How to measure race

I am working on a minor update to the happiness survey that we're trying to get everybody to take (fairly successfully - we had more than 6,000 responses the last time I checked).  I don't get to just dive in and rewrite the survey, which is for the best really - while it will take much longer to do this collaboratively, we'll end up with something much better in the end. But I do have today and tomorrow set aside to update the online survey app, and one of the things I'll be doing is adding a race question to the demographics page. 

I had initially been the advocate of leaving this question out, for reasons that I now think were hopelessly naïve. The main reason I wanted it left out is that race is a social construct that only means as much as we decide to make it mean. Idealistically, I would love to stop the world from talking about race altogether. The trouble is that while race is a social construct, racism is real both as a lamentably common individual prejudice and as a series of institutional barriers to success, and not talking about this doesn't make it go away. Instead it makes the institutional side harder to address and sends a misleading signal that we don't care about the issue, so the survey will now include a race question.

That, though, opens its own can of worms. The secondary reason I don't like asking race questions is that it's impossible to ask the question right. We have two options: make everyone write their own in (a nightmare for data analysis!), or make people choose from a frustrating list. As an example of why these lists are so frustrating, consider the "Caucasian" category that is often what I am expected to check. It means different things in different contexts:

• Its origin is synonymous with "Indo-European", in that it describes an inferred migration of people out from the Caucasus, into most of Europe and some of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, bringing a language family with them.
• In the US, it's generally used as a shorthand for "white".
• In Singapore it seems to be shorthand for "of European descent".
• In Russia it means "from the Caucasus region".

So is an Iranian a Caucasian? By one or two of those definitions, yes, but how many people here in the US would recognise Iranians as such? As a Jew, am I? I fit the other two definitions, but I don't check this box - partly because my ancestors were not part of the Caucasian migration and partly because I think it's important to be counted, I usually write in "Jew". But I suspect most people round here would tell me I'm Caucasian and I should stop making life difficult.

And then there's the question of resolution. Which groups we lump together and which we split is very much a product of which questions we're trying to answer. Given that our purpose is to get at how big an effect racism has on peoples' happiness, we could almost get away with asking "are you a member of a race or ethnic group that is discriminated against in your country?", but we already ask whether people feel discriminated against in their own lives and we want more objective information to go with that. Yesterday I found a fascinating reference for the diverse ways race questions are asked around the world: everything from Canada's breakdown of First Nations into different subgroups from those we talk about in the U.S. to Brazil's shades-of-brown palette and Bulgaria's "Bulgarian or Turk or Gypsy or Other".

For the time being, we're running with the US Census categories because at least in this country those are sort of understood, and we can credit/blame the Census Bureau for the particular selection. But we really want this survey to make sense internationally. We have a Spanish translation almost ready to go, Arabic and Chinese in the works, and groups interested in using the instrument in a couple of far-flung other countries already. The other internationalization issues are relatively easy to work out—the update I'm doing this week will make it handle non-US location coding properly, and there are a few questions that need slight rewording—but I still really don't know how to ask the race question right and there's no "official" answer from the UN to guide us. Is there an appropriate universal way?

- posted by Eldan Goldenberg

"Race: The Power of an Illusion" Board Training

This last weekend Sustainable Seattle's board had a training about race, ethnicity and the challenges and opportunities these discussions can bring about. The all day training on a warm Saturday afternoon started off light and high minded, but as we continued to go through the training videos and the discussions the mood began to become more murky.

The ideas of race are of course a socially created construct. Race does not exist biologically at all, but the point of this training is to confront the socially created idea of race and how it can complicate relationships. The trainings are a combination of videos put on by PBS and discussions that are facilitated to ensure genuine honesty, respect and openness.

The discussions were lively, touchy, and powerful. Ideas were debated, ratified and thrown out and the entire day was an example of how much deep seated almost subconscious ideas about race are within us all. This social construct has been a part of our society for hundreds of years and that amount of unconscious programing takes time, courage, and love to overcome.

One of the most important lessons we learned as a board was that we all have room to grow and to open our hearts to compassion. We view social justice as one of our three main themes and the fact that we have put so much effort into learning more about ourselves and each other is a testament to our dedication. It was not an easy discussion or training, but it was an important first step in getting us on the same wavelength. We are currently discussing cultural competency training as our next step to build on the lessons we've learned.

Race: The Power of Illusion – Part Three

We began with “popcorn:” participants bringing up their feelings and thoughts from the last two sessions. Feelings of guilt, responsibility, imprisonment, hope, lightness, heaviness came up. Thoughts about the work that has been done, that needs to be done- for organizations, systems and individuals. We watched part three: a story of our imprisonment by the illusion of race.

We talked about what we can do in our lives and work to shift our system out of institutional racism. Crossroads Ministry’s Continuum on Becoming an Anti-Racist Multicultural Institution was handed out, This is a document that lays out six ways that an organization behaves: Exclusive, Passive, Symbolic Change, Identity Change, Structural Change, Fully Inclusive. We talked about taking action, and getting more training: People’s Institute Northwest is one resource. Using basic principles to guide us is another: one must have multi-racial group working on this. While people can’t be in charge of the community organizing. Reciprocity – it has to be a partnership. Identify small steps, celebrate successes but make sure you are looking on the horizon for the next step.

Environmental Justice and the EPA

Sustainable Seattle is making a conscious effort to reinvent ourselves, and one of the key aspects of this has been to pick social justice as a central principle of our work. We did this for at least three reasons: no system that serves only some people well is truly sustainable; sustainability groups haven't historically done as well as we should in reaching out to minority communities; and the impacts of unsustainable practices have tended to fall most heavily on minority communities. It's this last issue that I want to focus on today: why unsustainable practices have tended to affect some communities far worse than others, and what's being done to fix the problem now.

At heart, the problem is that poorer neighborhoods tend to bear the brunt of problems such as pollution, poorly designed & maintained infrastructure, and limited access to resources including jobs, open space and healthy food. This is not usually an issue of cartoon villains rubbing their hands together and saying "mwahaha we can dump all our PCBs over there and punish those people", but of systemic reasons why some communities have been better able to protect themselves than others. Each individual decision--the siting of a new road or landfill, or whether to spend the extra money putting power lines and railways underground--is made independently and rationally, but the end result becomes discriminatory.

One of the reasons for this is that poorer neighborhoods have historically fared less well at organizing themselves and speaking up for their interests in the planning process. Simply having money to spend can help directly by opening access to politicians, but it's not the only mechanism. The rich are more likely to have the time to do this, while people with less money have to focus on immediate needs. Neighborhoods with a range of first languages have a harder time co-ordinating internally as not everyone can communicate directly, and neighborhoods with large immigrant populations may simply lack the collective knowledge of who to approach to influence public policy.

We are working to address these issues: we are building on our historic community development projects with a renewed emphasis on the neediest neighborhoods in Seattle. Several of our staff are working with the neighborhoods along the Duwamish river, in partnership with 7 other non-profits to develop a neighborhood-led sustainability plan, and we will keep building on this work.

Another key issue, for all the same background reasons, is that poorer neighborhoods have tended to attract less attention from government bodies that can serve them by preventing and cleaning up pollution. Enforcement of environmental law tends to be complaint-driven, which unintentionally but inevitably leads to a bias in favor of neighborhoods that complain louder and more effectively. This is far from the only area where this happens--we have the idiom about squeaky wheels getting greased for a reason--but it's a significant one. Not being an enforcement agency ourselves, there is less we can do on this front, so it's very reassuring to hear that the EPA has decided to focus more of its efforts on environmental justice. Here is a press release we received from Charles Lee of the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice last week (emphasis added):

EPA Enforcement Goals and National Enforcement Initiatives Fiscal Year 2011-13

EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) has adopted three goals and announced national enforcement initiatives that put special emphasis on environmental justice in our enforcement work.

The Enforcement Goals clearly identify what we are doing to advance the Administrator’s priorities to make a real difference to people where they live and work, and will guide our work beginning now and continuing into 2011 and beyond. The goals themselves are simple and straightforward:

· Aggressively go after pollution problems that matter to communities; vigorous civil and criminal enforcement that targets the most serious water, air and chemical hazards; advance environmental justice by protecting vulnerable communities;

· Reset our relationship with states: make sure we are delivering on our joint commitment to a clean and healthy environment, and

· Improve transparency.

The national enforcement initiatives announced today also emphasize the importance of protecting over burdened communities and advancing environmental justice. With your help, we held an unprecedented National Environmental Justice Advisory Council Public Teleconference to take comment on candidates for national enforcement initiatives. The goals and national enforcement initiatives we have adopted demonstrate how we have heard the message that it is important to make advancing environmental justice an integral part of our enforcement efforts. We have also heard that vigorous enforcement depends on the effectiveness of all of EPA’s regulatory tools, including rules, permits and monitoring. Environmental justice will inform our work in all the national enforcement initiatives, but I particularly want to draw your attention to our Air Toxics in Communities initiative, which will employ all our tools to address excess emissions caused by failure to comply with EPA’s “leak detection and repair,” requirements, restrictions on flaring, and excess emissions during start up, shut down and malfunction events, particularly in communities burdened by multiple pollution sources. Impacts on overburdened communities will also be central to our work to address concentrated animal feeding operations, emissions from the largest sources of air pollution and pollution from sewer overflows and stormwater in urban waters.

More information on the Enforcement Goals and the National Enforcement Initiatives announced today is available on the internet at: www.epa.gov/compliance/ .

We have many challenges ahead, but I look forward to working with you to protect health and the environment and to advance environmental justice and protect vulnerable communities across the nation.

This is hugely important work, and we applaud the EPA's new emphasis on it.

Further reading: these two sites are great sources for more information about environmental justice:
Environmental Justice Network
The Environmental Justice journal (one whole issue available free online)

Sustainable Seattle’s Race: The Power of Illusion- Part one of a three-part training.

We began by reading 12 ground rules for the training, then sharing our name, organization, what brought us to the training and our race. Our instructors capped the introduction with the message that “we are all on a learning journey” and an explanation of institutional racism. We then went into a roundabout to define race: differences in skin tones, cultures and traditions, heredity, style, language, shared history, place of origin, finite set of categories in which society shifts all its members, word that first was used to describe differences between plants, then animals, then people- a word to categorize, identity. We were asked how many races there are, where our ideas of race come from and how long the idea of race has been around. These questions brought out the highly subjective nature of race. We watched part one of Race: The Power of Illusion. Afterwards we shared our thoughts and feelings. Hope, liberation, bewilderment, anger and frustration. A look back and a look forward. We know where we have been. Now, where do we go from here? And how? We agreed to discuss how this turns into action for the next sessions. We also agreed to sit with the feelings that came up.

Smart Growth Conference: First Day

The 9th annual Smart Growth Conference kicked off on Thursday February 4th on the sixth floor of the Washington Convention Center in downtown Seattle.




Kick-off Plenary

After a Dow Constantine, King County Executive, Michelle Pirzadeth, Acting Regional Administrator our region’s EPA and a few other gave speeches, Ron Sims, longtime supporter of Sustainable Seattle and currently the Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Deputy Secretary was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award. A standing ovation came from the crowd. Ron Sims spoke in celebration of the synchronization of HUD, DOT and EPA and in tribute of his family and his boss, the Secretary of HUD. A second standing ovation was given. Two in one night!

This was followed by Shaun Donovan, HUD Secretary, Ray LaHood, DOT Transportation and a video presentation by speeches by Lisa Jackson, the EPA Administrator. Ray LaHood spoke about access to jobs, quality schools and safe streets, a clean energy economy that enhances the competitiveness of our nation. He talked about what Sustainability means: choice and quality of life- walk able accessible job centers where people can walk to work; building inclusive neighborhoods of opportunities so community members share problems and opportunities, economic vitality being smaller but stronger and smarter and survival itself.

Mr. LaHood spoke to the truth that all communities define sustainability differently based on their circumstances while all seeking to meet the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Families are spending far too much on commutes and high rent or mortgage payments. In the last generation, transportation costs have increased by 1000%. He spoke about the Sustainability Partnership between EPA, DOT and HUD. He announced the creation of a new office focused sustainability with a $200M budget.



Regional Leadership in Smart Growth and Sustainability: Lessons from across the Country

“Smart growth” or “Sustainability” can sometimes be alarming terms. Synonyms are: Blue print Planning, Vision 2050, Quality of Life Planning….a rose is still a rose by any other name. It does not matter what you call it. Knowing the goals can allow the community to find the right terms to use is a best practice.

Do not start from square one: build on what is out there. Survey and do scenario workshops to understand what is out there, and to understand the big movements and concerns.

Identify priorities and organize them in how they work together and are interconnected: sustainability, accessibility, prosperity and livability. Set targets – stretch goals, longer and shorter-term goals. This leads to a compact or agreement that identifies and binds individuals and organizations towards working together.

Get public comment, go online, get ideas and make sure you have a way to measure how you are going to get there. Get support and be there for the long haul.

Local food independence is a challenge for regions. Farmers need to develop new and creative markets and models. We are loosing farmland, and it is harder to establish new farms. Farmers are competing for crops and moving to biofuel over food. The local economic impact is often difficult to determine (check out Viki Sonntag’s work on the local food system multiplier).

Talking about Race and Smart Growth: What are the next steps

The panelists identified needs for communities of color to get the leadership support to affect the ideas and move them forward, to link academic research to implementing research findings on the ground, and the need to talk about race in an effective manner to move people and arm people of color to create multiracial alliances to influence policy and action.

Race and ethnicity can be a major challenge and are one of the most significant barriers to collaboration. Social class and gender inequality is another major barrier. Challenges regarding integrating social justice and environmental movements and goals include the local nature of social justice groups and the global nature of the environmental movement. Another challenge is time frames. The wealthier one is, the longer the time frame. If you are struggling to meet your basic needs, your time frame is likely quite short – a rising tide lifts all boats but can’t lift you if you do not have a boat.

Yet another challenge is the language around race: this is a hard topic to discuss. We lack a common language for social justice and race, unlike with environmentalism. Moreover, with only 2% of our brains dedicated to cognitive processes, we tend to use the other 98% - a more reactive process-when dealing with social justice. Communication strategies: think about the cognitive framing- we need to be careful that we do not reinforce assumptions deep in our brain (that 98%) in how and what is messaged. We need to resent the framing – our mindsets and our values. Community needs to be valued at least as much as economics. We need to include all in the process of setting strategies or agendas wherever we are in that process.

Tools for going forward

Professor John Powell, ED of Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity: Tool for Talking about Race

Integrate Social Justice into your strategy

Portland underwent a process to form relationships across race and social class in the city that directly addressed power dynamics and privilege and how that shows up in a daily basis and found ways for people of privilege to be better allies.

Meet people, organizations and institutions “where they are” provide next steps.

Go to communities of color, communities that are under served – listen. Even if you don’t have an answer, a solution or the resources to work together. Building relationships can be a first step to getting to the end goal of social justice and sustainability.

Newest Research on Built Environment and Health


The amount of research in the field of health and environment is steadily increasing as evidence grows with the relationship between health and the buildings and communities in which we live. The Active Living Research organization is leading the way with a sponsorship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Physical inactivity is the leading cause of death in the United States. The data shows the number one cause of death is heart failure which is caused in the majority of cases because of an inactive lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits. Tobacco use is another major cause of death that is in congruent with an active lifestyle since tobacco use lowers one's lung capacity decreasing the efficiency during physical activities.

The panelists shared some of their research and their results including the walkability of neighborhoods, childhood obesity, adult bicycling behavior, and the overall effect of transportation on the health of the populace.

Childhood obesity rates are the highest they have ever been in the country's history. The major factor is environment as that is the only major source of change that is broad enough and large enough to account for most of the nearly tripling amount of childhood obesity cases since the late sixties.

Children over the age of five are not meeting their bare minimum levels of activities, nearly 85% are getting less than the recommended amounts. The built environment has lead many parents to simply not allow their children outside as crowded streets, unwalkable paths, and the threat of crime have made the choices for activity restricted to indoor pursuits. With a focus on built environment the city has an opportunity to reverse that trend by building playable parks within ten minute walks of major residential areas, rebuilding and updating crosswalks and bike paths, and building safety features such as working street lights.

Public transportation included light rail and buses and a significant early finding of the research shows that the public is more likely to walk further for the use of light rail than buses. In fact, the public would walk twice as far if they could use light rail as opposed to buses.

The research is still in its early stages, but looks to bring concrete evidence to influence policy makers to rethink neighborhoods, transportation and the health of its citizens.

Sustainable Seattle Upcoming Events

It is a glorious start to the year with more events happening around the Seattle area in the next few months. There are many opportunities to get involved and learn how you can make smart changes and a difference.

January 20 - Transitioning To Green A free brownbag about greening the home. Featuring Jacqueline Powers, a green residential remodeling contractor, interior designer, and author.

February 11 - Environmental Film Festival

Join Sustainable Seattle for a "feel-good" evening celebrating positive actions in our community and other regions of the world. Featuring biologist/filmmaker Shelly Solomon and panel discussion moderated by Sustainable Seattle's Executive Director Laura Musikanski.

February 18 & 25, and March 4 - Dialog About: Race, The Power of An Illusion

Much is being said about Social Justice and Sustainability, but what does it really mean? This three-part dialog designed for environmental and sustainability non-profit board members, staff and volunteers will help you and your organization ask and answer the tough questions.

May 10-14 - Sustainability Intensive

Sustainable Seattle is pleased to present our Sustainability Intensive: a four-day course for deepening your understanding of sustainability and guiding your organization on a sustainable path. The purpose of this intensive course is to help individuals and organizations take sustainability to the next level.