Florence Roisman (Professor at Indiana Univ. School
of Law) has won the 2004 Equal
Justice Works Outstanding Law
School Faculty Award for her
dogged pursuit of equal justice
and her pivotal role in nurturing
a public interest ethic among law
students, and was honored at
EJW’s Oct. 28 dinner in DC. To
further honor Florence, a number of friends have made donations to the IU Foundation to
support their summer public interest law fellowship program.
If you’d like to participate in this
tribute, contact Carol Neary,
Dir. of Development, IU School
of Law, at 317/274-4209,
[email protected].
administrators were given the right
tools, it is possible — indeed, likely
— that the goal would be achieved.
A Legal Question
A different kind of question is
prompted by the notion of setting aside
50,000 vouchers each year for black
families. How can one justify denying poor whites, poor Latinos and poor
Asians, many also living in high-poverty neighborhoods, an opportunity to
participate in the mobility program?
Would it even be legal?
A dual justification can be offered.
The first is that the proposal is designed
to help the nation confront its “most
formidable evil,” an evil that results
in significant degree from fears and
conduct generated by confining black
Americans, not others, to ghettos. The
second is that the country is responsible for the confinement of blacks to
ghettos in a manner and degree that is
not the case with other groups. This
is obviously so for poor whites, who
already live mostly among the non(Please turn to page 10)
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 9
(GHETTOS: Continued from page 9)
poor. Latinos and Asians, for all of
the discrimination they have suffered,
do not have slavery or Jim Crow in
their histories. Nor have they been
confined among their own to a comparable degree. Devoting 50,000
vouchers exclusively to blacks in ghettos can thus be justified both by the
purpose of the proposal and by the
unique history and current situation of
blacks in ghettos.
As for legality, no one can be certain in a time when 5-4 Supreme Court
decisions are routine. But when in
1988 Congress authorized compensation to Japanese citizens who had been
herded into World War II detention
camps, no serious legal question was
even raised. Though the analogy is
obviously imperfect, housing choice
vouchers as “compensation” for confining blacks in ghettos is not a bad
rationale. It is unlikely that even
today’s Supreme Court would upset
an express Congressional determination to make partial amends in this way
for a history of slavery, Jim Crow and
ghettoization. (Even so, one can imagine that for reasons of policy or politics, Congress would choose to offer
the mobility program to all residents
of metropolitan ghettos. That would
require a reworking of the numbers,
and possibly prioritizing poverty families, but would not affect the basic
structure or feasibility of the proposed
program.)
Those Who Remain
Even if a national Gautreaux-type
program were doable and legal, objections remain to be addressed. One
is that the program would be harmful
to the moving families, severing them
from family, friends and institutional
support systems, and subjecting them
to hostility and racial discrimination.
An answer is to ask who are “we” to
withhold a purely voluntary opportunity from “them” on the ground that
we know better than they what is in
their interest. Moreover, studies of
the Gautreaux program show that mo-
bility works well for many participating families.
A variation on this argument is that
dismantling the ghetto will undermine
black institutions, political power and
ghetto communities that have values
deserving preservation. As for black
institutional and political strength,
Italians, Irish, Jews and others have
survived far more mobility than black
Americans are likely to experience; it
is absurd to contend that the strong,
resilient black American culture has
anything to fear from a Gautreaux-type
Housing choice vouchers
as “compensation” for
confining blacks to
ghettos is not a bad
legal rationale.
program. As for values in ghetto communities, it is plain to any objective
observer that the bad far outweighs the
good.
A further variation on the bad-forthem argument is that non-movers will
be worse off once some of the ablest
and most motivated among ghetto residents leave. Even if true, this is not a
sufficient reason to reject the approach. Should we not have passed
the Fair Housing Act because the departure of better-off ghetto residents
may have left those who remained
worse off? Moreover, the likelihood
that deconcentration will foster redevelopment means that even many of
those who choose to remain will be
benefited over time.
The latter point may raise eyebrows.
Why will redevelopment be fostered?
And if it is, won’t gentrification simply drive out remaining ghetto residents? The answer to the first question is a matter of pressure: When,
like a balloon being filled, migrants
poured in, the ghetto expanded outward; as deconcentration lets out some
of the air, the pressure will be reversed. When ghettos are located near
desirable areas, redevelopment pressures will be strong. When they are
not, the redevelopment pump may
10 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
need to be primed with government
assistance.
In both circumstances, the concern
that gentrification will drive out the
remaining poor can be addressed.
Where government assists the redevelopment process, the assistance should
be conditioned on housing for the poor
as part of the mix. Where it does not
(although usually some form of assistance will be involved), inclusionary
zoning can mandate that some low-income housing be included in all new
residential development above a
threshold number of units. Other techniques — for example, property tax
caps — are also available.
Revitalization as
an Alternative?
Others reject the Gautreaux approach in favor of preferred alternatives. A major one is “revitalization,”
but analysis discloses that, absent poverty deconcentration, this is an inadequate alternative. A rudimentary
form of revitalization is simply to go
in — without worrying about poverty
deconcentration through housing mobility — and improve shelter and services for present residents. But with
the suburbs having become the locus
of metropolitan employment growth,
with the opportunity engine the ghetto
once was now a destructive, jobless
environment, it is hubris to think we
could reverse decades-old economic
forces through improved shelter and
services alone. William Julius Wilson has concluded, correctly, that without increasing economic opportunities
for poor blacks and reducing their segregation, programs that target ghettos
are unlikely to have much success.
A more sophisticated revitalization
approach is community redevelopment. With a nonprofit community
development corporation generally
leading the way, the idea is to attack
all of a depressed community’s needs
comprehensively and simultaneously
— not just housing, but commercial
development, job creation, school improvement, health facilities, public
and social services, credit supply,
crime and drug control. This form of
revitalization is almost always aided
by government funding of one sort or
another.
The attraction of community revitalization is considerable. Residents
of depressed neighborhoods need
hope; the revitalizing possibility may
supply it. Cities need redevelopment;
the prospect of revitalization offers it.
Democracy requires a strong citizenry;
community-based revitalization builds
strong citizens. No wonder community revitalization is the darling of
philanthropy, supported by a growing
national movement.
But cautions are in order. First,
community redevelopment does not
generally focus on ghettos, for few
black ghettos boast the key instrument
— a strong community development
corporation. Second, even in the
neighborhoods in which most revitalization has been attempted, the record
is distinctly mixed. Revitalization is
a difficult, multi-faceted, long-term
undertaking. Numerous studies make
it clear that even after decades of stupendously hard work and much
achievement, jobs may still be scarce,
neighborhood schools still problematic, poverty still widespread, crime
and drugs still unvanquished. Two of
revitalization’s most enthusiastic supporters, describing one of its most
notable successes (Paul Grogan and
Tony Proscio, in their book Comeback
Cities, writing of the South Bronx),
acknowledge that the poverty rate did
not decline, that employment was
mostly unchanged and that “substantial racial segregation and isolation will
continue.”
The reason has to do with over five
decades of metropolitan development
In the neighborhoods in
which most
revitalization has been
attempted, the record is
distinctly mixed.
patterns which David Rusk examines
in his 1999 book, Inside Game Outside Game. The “inside game” is be-
Selected Readings
Elijah Anderson, Streetwise: Race, Class,
and Change in an Urban Community
(Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990)
Sheryl Cashin, The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream (Public Affairs, 2004)
Elliott Currie, Crime and Punishment in
America (New York: Henry Holt, 1998)
Owen Fiss, A Way Out: America’s Ghettos and the Legacy of Racism (Princeton
Univ. Press, 2003)
George M. Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind (Harper & Row,
1971)
John Goering & Judith D. Feins, eds.
Choosing a Better Life? Evaluating the
Moving to Opportunity Social Experiment
(Urban Institute Press, 2003)
Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second
Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago
1940-1960 (Cambridge Univ. Press,
1983)
Thomas G. Kingsley & Margery Austin
Turner, eds. Housing Markets and Residential Mobility (Urban Institute Press,
1993)
Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land:
The Great Black Migration and How it
Changed America (Knopf, 1991)
Douglas S. Massey & Nancy A. Denton,
American Apartheid: Segregation and the
Making of the Underclass (Harvard Univ.
Press, 1993)
Leonard S. Rubinowitz & James E.
Rosenbaum, Crossing the Class and
Color Lines (Univ. of Chicago Press,
2000)
David Rusk, Inside Game Outside Game:
Winning Strategies for Saving Urban
America (Brookings Institution Press,
1999)
John Yinger, Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimination (Russell Sage Foundation, 1995)
ing played in many large cities and —
increasingly — in many older, innerring suburbs as well. Relative to their
metropolitan regions, these “inside”
places face declining employment,
middle-class populations, buying
power, relative incomes and tax bases,
along with increasing, disproportionately poor minority populations. The
“outside game” reverses these patterns,
with most of the suburbs, particularly
the newer, farther-out ones, garnering a steadily growing share of the
region’s jobs, as well as middle-class
families with their incomes, buying
power and tax-paying capacities, while
housing a disproportionately low fraction of the region’s poor.
Inside Game Outside Game analyzes the powerful social and economic
forces that generate these metropolitan development patterns, and the institutional — including governmental
— arrangements that foster them. The
result is what Rusk calls the “tragic
dilemma” of community-based redevelopment programs. “It is like helping a crowd of people run up a down
escalator.” No matter how fast they
run, Rusk writes, the escalator comes
back down faster and faster. Some
run so hard — some programs function so well — that a few succeed in
getting to the top, but most are carried back down, and the climb becomes
harder and harder for those trying
later.
To be sure, no effort to improve
housing and services for poor families
should be gainsaid. Some revitalization activity may actually prevent marginal neighborhoods from becoming
ghettos. Yet there is a danger that the
appeal of community revitalization
will lead to plans that leave ghettos
intact by focusing exclusively on improving conditions within them for
their impoverished populations. We
should not be about the business of
fostering self-contained ghetto communities apart from the mainstream.
We should instead be trying to bring
the ghetto poor into the mainstream.
The critical point is that only by enabling the poor to live among the nonpoor will significant long-term im(Please turn to page 12)
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 11
(GHETTOS: Continued from page 11)
provements be made possible in the life
circumstances of most impoverished
families trapped in ghettos.
Experience demonstrates that community revitalization can best be
achieved through a mixed-income approach that attracts higher-income
families to (formerly) poverty neighborhoods, thereby creating an incentive for private profit and investment.
Like housing mobility, mixed-income
development also brings with it the
crucial benefit of enabling the poor to
live among the non-poor. Community
revitalization should thus be seen not
as an opposing or alternate strategy but
as a follow-on, mixed-income complement to housing mobility.
The Politics
A final objection is that my entire
proposal is an indulgent fantasy. Don’t
we clearly lack the political stomach
for facilitating the movement of large
numbers of black families from innercity ghettos to white neighborhoods?
What on earth makes me think that a
nation that has treated blacks the way
America has through most of its history — the way it still treats the black
poor — would give a moment’s consideration to the course I am proposing? This very black ghetto issue was
instrumental in shifting the political
alignment of the entire country just a
few decades ago, changing American
character in the bargain. We remain
today the uncaring nation we then became. Indeed, as this is being written, the Bush Administration is proposing to cut back radically on housing choice vouchers. A Gautreauxtype program would certainly be portrayed as liberal social engineering.
Should it ever be seriously considered,
wouldn’t some modern-day George
Wallace whip up the country’s hardly
dormant Negrophobia, perhaps especially easy to do at a time when working- and even middle-class Americans
are having a hard time?
Maybe. Still, history is full of close
calls and surprises. England might have
succumbed to the Nazis if Roosevelt
had not dreamed up lend-lease and
persuaded a reluctant America First
Congress to go along. Truman beat
Dewey. Nixon went to China. The
Soviet Union collapsed. In one decade, the Civil Rights Movement
ended generations of seemingly impregnable Jim Crow. In a single fair
housing enactment, Congress stripped
historically sacred private property
rights from American landowners.
Even with respect to black Americans,
history tells us that we can sometimes
manage to take forward steps. Leadership is key, but we will not have a
Bush in the White House forever.
It is ghetto fear — anxiety about inundation and anti-social conduct —
that explains a good deal (though not
So long as black ghettos
exist, most white
Americans will fear the
entry of blacks, any
blacks, into their
communities.
all) of white attitudes toward blacks
in general, and white rejection of inmoving blacks in particular. If the
black ghetto were replaced, over time
those fears and anxieties would be ameliorated. Gautreaux teaches that the
threshold fear of “them” can be overcome by effective pre- and post-move
counseling; by certification from a
credible agency that the moving families will be good tenants; and, most
importantly, by keeping the numbers
down. No more than a handful of
families a year entering any receiving
community makes for a different ball
game.
Two Courses
America confronts two courses.
The first is to continue to co-exist with
black ghettos. The second is to dismantle and transform them. The prospect along the first course, as
Tocqueville prophesied, is that the evil
of racial inequality will not be solved.
12 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
So long as black ghettos exist, threatening inundation should there be a
break in any neighborhood’s dike,
most white Americans will fear the entry of blacks, any blacks, into their
communities. And so long as that is
the case, America’s “most formidable
evil” will continue to afflict the nation.
The other part of Tocqueville’s
prophecy — result in disaster — is less
certain. Yet so long as we continue to
tolerate the black ghetto, the prospect
is for continuation of the two unequal
societies described by the Kerner Commission Report, and continued fear of
blacks by white Americans. As long
as that fear persists, whites will continue to treat black Americans as the
feared Other. They are likely to continue to act fearfully and repressively,
possibly to incarcerate still more black
Americans in still more prisons. In that
event, the Toqueville prophecy of disaster may indeed become the American reality.
The alternative is to dismantle our
highest-poverty black ghettos and replace them wherever possible with
mixed-income communities, thereby
to lessen the fear and the fearful conduct they generate. Nothing can bring
that about overnight, and any approach
will be fraught with difficulty and uncertainty. But a national Gautreaux
mobility program is a sensible way to
begin a task that we postpone at our
peril.
Alexander Polikoff (apolikoff@
bpichicago.org) is staff attorney and
former executive director of Business
and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI), a Chicago public
interest law and policy center. He is
also lead counsel in the Gautreaux litigation. This article is adapted from
the final chapter of Polikoff’s forthcoming book, Waiting for Gautreaux:
The Slender but Precious Hope for
Racial Equality. ❏
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section.
(VOTING: Continued from page 4)
Keeping the Promise
The Third National Conference
on Housing Mobility
December 3-4, 2004
At the Urban Institute, 2100 M St. NW
Washington, DC
This working conference will bring together housing mobility
program administrators, public housing agency representatives,
researchers, and fair housing and civil rights activists to plan for
the future of programs that help poor families move from highpoverty to low-poverty communities. We will hear the latest
research on housing voucher mobility, in order to begin to develop a coherent set of policy proposals and organize to put
housing mobility back on the national policy agenda.
CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS
“Understanding and translating the latest research results from
Moving to Opportunity and Gautreaux”: Margery AustinTurner,
The Urban Institute
“Housing Mobility and Public Health”: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia,
Harvard University
“The Continuing Promise of Housing Mobility”: Alex Polikoff,
Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, and lead
plaintiffs’ counsel in Gautreaux
“Mobility Programs Today — Promising Practices and Ongoing
Challenges”: Jennifer O’Neill, CHAC; Ophelia Basgal, Alameda
County Housing Authority; Mary Davis, Leadership Council for
Metropolitan Open Communities
“Housing Mobility and the Future of the Integration Ideal”: Prof.
Sheryll Cashin, Georgetown Law School
Workshops will cover housing mobility in the Latino and Asian
communities, domestic violence and gender issues, public health
impacts of housing mobility, and current issues in housing
mobility administration.
Conference co-sponsors include the National Fair Housing Alliance, The National Low Income Housing Coalition, The Urban
Institute, the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, the Leadership
Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, and the National
Council of La Raza. The Conference is supported in part by a grant
from the Taconic Foundation.
For late registration and more information, go to www.prrac.org.
Presidential elections (1961); the 24th
Amendment banned poll taxes in federal elections (1964); and the 26th
amendment lowered the voting age to
18 for qualified voters in the states
(1971).
But this ad hoc sequence of democratizing and anti-discrimination
amendments for particular groups still
does not add up to an affirmative universal right to vote, the kind that the
International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights calls for and that, for
example, post-apartheid South Africa
actually has. The South African Constitution defines the new Republic as a
“sovereign democratic state” with
“universal adult suffrage” and a “multiparty system of democratic government.” In South Africa, “Every adult
citizen has the right to vote in elec-
Most Americans think
that we have a
Constitutional “right
to vote.”
tions for any legislative body established in terms of the Constitution.”
What difference does it make that
our Constitution has never made a declaration like that? After all, most
people think that we already do have a
“right to vote,” and billions of dollars
were spent in 2004 telling people to
exercise it. But, in truth, this void
deep in the heart of our Constitution
leaves us with a major democracy deficit that poses the three following problems for democratic legitimacy in
America.
• Within the Electoral College system, the individual citizen has no
Constitutional right to vote for
President, and the people have no
right to control the selection of the
state’s electors
Most Americans dimly understand
that the popular vote does not control
who wins in the Presidential election
(Please turn to page 14)
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 13
(VOTING: Continued from page 13)
— thus, Vice-President Gore had
500,000+ votes more than Bush in
2000 but still lost. Yet most people
also assume that a majority popular
vote controls which candidate captures
the Electoral College votes in their own
state. But the 2000 Presidential election taught us that this is false.
In 2000, the Florida Supreme Court
ordered a statewide manual recount of
175,000 ballots that for various reasons could not be read by the state’s
obsolescent punchcard machines. At
that point, leaders of the Republicancontrolled Florida legislature in 2000
declared that the legislature would not
be bound by this recount and would
independently select the state’s Electoral College members. This announcement stunned many Americans.
Harvard Kennedy School of Government Professor Alexander Keyssar, in
the Political Science Quarterly (Summer 2003), likened it to “a half-forgotten corpse” that “had suddenly been
jarred loose from the river bottom and
floated upward into view.”
But in its opinion in Bush v. Gore,
the Supreme Court’s majority emphasized that the Florida legislature was
acting well within its powers. The
Court stated that the “individual citizen has no federal Constitutional right
to vote for electors for the President
of the United States.” Thus, even
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its 2004 Multicultural Book
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when legislatures grant the people the
right to vote in Presidential elections,
they can always revoke it and “take
back the power to appoint electors.”
Even if the people seek to bind themselves in their state constitutions to
abide by a popular vote for president,
they cannot restrain legislatures that
resolve in the future to appoint electors of their own choosing.
The events of 2000, however extreme they seemed at the time, may
prefigure the collapse of already fragile democratic norms in close Presidential elections. As the nation’s demographics shift, undermining the
The Electoral College presents a
massive challenge to democratic values and a standing invitation to political mischief. But, even if we assume
that we are stuck with it for the time
being, the electors should at least be
directly chosen by the people of each
state. The only way to strip the legislatures of their dangerous power over
selection of the electors and establish
real popular control of each state’s
electoral votes is by way of Constitutional amendment.
The Court told us that
state legislatures can
appoint electors,
regardless of the actual
popular vote.
• In every election, millions of
Americans entitled to vote are disenfranchised by bad technology,
voter registration obstacles, and tactical suppression of voting, which
are problems engineered or tolerated
by state election managers who operate with relative impunity under
current laws.
natural strength of the contemporary
Republican Party, we can expect to see
aggressive partisan tactics by its leaders in state legislatures — and their lawyers in the Supreme Court and other
tribunals — working to accumulate 270
electors by hook or by crook. Indeed,
the Texas Constitution was amended
shortly after the 2000 election to provide that if the popular vote seems
ambiguous or difficult to count, the
Texas legislature shall have the right
to immediately appoint electors of its
choosing. This provision is redundant,
of course, given the Court’s analysis
of the problem, but it is properly read
as a statement of collective political
intentions by a flagship Republican
legislature that last year, with ferocious partisan precision, also moved
heaven and earth to “gerrymander”
U.S. House districts to favor Republicans. I write before the 2004 election, which has the benefit of thousands of volunteer lawyers on the
ground. But if any state legislature
decides to take advantage of the ample
confusion and controversy in the electoral system to appoint electors without regard to the popular vote, the
people will have little structural recourse.
Because America has no Constitutional right to vote, it also has no national electoral commission to protect
voting rights and fair elections.
Rather, we have hundreds of partisan
officials at the state and local level
supervising our elections — people like
Florida’s Secretary of State in 2000,
Katherine Harris, who co-chaired the
Bush for President campaign in
Florida, or Ohio Secretary of State
Kenneth Blackwell, who co-chaired
his state’s Bush for President campaign
in 2004. We have no national ballot
but a maze of state ballots. We have
no single system of voting but everything from punchcard machines to the
“optical scan” method to the paranoiainducing “black box” computers without paper receipts. Our election systems are increasingly designed, not by
public agencies but by private corporations, many of them run by political
activists. The CEO of the Diebold
Corporation, which is the largest
maker of the new voting computers,
spent a weekend at President Bush’s
ranch and wrote a fundraising letter to
fellow Republicans in which he
pledged to deliver Ohio’s Electoral
College votes to President Bush.
In this electoral jungle, voting
rights are weak but voting wrongs are
14 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
everywhere. Our votes are lost, miscounted, passed over and suppressed
in every election. This reality was
shown by the outrageous practices that
came to light in Florida in 2000. Journalist Greg Palast, in Harper’s, has
documented that more than 50,000
persons – half of them African American or Latino — were falsely accused
of being felons and then illegally removed from the state voter registration list before the election by a private company with which Secretary of
State Katherine Harris contracted to
purge felons from the rolls. These citizens were beyond the 600,000 convicted felons who were already disenfranchised by law. After the election,
the state promised to restore the illegally purged voters and not to do it
again.
There were other irregularities.
Thousands of Florida voters who actually made it into the voting booth
lost their votes to that masterpiece of
design error, the Palm Beach “butterfly ballot.” Tens of thousands more
“overvote” ballots — where voters followed ambiguous instructions and
checked off the name of “Al Gore,”
for example, and then also wrote it in
separately — were cast aside and forgotten. Above all, more than 175,000
ballots were simply left uncounted
when they failed to register on the
punchcard ballot tabulations. Although the Florida Supreme Court
ordered all of the ballots to be counted,
a 5-4 majority on the U.S. Supreme
Court quickly moved in to stop the
vote-counting.
Florida was illustrative of our electoral practices, where we all belong to
a reserve army of the disenfranchised
that can be mobilized in different
places at different times. According
to the July 2001 report of the CalTech
and MIT Voting Technology Project
(“Voting: What It Is, What It Could
Be”), “between four and six million
presidential votes were lost in the 2000
election.” Some 2 million votes were
simply never counted, primarily because of “faulty equipment and confusing ballots”; between 1.5 and 3
million votes were lost in the mazelike vagaries of the voter registration
PRRAC Needs Your
$upport!
As we go to press, we don’t yet know the outcome of the upcoming
national election, but we do know that PRRAC needs your help to continue its progressive research and policy work. While our organization is
primarily foundation-funded, we also are dependent on the individual contributions of our subscribers and supporters to pursue our research and
advocacy agenda. Some of our current projects include the Housing Mobility Initiative (including our upcoming Housing Mobility Conference),
“Civil Rights Mandates in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program”
(a research and advocacy campaign to enforce fair housing requirements
in the nation’s largest low-income housing production program), and a
new effort to bring our award-winning civil rights curriculum on the road
in a series of teacher-community activist workshops (“Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching”). For a complete list of current
PRRAC projects, see our website, http://www.prrac.org. Please consider
giving generously to PRRAC this year, using the attached envelope.
process; and up to 1.2 million votes
were lost “because of polling place operations” — meaning technical malfunctions, problems with lines and
hours, negligence, understaffing and
underfunding. Significantly, this
study reports that these problems are
even worse in state elections than federal ones.
More than 8 million
Americans, a majority
of them AfricanAmerican and Hispanic,
belong to communities
that are absolutely or
substantially
disenfranchised by law.
After 2000, many were convinced
that all we needed was technological
reform to improve the picture. The
Help America Vote Act of 2002
(HAVA) put billions of dollars into
state efforts to replace the punchcard
machines with electronic voting and,
most positively, required state provisional voting laws that will allow voters to cast challenged ballots if there
is a problem at the polls.
But HAVA did not fundamentally
change the picture of official indifference to voting rights and in fact made
certain things worse. The statute created no legal redress for voters who
are wrongfully excluded from the voter
rolls, nor did it pass any criminal or
civil penalties for officials who actually violate a person’s right to vote.
There are no real teeth in the statute
when it comes to defending voting
rights against government misconduct.
And it has created some practices and
implications unfriendly to voting.
Several courts this year upheld the
power of states under HAVA to toss
out provisional ballots cast by bona fide
voters who vote in the wrong precinct.
This would be unthinkable if the fundamental right to vote were rooted in
the Constitution rather than the grace
of state legislatures.
We also face the recurring problem
of the modern Republican Party practicing scare tactics to intimidate minority voters. Just as Southern white
Democrats suppressed black voting in
Mississippi, today’s Republicans are
always looking for ways to intimidate
and deter racial minorities in the political process. A seminal example took
place early in the Reagan years, in New
Jersey’s 1981 gubernatorial election.
The Republican National Committee
launched a National Ballot Security
Force, which sent letters to registered
Democrats in African-American and
Hispanic communities. Any letters re(Please turn to page 16)
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 15
(VOTING: Continued from page 15)
turned as undeliverable became the
basis for challenging voters and trying to get them deleted from the rolls.
“On election day,” Laughlin
McDonald writes in The American
Prospect, “the security force dispatched armed off-duty police officers wearing official looking armbands
to heavily black. . . precincts in Newark, Camden and Trenton.” They patrolled the polls and posted signs advertising a $1,000 reward for anyone
offering information leading to the
arrest and conviction of people violating election laws. This kind of “ballot
security” operation has become standard operating procedure in today’s
Republican Party, which understands,
as one of its Michigan state legislators
put it in 2004, that victory depends on
suppressing the black vote.
• More than 8 million American
citizens, a majority of them African-Americans and Hispanics, remain absolutely or substantially disenfranchised by virtue of exclusionary voting policies that the courts
have found Constitutionally acceptable or even obligatory.
Unlike the haphazard disenfranchisement that randomly affected millions in 2000, there is a larger institutionalized disenfranchisement taking
place that rarely enters the headlines.
More than 8 million Americans, a
majority of them racial and ethnic
minorities, still belong to communities that are absolutely or substantially
disenfranchised by law. This is a population of voteless persons larger than
the combined populations of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Delaware, Maine and Nebraska. The unrepresented fall into three groups:
There are 570,898 taxpaying,
draftable U.S. citizens living in the
District of Columbia who lack any
voting representation in the U.S.
Congress. Although Washingtonians
pay more federal taxes per capita than
the residents of every state but Con-
necticut, are subject to military conscription and can vote in Presidential
elections under the terms of the 23 rd
Amendment, they have been continually frustrated in their efforts to achieve
voting representation in the United
States Senate and House of Representatives. This is a double injustice, since
Congress acts not only as their national
legislative sovereign but ultimately as
their local legislature as well under the
terms of the Constitution’s “District
Clause” (U.S. Const. art. I, 17, cl.
8), which confers upon Congress “exclusive Legislation” over the District.
Over 4 million American
citizens living in the
Territories have no
mechanism for
participation in federal
elections and no voting
representation.
District residents have only a non-voting Delegate in the House, Rep.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has been
brilliantly nimble but so far unsuccessful in promoting equal voting rights
for her constituents against the frosty
indifference of most politicians.
The District’s effort to climb up to
a level of equal membership in
America has been a lonely one, and
the Constitution has been effectively
mobilized as an enemy to the cause.
In the early 1990s, a bill to grant a
petition for statehood for D.C. failed
by a 2-1 margin in the House of Representatives and never saw the light of
day in the Senate. Members of Congress repeatedly invoked the Constitution itself as the warrant for continuing disenfranchisement.
In 2000, just a few months before
its decision in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court rejected an Equal Protection attack on Congressional disenfranchisement of the District by affirming a 2-1 decision of the United
States District Court for the District
of Columbia in a case called Alexander
v. Mineta (90 F.Supp.2d 35 [D. D.C.
2000], aff’d by 531 U.S. 940). The
16 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
plaintiffs in the suit, which was brought
by the District’s lawyer, alleged that
their disenfranchisement in the U.S.
Senate and House of Representatives
was unconstitutional. The District
Court majority found that: “The Equal
Protection Clause does not protect the
right of all citizens to vote, but rather
the right of all qualified citizens to
vote.” To be a “qualified” citizen for
purposes of national legislative representation, you must live in a state and
have the state grant you the vote. Thus,
the District population, nearly 70% of
which is African-American, Hispanic
and Asian-American, is simply in the
wrong place.
The effort that has come nearest to
accomplishing voting rights in Congress for District residents was the proposed D.C. Voting Rights Constitutional amendment, which would have
treated the District constituting the
Seat of Government as though it were
a state for the purposes of Congressional representation. The proposed
amendment passed Congress in 1978
by more than a two-thirds majority in
both the House and Senate, with overwhelming Democratic support and substantial Republican backing as well. It
failed in the states when it found itself
desperately short of national allies
against a ferocious conservative opposition.
There are 4,129,318 American citizens living in the federal Territories
of Puerto Rico, Guam, American
Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands
who have no right to vote for President and no voting representation in
the Congress. These 4+ million U.S.
citizens living in the Territories are
subject to the sovereignty of Congress
under the “Territorial Clause” of the
Constitution (art. IV, 3, cl. 2). But
they have no mechanism for participation in federal elections and no voting representation in national government. The largest Territorial population is in Puerto Rico, home to
3,808,610 people as of the 2000 Census. In 1917, the Jones Act gave all
Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, and in
1952 the island gained “Commonwealth” status. But, like the District’s
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Puerto
Rican “Resident Commissioner” still
acts only as a non-voting Delegate in
the House of Representatives. Also
like residents of the District of Columbia, Territorial residents are shut out
of the Senate completely. Unlike
Washingtonians, Puerto Ricans have
no voice even in Presidential elections.
Citizens living in the Territories
have all the responsibilities of other
American citizens except that they do
not pay federal taxes (unless they work
for the federal government). Some
people believe that this exemption justifies complete disenfranchisement.
This is certainly not the view of Puerto
Ricans and other Territorial residents,
who pay heavy local taxes, serve in
the armed forces, are subject to the
draft and consider themselves part of
the country. According to the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the “exclusion of U.S. citizens
residing in the territories from participating in the vote for the President of
the United States is the cause of immense resentment in those territories
— resentment that has been especially
vocal in Puerto Rico” (Romeu v.
Cohen, 265 F.3d 118, 127 [2d Cir.
2001]). As Judge Pierre Leval observed in that case, the political exclusion of Puerto Ricans “fuels annual
attacks on the United States in hearings in the United Nations, at which
the United States is described as hypocritically preaching democracy to the
world while practicing nineteenth-century colonialism at home.”
Yet repeated lawsuits against the
disenfranchisement of Puerto Ricans
in Presidential elections have failed.
The Constitution makes no provision
for Territorial residents to be represented in the national government and
therefore reduces citizens living in
Territories to colonial status. This
second-class seating is a central obsession of Puerto Rican politics and
equally significant in other Territories.
There is little sympathy for seeking
independence from the U.S., which
seems an ever more far-fetched option.
But Congress has refused to act in an
effective way to grant Puerto Ricans a
real choice among statehood, indepen-
dence, the status quo and “enhanced
commonwealth” status. The political
rights of citizens in the Territories
should not wait any longer for a choice
of political forms that never emerges.
The 23rd Amendment, which gave
residents of D.C. the opportunity to
vote in their first Presidential election
in 1964, set a precedent for using Constitutional amendments to enfranchise
citizens who have no residence in a
state and to recognize them as a permanent part of the national community.
We are the only nation
on earth that
disenfranchises the
people of its capital
city.
There are more than 4 million citizens disenfranchised, many of them
for the rest of their lives, in federal,
state and local elections as a consequence of a felony criminal conviction. According to The Sentencing
Project and Human Rights Watch, in
their report, “Losing the Vote: The
Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement,” citizens who have been disenfranchised in their states because of
criminal convictions amount to about
2% of the country’s eligible voting
population. In four states — Florida,
Mississippi, Virginia and Wyoming —
citizens disenfranchised because of
their criminal records constitute fully
4% of the adult population.
Felon disenfranchisement is less a
strategy of individual moral rehabilitation than mass electoral suppression.
This analysis seems unavoidable when
we consider that 1.4 million ex-offenders, mostly African Americans, are
permanently disenfranchised in eight
states. In Florida in 2000, 600,000
voteless citizens were former felons
who already did their time and paid
their dues to society. They will never
get their suffrage rights back under
current law, which operates like a political death sentence, unless they beg
for, and receive, electoral clemency
Thanks!
There’s no way I could function as Editor of P&R without
lots of help. And fortunately,
we’ve got it, and they’re terrific.
So let me thank Teri Grimwood
for her reliable, quick and intelligent layout work, and Brenda
Fleet and Rebekah Park of the
PRRAC staff for all their good
support work. — CH
from the state’s Governor, presently
Jeb Bush.
As one might expect in a period of
racially-tilted law enforcement, these
policies have dramatic effects on the
composition of the electorate. In
Florida, a shocking 31% of all African-American men are permanently
disenfranchised. In both Delaware and
Texas, 20% of African Americans are
disenfranchised. In Virginia and Mississippi, about 25% of the black male
population has been permanently
locked out of the electoral process.
Felon disenfranchisement is at odds
with the principle of universal suffrage,
which is why the policy has begun to
fall around the world. Last year, the
Canadian Supreme Court in Sauve v.
Canada (Chief Electoral Officer)
struck it down as violative of Canada’s
constitutional right to vote, holding:
“Denial of the right to vote on the basis of attributed moral unworthiness is
inconsistent with the respect for the
dignity of every person that lies at the
heart of Canadian democracy.”
But our Constitution creates the
contrary implication. In 1974, the
U.S. Supreme Court in Richardson v.
Ramirez (418 U.S. 24, 56 [1974])
found that felon disenfranchisement
does not violate the requirement of
“equal protection” in Section 1 of the
14th Amendment because Section 2
explicitly authorizes states to disenfranchise persons convicted of “rebellion, or other crime” without losing
any Congressional representation.
Unless this decision is reversed, only
a Constitutional amendment can en(Please turn to page 18)
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 17
(VOTING: Continued from page 17)
franchise more than 4 million people
who have been convicted of felonies
and stripped of their voting rights or,
at least, the 1.4 million ex-offenders
who have served their time but are
likely to remain disenfranchised until
they die.
Catching Up to the
World — and Ourselves
Americans are waking up to a central and surprising flaw of American
politics—our deeply vulnerable right
to vote. But, in a certain sense, this
only scratches the surface of our difficulties, which include: runaway partisan gerrymandering that destroys
competitiveness in most U.S. House
races and gives us an incumbent reelection rate often exceeding 95%; a
U.S. Senate with no African-American members except the (presumably)
newly elected Senator from Illinois,
Barack Obama; winner-take-all elections that systematically cancel out the
voting strength and interests of tens of
millions of people; blatant official discrimination against third parties and
independents in ballot access rules and
debate participation; the continuing
dominance of big money in government and elections; and the unnecessary disenfranchisement of non-citizens
in local elections.
But these second-generation issues
will be difficult to address until we
deal with the primary fact that we have
not protected voting as an affirmative
Constitutional right. In the global context, this departure of American constitutionalism from well-established
international norms is ironic. For the
United States was the first nation conceived in popular insurgency against
tyranny and in favor of representative
constitutionalism. It was Bob Moses
and our modern Civil Rights activists,
battling the political oppression of
apartheid Mississippi, who produced
the slogan of “one person, one vote”
that swept the earth at the end of the
20th Century.
Today, our political Constitution
looks frail and incomplete in the face
of modern universal suffrage principles visible all over the world. We
are the only nation on earth that disenfranchises the people of its capital
city. Our felon disenfranchisement
policies are backward compared to
those of other advanced democracies.
Our election systems are raggedy, and
our electoral practices disfavor real
electoral competition and diverse representation.
The world was shocked to witness
our electoral train-wreck in 2000, and
Our political
Constitution looks frail
and incomplete in the
face of modern
universal suffrage
principles visible all
over the world.
many of us were astonished to read the
Supreme Court’s pronouncement that
we have no Constitutional right to vote
for President. But no one should have
been surprised, for the evidence is all
around us. A right-to-vote Constitutional amendment is necessary not only
to redeem the demoralizing chaos we
experienced in the election of 2000 but
to maintain the trajectory of our democratic development against competing
forms of government also lurking
within our society, such as empire and
national security state. Already the
entire Congressional Black Caucus has
endorsed a right-to-vote Constitutional
amendment proposed by Congressman
Jesse Jackson, Jr. Dozens of other
members of Congress have voiced
their support as well. There are signs
that the “election protection” movement that intervened in the 2004 election will not fold up its tent, but will
place democracy advancement high up
on the agenda.
The history of the United States can
be read as a struggle for inclusive democracy against structures of domination and exclusion. Many of the
18 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
amendments we have added since the
Bill of Rights have been suffrage-expanding or democracy-deepening
amendments. But they have had a
sharply limited effect. Without a universal Constitutional right to vote
granting every possible presumption in
favor of the people, almost any electoral policy can be turned against the
electorate by partisan state election
officials. We need to show the political maturity as a nation now to inscribe
the people’s right to vote directly into
the people’s covenant.
Jamin Raskin (raskin@wcl.
american.edu) is a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law
and founder of its Marshall-Brennan
Program, which sends law students into
public high schools to teach a course
in constitutional literacy. He is the
author, most recently, of We the Students (CQ Press and the Supreme Court
Historical Society, 2003 [2d ed.]) and
Overruling Democracy: The Supreme
Court versus the American People
(Routledge, 2003). ❏
Additional Reading
Bob Moses and Charles Cobb, Radical
Equations: Math Literacy and Civil
Rights, Beacon Press (2001)
Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote:
The Contested History of Democracy
in the United States, Basic Books (2000)
“The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter
Intimidation and Suppression in America
Today,” People for the American Way
Foundation and NAACP, http://
www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/
default.aspx?oid=16368.
Laughlin McDonald, “The New Poll
Tax,” The American Prospect, December 30, 2002, http://www.prospect.org/
print/V13/23/mcdonald-l.html
Steven Hill, Fixing Elections: The Failure of America’s Winner Take All Politics, Routledge (2002)
The Center for Voting and Democracy,
the nation’s leading voting reform organization — www.fairvote.org.
Our New Board Members
Darrell Armstrong
Darrell Armstrong is pastor of historic Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, NJ — its third pastor in the last
100 years. He is the founder and Board
Chair of the National Association of
Foster Children, Inc. and is a member of the [NJ] Governor’s Cabinet for
Children. He chairs the Social Concerns Committee of the General Baptist Convention of NJ and is a member of the NJ Supreme Court Committee on Minority Concerns. He is a
trustee of the College of New Jersey.
He holds a BA in Public Policy from
Stanford and a Masters in Divinity
from Princeton Theological Seminary.
Director of its Project for the Future
of Equal Justice. In 2002, she helped
form the Mississippi Center for Social Justice, a collaborative racial and
economic justice law firm that practices community problem-solving approaches. Prior to coming to CLASP,
she was Executive Director of the
Southern Africa Legal Service & Legal Education Project. She is the immediate past Board President of the
Washington Council of Lawyers, a
voluntary bar association promoting
pro bono and public interest law. A
graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe Colleges and the Harvard Law School, she
then clerked for Sixth Circuit Judge
Damon Keith.
Craig Flournoy
Craig Flournoy is an Assistant Professor of Journalism at Southern Methodist Univ. in Dallas. For over a decade, he was a reporter for the Dallas
Morning News, where he twice won a
Pulitzer Prize (among many other
awards) for his investigative reporting,
including “Separate and Unequal,” a
series on racial discrimination and segregation in HUD’s low-income housing programs throughout the country.
His undergraduate degree is from the
University of New Orleans, and he
holds a Masters from SMU, a doctorate from Louisiana State University.
Olati Johnson
Camille Holmes
Camille Holmes is Senior Staff
Attorney at the Center for Law & Social Policy in Washington, DC and Co-
Olati Johnson is the Kellis Parker
Fellow in Law at Columbia Law
School. Prior to that she served as a
consultant at the ACLU’s National
Legal Dept.; counsel to Sen. Kennedy
on the Senate Judiciary Comm., Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund, and a program assistant at the Children’s Defense Fund.
She holds a BA from Yale and a law
degree from Stanford, following
which she clerked for US Court of
Appeals Judge David Tatel and Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
Request
for Syllabi
We’ve received several syllabi
for courses dealing with race and
poverty issues. We’d like to list
them (and how to access them) in
a future issue of P&R. If you
teach/taught or are taking/took
such a course, please pass on
(preferably by email) such a syllabus.
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 19
Resources
When ordering items from
the Resources Section,
please note that most
listings direct you to
contact an organization
other than PRRAC. Prices
include the shipping/
handling (s/h) charge
when this information is
provided to PRRAC. “No
price listed” items often
are free.
When ordering items from
PRRAC: SASE = selfaddressed stamped
envelope (37¢ unless
otherwise indicated).
Orders may not be placed
by telephone or fax.
Please indicate from
which issue of P&R you
are ordering.
Race/Racism
• “The New Great
Migration: Black
Americans’ Return to the
South, 1965-2000,” a
2004 Brookings Inst.
report, is available at
www.brookings.edu/
urban/publications/
20040524_frey.htm
[9042]
• The Deacons for
Defense: Armed Resistance & the Civil Rights
Movement, by Lance Hill
(363 pp., 2004), has been
published by the Univ. of
No. Carolina Press. It’s
an extraordinary, meticulously documented
account, focusing largely
on the Bogalusa, LA area,
of largely unknown
activism on the part of
oppressed African
Americans; the relationship between such armed
resistance and the
nonviolent resistance
activities of the Civil
Rights Movement; the
conflict between the goals
of national and local civil
rights organizations and
the underlying class
differences within the
black community that
explain much,
www.uncpress.unc.edu
[9050]
• “Asian Americans
and Voting” is the special
issue (Vol. 2:2, 2004) of
AAPI Nexus, the journal
of the UCLA Asian Amer.
Studies Ctr. (headed by
PRRAC Bd. member Don
Nakanishi). $16 from the
Ctr., 3230 Campbell
Hall, Box 951946, LA,
CA 90095-1546, 310/
825-2968, aascpress@
aasc.ucla.edu,
www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc
[9062]
• “Names Make a
Difference: The screening of resumes by
temporary employment
agencies in California”
(Oct. 2004) is available
from the Discriminat1on
Research Ctr., 125
University Ave., Berkeley, CA 94710, 510/8453473, x311, spierre@
impactfund.org,
www.impactfund.org/
drc.html [9072]
• “Redefining Rights in
America: The Civil
Rights Record of the
George W. Bush Administration, 2001-2004” is a
U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights staff report
that was posted on the
Commission’s website,
but has engendered fierce
partisan conflict among
Commission members
(Republican appointees
objected to posting it
prior to the Nov.2
election). It still may be
viewable/downloadable at
www.usccr.gov/pubs/
bush/bush04.pdf [9099]
Please drop us a line letting us know how useful
our Resources Section is to you, as both a lister
and requester of items. We hear good things, but
only sporadically. Having a more complete sense
of the effectiveness of this networking function will
help us greatly in foundation fundraising work
(and is awfully good for our morale). Drop us a
short note, letting us know if it has been/is useful to
you (how many requests you get when you list an
item, how many items you send away for, etc.)
Thank you.
• “Building Personal
& Professional Competence in a Multicultural
Society,” sponsored by
the Natl. Multicultural
Inst., will be held Nov.
11-14, 2004 in Bethesda,
MD. Inf. from NMCI,
3000 Conn. Ave. NW,
#438, Wash., DC 20008,
202/483-0700,
[email protected],
www.nmci.org [9024]
Poverty/
Welfare
• “The Shape of the
Curve: Household
Income Distributions in
U.S. Cities, 1979-1999,”
by Alan Berube &
Thacher Tiffany (35 pp.,
Aug. 2004), is available
(possibly free) from the
Brookings Inst. Met.
Policy Prog., 1775 Mass.
Ave. NW, Wash., DC
20036-2188, 202/7976139, www.brookings.
edu/metro [9020]
• “Time Limits,
Employment, and State
Flexibility in TANF
Programming: How
States Can Use Time
Limits & Earnings
Disregards to Support
Employment Goals,
Preserve Flexibility &
Meet Stricter Federal
Participation Requirements,” by John M.
20 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
Bouman, Margaret
Stapleton & Deb McKee,
is a 14-page article in the
Sept./Oct. 2003 issue of
Clearinghouse Review:
Journal of Poverty Law &
Policy. Available from
the Sargent Shriver Natl.
Ctr. on Poverty Law, 50
E. Washington St., #500,
Chicago, IL 60602, 312/
263-3830, admin@
povertylaw.org,
www.povertylaw.org
[9033]
• “Do Child Characteristics Affect How Children Fare in Families
Receiving & Leaving
Welfare?,” by Sharon
Vandivere, Martha
Zaslow, Jennifer Brooks
& Zakia Redd, is an Aug.
2004 Discussion Paper
from The Urban Inst.,
2100 M St. NW, Wash.,
DC 20037, 202/2615699, BNowak@
ui.urban.org [9037]
• “Working Hard,
Falling Short: America’s
Working Families & the
Pursuit of Economic
Security,” by Tom
Waldrom, Brandon
Roberts, Andrew Reamer,
Sara Rab & Steve Ressler
(36 pp., Oct. 2004), is
available at www.aecf.
org/initiatives/
jobsinitiative/
workingpoor/
working_hard_new.pdf
[9044]
• Poverty Law News is
a weekly electonic
newsletter published by
the Sargent Shriver Natl.
Ctr. on Poverty Law,
www.povertylaw.org
[9053]
• Ideas, Policies &
Programs to Broaden
Asset Ownership is a
website from the New
America Fdn.,
assetbuilding@
newamerica.net,
AssetBuilding.org [9064]
• Leaving Welfare:
Employment & WellBeing of Families that
Left Welfare in the PostEntitlement Era, by
Gregory Acs & Pamela
Loprest (Sept. 2004), has
been published by The
Urban Inst., 2100 M St.
NW, Wash., DC 20037,
202/261-5709,
[email protected]
[9066]
• “A Profile of Families Cycling On & Off
Welfare” is an Oct. 2004
MDRC report, available
at www.mdrc.org/sps/
go.cgi?c=b0mYxfl7Fzmdoy
JJKJ51 [9089]
Community
Organizing
• “Protecting LowIncome Communities
From the New ‘Urban
Renewal’: Antidisplacement Advocacy &
Relocation Rights
Enforcement,” by S.
Lynn Martinez, is a 23page article in the Sept./
Oct. 2003 issue of
Clearinghouse Review:
Journal of Poverty Law &
Policy. Available from
the Sargent Shriver Natl.
Ctr. on Poverty Law, 50
E. Washington St., #500,
Chicago, IL 60602, 312/
263-3830, admin@
povertylaw.org,
www.povertylaw.org
[9032]
Criminal
Justice
• “Lost Opportunities:
The Reality of Latinos in
the U.S. Criminal Justice
System,” an Oct. 2004,
147-page report from the
Natl. Council of La Raza,
is available ($20) from
NCLR, 202/785-1670;
downloadable free if you
register online with
NCLR. [9043]
• “The Vanishing
Black Electorate: Felony
Disenfranchisement in
Atlanta, Georgia” (Sept.
2004) is available from
The Sentencing Proj.,
www.sentencingproject.org/
pdfs/atlanta-report.pdf
[9057]
• “Political Punishment,” a 2004 study by
the Family Life Ctr.,
found that 20% of
African-Amer. males in
RI, and as many as 40%
in some Providence
neighborhoods, cannot
vote due to felony
disenfranchisement. Inf./
copies from The Sentencing Proj., staff@
sentencingproject.org,
www.sentencingproject.org
[9060]
• “Innocence and the
Crisis in the American
Death Penalty,” by
Richard C. Dieter (61
pp., Sept. 2004), a Death
Penalty Inf. Ctr. report, is
available from the Ctr.,
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org
[9081]
• “Purged!” a 44-page,
Oct. 2004 report by Laleh
Ispahani & Nick Williams, from ACLU, Right
to Vote & Demos, http://
www.aclu.org/
votingrights/
votingrights.cfm?ID=
16845&c=167. [9082]
Economic/
Community
Development
• “Promises & Pitfalls”
is the Federal Reserve
System’s 4th annual
Community Affairs
Research Conf., April 7-8,
2005 in DC; Alan
Greenspan, keynote
speaker. Inf. from their
Div. of Consumer &
Comm. Affairs, Bd. of
Governors, Fed. Reserve
System, Wash., DC 20551.
[9069]
Education
• New Directions in
Civic Engagement:
University Avenue Meets
Main Street (114 pp.,
2004) is available (likely
free) from the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, 5
Boar’s Head Ln., #100,
Charlottesville, VA 22903,
www.pew-partnership.org
[9014]
• “Complementing
Teachers: A Practical
Guide to Promoting Race
Equality in Schools” is a
210-page, 2003 workbook,
published by England’s
Runnymede Trust, available (no price listed) from
Granada Learning, The
Chiswick Centre, 414
Chiswick High Rd.,
London W4 5TF, England,
020-89963333, www.
granadalearning.co.uk
[9021]
• How Does Teacher
Pay Compare? Methodological Challenges &
Answers, by Sylvia
Allegretto, Sean P.
Corcoran & Lawrence
Mischel (54 pp., 2004), is
available (no price listed)
from the Econ. Policy
Inst., 1660 L St. NW,
#1200, Wash., DC 20036,
www.epinet.org [9027]
• The New Teacher
Book: Finding Purpose,
Balance & Hope During
Your First Years in the
Classroom (2004), from
Rethinking Schools;
$14.95 ($3 discount if
ordered from
www.rethinkingschools.org/
orderform/order.shtml)
[9051]
• “Making the ‘No
Child Left Behind Act’
Work for Children Who
Struggle to Learn: A
Parent’s Guide” (22 pp.,
Oct. 2004) can be
downloaded at
www.LD.org/nclb [9056]
• Beyond ‘Bilingual’
Education: New Immigrants & Public School
Policies in California, by
Alec Ian Gershberg, Anne
Dannenberg & Patricia
Sanchez (2004), has been
published by The Urban
Inst., 2100 M St. NW,
Wash., DC 20037, 202/
261-5709. [9070]
• “National Board
Certified Teachers &
Their Student Achievements,” by Leslie
Vandervoort, Audrey
Amrein-Beardsley &
David C. Berliner,
appeared in the Sept. 8,
2004 issue of Educational
Policy Analysis Archives.
The study — which shows
that students of teachers
certified by the Natl. Bd.
for Profl. Teaching
Standards outperformed
the students of
noncertified teachers on a
standardized text — is
available at epaa.asu.edu/
epaa/v12n46/v12n46.pdf
[9071]
• “Ending Social
Promotion: The effects
of retention,” by Jenny
Nagaoka & Melissa
Roderick (68 pp., March
2004), a Chicago study,
is available at
www.consortiumchicago.org/publications/
pdfs/p70.pdf [9075]
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 21
• “Ending Social
Promotion: Dropout
rates in Chicago after
implementation of the
eighth-grade promotion
gate,” by Elaine
Allensworth (48 pp.,
March 2004), is available
at www.consortium.
chicago.org/publications/
pdfs/p69.pdf [9076]
• “Breeding Animosity: The ‘Burden of
Acting White’ & Other
Problems of Status
Group Hierarchies in
Schools,” by William A.
Darity, Jr. (Oct. 2004),
concluding that most
black students do not
carry a cultural bias
against high achievement
in the classroom, is
available from Prof.
Darity, [email protected]
[9097]
• “Parent Leaders: An
Untapped Resource in
Education,” sponsored
by the Ctr. for Parent
Leadership, will be held
Dec. 8-9, 2004 in
Charleston, SC. Inf. from
859/233-9849, x229,
www.centerforparent
leadership.org [9022]
Employment/
Jobs Policy
• “Parents’ Labor
Force Participation:
Does Child Health
Matter?” (3 pp., Aug.
2004) is available (likely
free) from the Ctr. for
Research on Child
Wellbeing, Wallace Hall,
2nd flr., Princeton Univ.,
Princeton, NJ 08544,
[email protected],
crcw.princeton.edu/
fragilefamilies [9025]
• “State Policies That
Affect Working,” by
Katherin Ross Phillips, is
an Aug. 2004 Discussion
Paper from The Urban
Inst., 2100 M St. NW,
Wash., DC 20037, 202/
261-5699, BNowak@
ui.urban.org [9038]
• “Hidden Slaves:
Forced Labor in the
U.S.,” by Laurel Fletcher
& Kevin Bales (73 pp.,
Sept. 2004), has been
issued by the Univ. of
Calif.-Berkeley’s Human
Rights Ctr. & the DCbased Free the Slaves.
Available at http://
freetheslaves. net/
resources/pdfs/
Hidden_Slaves.pdf [9049]
Families/
Women/
Children
• “Marriage Promotion & the Living
Arrangements of Black,
Hispanic & White
Children,” by Laura
Wherry & Kenneth
Finegold (7 pp., Sept.
2004), is available (likely
free) from The Urban
Inst., 2100 M St. NW,
Wash., DC 20037, 202/
261-5687, pubs@
ui.urban.org,
www.uipress.org [9018]
• “What is ‘Healthy
Marriage’? Defining the
Concept,” by Kristin
Anderson Moore, Susan
M. Jekielek, Jacinta
Bronte-Tinkew, Lina
Guzman, Suzanne Ryan &
Zakia Redd, an 8-page,
Sept. 2004 Research Brief
from Child Trends, is
available (possibly free)
from them at 4301 Conn.
Ave. NW, #100, Wash.,
DC 20008, 202/5726000, www.childtrends.
org [9023]
• “Maternal Stress &
Mothering Behaviors in
Stable & Unstable
Families” (3 pp., Sept.
2004) is available (likely
free) from the Ctr. for
Research on Child
Wellbeing, Wallace Hall,
2nd flr., Princeton Univ.,
Princeton, NJ 08544,
[email protected],
crcw.princeton.edu/
fragilefamilies [9028]
• “Initiatives to Reduce
Teen & Adult
Nonmarital Childbearing,” by Richard
Wertheimer & Angela
Romano Papillo, is an
Aug. 2004 Policy Brief
from The Urban Inst.,
2100 M St. NW, Wash.,
DC 20037, 202/2615699, BNowak@ui.
urban.org [9036]
• “Asian American &
Pacific Islander Youth at
Risk” is the topic of a
forthcoming special issue
of AAPI Nexus, the natl.
peer-reviewed journal
published by UCLA’s
Asian American Studies
Ctr. (headed by PRRAC
Bd. member Don
Nakanishi). They seek
submissions, with a Dec.
31, 2004 deadline for
letters of intent. Send to
[email protected], &
cc [email protected] &
[email protected]
[9041]
• “The Impacts of
Neighborhood Poverty
Deconcentration Efforts
on Low-Income
Children’s & Adolescents’ Well-Being,” by
Rebecca C. Fauth,
appeared in Children,
Youth and Environments,
14(1), 2004, pp. 1-55.
[9077]
• “National Costs of
Teen Pregnancy & Teen
Pregnancy Prevention:
What We Know,” by
Wilhelmina Leigh (2003),
is available from the Jt.
Ctr. for Pol. & Econ.
Studies Health Policy
Inst., www.jointcenter.org
[9086]
• “State/Local Costs of
Teen Pregnancy & Teen
Pregnancy Prevention:
What We Know,” by
Wilhelmina Leigh (2003),
22 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
is available from the Jt.
Ctr. for Pol. & Econ.
Studies Health Policy
Inst., www.jointcenter.org
[9087]
• New Supporting
Healthy Marriage Web
Site has been launched by
MDRC, www.supporting
healthymarriage.org
[9090]
• “Child Support
Substantially Increases
Economic Well-Being of
Low & Moderate-Income
Families,” by Paula
Roberts, is an Oct. 2004
report, available from the
Ctr. for Law & Social
Policy (headed by former
PRRAC Bd. member Alan
Houseman) at www.
clasp.org/Pubs/DMS/
Documents/
1023218849.8/
CS_Economic_FS.pdf
[9092]
• “Child Support
Payments Benefit
Children in Non-Economic as Well as Economic Ways,” by Paula
Roberts, is an Oct. 2004
report from the Ctr. for
Law & Social Policy
(headed by former
PRRAC Bd. member Alan
Houseman), available at
www.clasp.org/Pubs/
DMS/Documents/
1024408642.85/
CS_Noneconomic_FS.pdf
[9093]
• “The Child Support
Program Promotes
Marriage & Reduces
Non-Marital Childbearing,” by Paula Roberts, is
an Oct. 2004 report from
the Ctr. for Law & Social
Policy (headed by former
PRRAC Bd. member Alan
Houseman), available at
www.clasp.org/Pubs/
DMS/Documents/
1024418627.66/
CS_Marriage.pdf [9094]
Food/
Nutrition/
Hunger
• “Estimating the
Possibilities & Patterns
of Food Stamp Use
Across the Life Course,”
by Mark Rank & Thomas
Hirschl (Oct. 2004), is
available from the Inst.
for the Study of
Homelessness & Poverty,
566 S. San Pedro St., LA,
CA 90013, 213/6892280, institute@
weingart.org,
www.weingart.org/
institute/ [9073]
Health
• Race & Research:
Perspectives on Minority
Participation in Health
Studies, eds. Bettina
Beech & Maurine
Goodman (2004), is
available ($35.95) from
the Amer. Public Health
Assn., PO Box 753,
Waldorf, MD 206040753, 301/893-1894,
[email protected],
www.apha.org [9063]
• “The Health of
Latino Communities in
the Southern United
States: Challenges &
Opportunities” (Sept.
2004) is available from
the Natl. Council of La
Raza, www.nclr.org/files/
26898_file_ThehealthOf
Latino.pdf [9079]
• “Factors Affecting
the Health of Men of
Color in the United
States,” by Wilhelmina
Leigh (2004), is available
from the Jt. Ctr. for Pol.
& Econ. Studies Health
Policy Inst., www.
jointcenter.org [9084]
• “Meeting the
Workforce Development
Needs of CommunityBased Health Facilities:
A Toolkit,” by
Wilhelmina Leigh, Kelley
D. Coleman & Julia L.
Andrews (2004), is
available from the Jt. Ctr.
for Pol. & Econ. Studies,
Health Policy Inst.,
www.jointcenter.org
[9085]
• “Visible Differences:
Improving the Oral
Health of African
American Males” (2004)
is available from the Jt.
Ctr. for Pol. & Econ.
Studies Health Policy
Inst., www.jointcenter.org
[9088]
• “Missing Persons:
Minorities in the Health
Professions” (208 pp.,
Oct. 2004) is the report of
the Sullivan Commn. on
Diversity in the Health
Workforce. Available at
http://admissions.duhs.
duke.edu/
sullivancommission/
documents/sullivan_
Final_Report_000.pdf
[9098]
Homelessness
• “Housing First for
Families” is a 2004
handbook from the Natl.
Alliance to End
Homelessness, available
at www.naeh.org/networks/housingfirst [9039]
• “Metropolitan Areas
with Sheltered Homeless
Populations: Evidence
from the 1990 & 2000
Censuses,” by Barrett A.
Lee & Chad R. Farrell,
an Oct. 2004 Brookings
Inst. study, is available at
www.brookings.edu/
dybdocroot/metro/pubs/
20041011_homeless.pdf
[9055]
• New Homelessness/
Poverty Resource (2004)
from the Weingart Ctr.
Association’s Inst. for the
Study of Homelessness &
Poverty alerts subscribers
to the latest, cutting-edge
academic & policy
research reports, 213/
689-2283, ellen@
weingart.org,
www.weingart.org/
institute/resource/email/
[9061]
Housing
• “The Human Right
to Housing: Making the
Case in U.S. Advocacy,”
by Maria Foscarinis, Brad
Paul, Bruce Porter &
Andrew Scherer, is a 17page article in the JulyAug. 2004 issue of
Clearinghouse Review:
Journal of Poverty Law &
Policy, available from the
Sargent Shriver Natl. Ctr.
on Poverty Law, 50 E.
Washington St., #500,
Chicago, IL 60602, 312/
263-3830, admin@
povertylaw.org,
www.povertylaw.org
[9029]
• “Community Service
Requirement for Public
Housing Residents:
States’ Implementation &
Strategies for Advocates,” by Judith
Goldiner & Risa E.
Kaufman, is an 11-page
article in the July/Aug.
2004 Clearinghouse
Review: Journal of
Poverty Law & Policy.
Available from the
Sargent Shriver Natl. Ctr.
on Poverty Law, 50 E.
Washington St., #500,
Chicago, IL 60602, 312/
263-3830, admin@
povertylaw.org,
www.povertylaw.org
[9031]
• Why the Poor Pay
More: How to Stop
Predatory Lending, ed.
Gregory D. Squires
(2004), is just out. The
238-page collection
($44.95, from Greenwood
Pub. Gp., 800/225-5800)
covers the full range of
issues around this
growing, nefarious
practice. The 9 chapters
include a Foreword by
Clarence Page & contributions by Maude Hurd
and her ACORN colleagues, a Philadelphia
case study, discussion of
legal remedies by John
Relman and colleagues, a
summary chapter by
PRRAC’s Chester
Hartman & an appendix
with Resources. [9047]
• “Making Rural
Housing Programs Work
in Indian Country” (Sept.
2004) is available ($5)
from the Housing Assistance Council, 1025
Vermont Ave. NW, #606,
Wash., DC 20005, 202/
842-8600, x141, leslie@
ruralhome.org,
downloadable at www.
ruralhome.org [9065]
• “Putting the ‘Choice’
in Housing Choice
Vouchers (Pt. 3)” (44
pp., July 2004), by the
Chicago Area Fair
Housing Alliance & the
Housing Choice Voucher
Project, is available at
www.state.il.us/dhr/
Housenet/Vouchers.pdf
[9067]
• New ACORN Study
on Lending Disparities
shows evidence of
increased disparities in
mortgage loans to
minority & low-income
borrowers in cities across
the country. Contact
Valerie Coffin, 410/7353373, fairhousing@
acorn.org [9091]
• “An Introduction to
Community Land
Trusts,” co-sponsored by
the Inst. for Community
Economics and HUD,
will be held Nov. 18-19,
2004 in San Mateo, CA.
Presenters include ICE’s
new ED, Gus Newport
(former head of Boston’s
Dudley St. Neighb.
Initiative and Mayor of
Berkeley) & John Davis
of Burlington Assoc.
Contact Julie Orvis at
ICE, 413/746-8660,
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 23
x118, [email protected]
[9083]
• “Building Homes,
Celebrating Leadership”
is the annual Housing
Assistance Council Natl.
Rural Housing Conf.,
Dec. 9-11, 2004 in DC.
Inf. from 202/842-8600,
x141, leslie@ruralhome.
org [9080]
Immigration
• “Looking to the
Future: A Commentary
on Children of Immigrant Families,” by
Mark Greenberg &
Hedieh Rahmanou,
appeared in the Fall 2004
issue of The Future of
Children, available at
www.clasp.org/DMS/
Documents/
1097006751.66/
Future_of_Children.pdf
[9068]
Miscellaneous
• The World Guide:
2003/2004: An alternative reference to the
countries of our planet
(624 pp., 2003) provides
inf. for 240 countries on
childhood, women, food,
health, education,
population, employment,
habitat & human welfare.
$34.95 from Garamond
Press, 800/898-9535,
[email protected],
www.garamond.ca [9017]
• The Progressive
Planning Reader (108
pp., 2004) is a compendium of articles from
Progressive Planning, the
quarterly magazine of The
Planners Network. $12
from PN, 1 Rapson Hall,
89 Church St., Mpls., MN
55455-0109, www.
plannersnetwork.org
[9034]
• Progressive Planning
is the quarterly magazine
of The Planners Network.
For subs., contact them at
1 Rapson Hall, 89 Church
St., Mpls., MN 554550109, [email protected],
www.plannersnetwork.org
[9035]
• The Center for Social
Media at American Univ.,
headed by Prof. Patricia
Aufderheide, “brings
together makers, scholars,
students & users of media
that make a difference.”
They hold forums &
roundtables, film festivals/
series/workshops, conferences, and have special
collections. 202/8852060, x6, socialmedia@
american.edu, www.
centerforsocialmedia.org
[9054]
• Place Matters:
Metropolitics for the 21st
Century, by Peter Dreier,
Todd Swanstrom & John
Mollenkopf, will be out in
Dec. 2004 in a 2nd,
revised edition (Univ. of
KS Press). The original
edition won the Amer.
Pol. Sci. Assn. Michael
Harrington Award for
“outstanding book that
demonstrates how scholarship can be used in the
struggle for a better
world,” www.kansaspress.
ku.edu/ [9059]
• Next Generation
Awareness Foundation
Films/Documentaries
Submissions: The Fdn.
seeks notable films,
documentaries & participants for consideration for
The 2005 Annual Natl.
Black History Month Film
& Discussion Series. Dec.
26, 2004 deadline.
Submissions should be
sent to the Fdn., PO Box
6885, Alexandria, VA
22306, 202/409-7240,
[email protected],
www.ngaf.org/ [9096]
• “Making Participation Count!” is the 2004
Independent Sector annual
conf., Nov. 7-9, in
Chicago. Among the
presenters: (former
PRRAC'S SOCIAL SCIENCE
ADVISORY BOARD
Frank Bonilla
CUNY Department of Sociology
Xavier de Souza Briggs
Harvard Univ. Kennedy School of Government
Camille Zubrinsky Charles
Department of Sociology, Univ. of Pennsylvania
Paul Ong
UCLA School of Public Policy
& Social Research
Gary Orfield
Harvard Univ. Grad. School of Education
Gary Sandefur
Univ. Wisconsin Inst. for Poverty Research
John Goering
Baruch College, City Univ. of New York
Heidi Hartmann
Inst. for Women’s Policy Research (Wash., DC)
William Kornblum
CUNY Center for Social Research
Harriette McAdoo
Michigan State School of Human Ecology
Fernando Mendoza
Department of Pediatrics, Stanford Univ.
24 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
Gregory D. Squires
Department of Sociology
George Washington Univ.
Margery Austin Turner
The Urban Institute
Margaret Weir
Department of Political Science,
Univ. of California, Berkeley
PRRAC Bd. members)
Wade Henderson, Angela
Glover Blackwell &
Robert Greenstein, Raul
Yzaguirre, Karen
Narasaki, Susan
Berresford, Ralph Neas,
Gay McDougall. Inf. from
202/467-6100,
meeting@Independent
Sector.org, www.
IndependentSector.org
[9019]
(Santa Cruz, CA office) mid-$50s, for their Aryeh
Neier Fellowship $42,000; for their
Reproductive Freedom
Proj. - mid-$50s; & for
their Karpatkin Fellowship - min. mid-$50s.
Nov. 30 deadline for all.
Contact ACLU, 125
Broad St., 18th flr., NYC,
NY 10004-2400, 212/5492500, www.aclu.org
[9026]
Job
Opportunities/
Fellowships/
Grants
• The Manna Community Development Org., a
comm. dev. & progressive
organizing group working
with mostly long-time
African-Amer. residents of
the Shaw neighborhood of
Wash., DC, is seeking a
Lead Tenant Organizer.
Dec. 13, 2004 deadlne.
Ltr./resume to Manna
CDC, 614 S St. NW, Rear
Carriage House, Wash.,
DC 20001. [9045]
• The American Civil
Liberties Union seeks 3rd
yr. law students/recent
graduates for their
Brennan Fellowships min. mid-$50s; for their
applied research fellowship in civil liberties &
natl. security - low $50s;
for their lesbian & gay
rights & AIDS projs. min. mid-$50s; for their
Drug Law Reform Proj.
• The Univ. of No.
Carolina Dept. City &
Regional Planning seeks
to fill a tenure-track Asst.
Prof. position; candidates
with expertise in community development and/or
affordable housing are
sought. Ltr./resume/list of
4 refs. to Prof. Phil Berk
at the Dept., Campus Box
3140, Chapel Hill, NC
27599-3140. [9048]
• Kirwin Inst. for the
Study of Race &
Ethnicity Post Doctoral
Fellowships at Ohio St.
Univ. (2-yr. support,
under the supervision of
the Inst. Dir., PRRAC Bd.
member john powell).
Applics. accepted until
April 30, 2005. Applics./
q’s to Tara McCoy at the
Inst., 423 Mendenhall
Lab., 125 S. Oval Mall,
Columbus, OH 43210,
[email protected]
[9074]
• Alston/Bannerman
Fellowship Program
offers sabbaticals for longtime activists of color.
$15,000 for 3 months or
more for reflection &
renewal. Dec. 1 deadline.
Inf. from the Program,
1627 Lancaster St.,
Baltimore, MD 21231,
410/327-6220, info@
Alston/Bannerman. org,
www. AlstonBannerman.
org [9078]
• The Sentencing
Project is hiring an
Operations Mgr., a
Development Mgr. & a
Director of Advocacy.
Nov. 15 deadline for 1st 2
positions, Nov. 29 for
3rd. See their website for
full descriptions and
application procedures,
www.sentencingproject.org/
hiring.cfm [9095]
• The Univ. of Mass.Boston College of
Education is seeking to
fill a tenure-track Asst.
Prof. of Higher Educ.
position. Ltr./c.v./at least
1 peer-reviewed example
of scholarship/name,
mailing & email addresses, tel. # of 3 refs. to
Dr. Alicia C. Dowd,
Search #605b, U. Mass.Boston, 100 Morrissey
Blvd., Boston, MA 021253393, 617/287-7593.
[9100]
November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 25
Poverty & Race Index, Vol. 13 (2004)
This Index includes the major articles in the six 2004 issues of Poverty & Race (Vol. 13). The categories used
frequently overlap, so a careful look at the entire Index is recommended. Each issue also contains an extensive Resources
Section, not in the Index below, but available in database form cumulatively for all 13 volumes . We are happy to make
available photocopies of any of the articles listed in the Index. We also can send an Index for any or all of the first 12
volumes of P&R (1992-2003). Please order by number and article name and include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
Race/Racism
419. “New PRRAC/Teaching for Change Publication
[Putting the MOVEMENT Back Into Civil Rights
Teaching], March/April
420. “Organizing to Protect the Civil Rights Movement’s
Legacy,” Chris Johnson, March/April
421. “FAIRNESS: The Civil Rights Act of 2004,” Ritu
Kelotra, March/April
422. “Remembrance and Change in Neshoba County,”
James W. Loewen, July/Aug.
428. “Low-Wage Work—America’s Broken Promise,”
Beth Shulman, March/April
Families/Women/Children
429. “Kinship Care Policy and Low-Income Minority
Children,” Jennifer Ehrle & Rob Geen, Jan./Feb.
Health
Economic/Community Development
430. “Racial Disparities in Housing and Health,”
Dolores Acevedo-Garcia & Theresa L. Osypuk,
July/Aug.
431. “Healthy Homes,” Julia Burgess, July/Aug.
432. “What Works: A Fifty Year Retrospective,” David
Barton Smith, Sept./Oct.
433. “Why is HHS Obscuring a Health Care Gap?,” H.
Jack Geiger, Sept./Oct.
424. “Race, Poverty and ‘Economic Development’ Gone
Haywire,” Greg LeRoy, May/June
Housing
Community Organizing
423. “Organizing for Regional Equity: The Gamaliel
Foundation,” Jill Mazullo, Sept./Oct.
Education
425.“Why is School Reform So Hard?,” Linda
Christensen & Stan Karp
426. “Schools and the Achievement Gap: A Symposium,”
Sept./Oct.
• “Even the Best Schools Can’t Close the Race
Achievement Gap,” Richard Rothstein
• “Social Class, But What About the Schools?,”
Pedro A. Noguera
• “Don’t Lose the Battle Trying to Fight the
War,” John H. Jackson
• “Simplistic and Condescending,” Jenice L.
View
• “Inequality and the Schoolhouse,” Stan Karp
• “Even the Best Schools Can’t Do It Alone,”
Wendy Puriefoy
• “What Teachers Know,” Mark Simon
• “Family and School Matter,” Krista Kafer
• “Schools Count,” Dianne M. Piché & Tamar
Ruth
• “Rothstein Responds,” Richard Rothstein
Employment/Jobs Policy
427. “The Living Wage: A Progressive Movement in
Action,” Jared Bernstein & Jeff Chapman,
Jan./Feb.
434. “A Racial Equity and Opportunity Agenda for
Metro Boston,” Nancy McArdle, March/April
435. “Housing Segregation/School Segregation,” David
Freund, May/June
436. “Housing Quiz,” May/June
437. “Some Lessons from Brown for the Fair Housing
Movement,” Philip Tegeler, July/Aug.
438. “Racial Inequality and the Black Ghetto,” Alex
Polikoff, Nov./Dec.
Immigration
439. “Voting Rights for Immigrants,” Catherine
Tactaquin, Nov./Dec.
Voting
440. “From Slave Republic to Constitutional Democracy: The Continuing Struggle for the Right to
Vote,” Jamin Raskin, Nov./Dec.
PRRAC Activities & News
441. “Visit PRRAC’s New Website,” March/April
442. “Our New New Board Members,” Nov./Dec.
26 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004
If You Are Not Already a P&R Subscriber,
Please Use the Coupon Below.
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Mail to: Poverty & Race Research Action Council • 3000 Connecticut Avenue NW • Suite 200
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November/December 2004 • Poverty & Race • Vol.13, No. 6 • 27
POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL
Board of Directors
CHAIR
John Charles Boger
University of North Carolina
School of Law
Chapel Hill, NC
VICE-CHAIR
José Padilla
Darrell Armstrong
Shiloh Baptist Church
Trenton, NJ
Craig Flournoy
Southern Methodist
University
Dallas, TX
Thomas Henderson
California Rural Legal
Assistance
San Francisco, CA
SECRETARY
john powell
Kirwin Institute for the Study
of Race & Ethnicity
Ohio State University
Columbus,OH
TREASURER
Sheila Crowley
National Low Income
Housing Coalition
Washington, DC
Lawyers' Committee for
Civil Rights Under Law
Washington, DC
Camille Holmes
Center for Law & Social
Policy
Washington, DC
Olati Johnson
Columbia Law School
New York, NY
Elizabeth Julian
Inclusive Communities
Project
Dallas, TX
S.M. Miller
The Commonwealth
Institute
Cambridge, MA
Don Nakanishi
University of California
Los Angeles, CA
Florence Wagman
Roisman
Indiana University
School of Law
Indianapolis, IN
Anthony Sarmiento
Senior Service America
Silver Spring, MD
Theodore M. Shaw
NAACP Legal Defense
& Educational Fund
New York, NY
Catherine Tactaquin
National Network for
Immigrant & Refugee
Rights
Oakland, CA
Poverty & Race Research Action Council
3000 Connecticut Ave. NW • Suite 200
Washington, DC 20008
202/387-9887 FAX: 202/387-0764
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.prrac.org
William L. Taylor
Washington, DC
[Organizations listed for
identification purposes only]
Philip D. Tegeler
President/Executive Director
Chester W. Hartman
Director of Research
Brenda Fleet
Office Manager
Rebekah Park
Research Associate
Tabitha Iwuh
Clerical Assistant
Nisha Agarwal
Elizabeth Grote
Law Student Interns
Nonprofit
U.S. Postage
PAID
Jefferson City, MO
Permit No. 210
Address Service Requested
11-12/04
Please consider an end-of-the-year contribution to PRRAC – see page 15.