Stand against Racism Kicks off at A-B Tech

by Moe White –

The YWCA’s 2015 Stand Against Racism series was launched March 26, 2015 with a program of presentations and panel discussions at A-B Tech’s Ferguson Auditorium. The program was hosted by James E. Lee, a pastor, staff member at A-B Tech, and co-chair of the Racial Justice Coalition of Asheville and Buncombe County; and by the college’s president, Dr. Dennis King.

History of racism and the road forward

In his opening remarks, Dr. King noted, “The history of our country is blemished by our treatment of African Americans from 1607 through the 1787 founding of the new republic. They were treated as property, so much so that the U.S. Constitution said these individuals would be three-fifths of a human being. In 1820 and up to the Civil War, the only way a new state could be admitted was if it was paired with another, one slave and one free state.

“The 1856 Dred Scot decision ruled that slaves—human beings—were nothing more than property, having no rights under our Constitution. And then came the climactic war, in which 500,000 people died, so as to drive a stake through the heart of slavery and racism. But while slavery ended, racism did not die; the Ku Klux Klan was born, and thirty years later institutional racism was legally enshrined in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Between 1882 and 1951, 3,437 blacks were lynched, mostly—though not all—in the South, specifically, in the states of the old Confederacy. In World War I, the U.S. Army was still segregated, and remained so through WW II, until President Harry Truman, a native of Missouri, ended segregation in the armed forces by executive order.

“Through all these abominations,” said King, “racism survived. Then, in 1954, the Supreme Court finally got it right, ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that ‘separate is not equal’.”

That decision started the United States down the road of equality, though throughout the 1960s many people died: freedom riders, little girls in Sunday school, Emmet Till, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many, many others died for the right to vote. Even today the U.S. Department of Justice must chastise the city of Ferguson, MO, for its deep, wide, and shameless programs of institutional racism.

“We have some distance left to go,” said President King. “Let us today, as a community, look toward the lofty goal that we are, in fact, equal.”

Racism, diversity, inclusion

The first part of the program was a keynote address by Jacquelyn Hallum, Director of Health Careers and Diversity Education at MAHEC, who addressed diversity in the context of ongoing institutional racism. She spoke of the many facets of bias—hidden or overt, unconscious, denied, or invisible—that permeate society at every level.

The thrust of Hallum’s remarks was that “Groups like those who are like ourselves. We all identify with others like us. But in the workplace [that natural tendency] can have consequences of groupthink, of being insulated from outside views.” Thus it’s common that, in the absence of dissent, it’s easy for the belief to grow that, “because they all agree, they must be right.”

“To achieve diversity,” she said, “is a process. It’s not just Black History Month or the MLK breakfast or peace march. Those events happen once a year; achieving diversity has to be integrated into the way we live and conduct our organization’s business 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year: 24/7/365.

Educational institutions v. institutional racism

After the keynote presentation, a panel comprised of Dr. Darin Waters, Assistant Professor of History at UNC Asheville; Oralene Graves Simmons, founding chairperson of the MLK Association of Asheville and Buncombe County; Beth Maczka, Executive Director of the YWCA of Asheville; and Sharon West, board chair of the YMI Cultural Center and an executive at the Charles George VA Center, discussed ways in which higher education has addressed, and can continue to address, opportunities and obstacles in development among minority communities.

The discussion was moderated by Annie Burton, Executive Director of School and Community Engagement for UNC Asheville, whose job is to “explore ways to strategically align resources at the university with those in communities—schools, students, institutions like Mission, nonprofit organizations, and businesses and community groups. Burton noted that W. E. B. Du Bois said, “The problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line”—and that it remains so one-sixth of the way through the 21st.

Among the facts presented for consideration by the panel were the following:

• Despite the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown, Asheville schools did not begin to desegregate until 1967, 13 years later
• Then, though new schools had just been built for blacks, African American students were forced to join majority white schools
• Asheville’s urban renewal program in the 1960s destroyed the heart of black communities, displacing more than 1,700 residents to other areas or public housing over three decades
• Even the name of Valley Street, once a thoroughfare of the historically black East End, was changed to S. Charlotte Street—named after Charlotte Patton, whose father was one of Asheville’s largest slave holders

Dr. Waters noted that in 2014 only 32% of African Americans believe that the U.S. has made significant progress on race, pointing out that 2011 figures shows that housing discrimination is still rampant, despite the equal housing law of 1968. He explained that on every measure of wellbeing—incidence of cancer, asthma, heart health; access to good food sources, recreation, parks; the quality of roads and schools and infrastructure—outcomes reflect where one lives. Thus housing discrimination does damage at a fundamental level that manifests itself in every other part of life.

He also told the audience that the difficulty in improving opportunities for African Americans in WNC is compounded by two factors: population and higher education. Asheville’s black population has hovered at around 12% since Reconstruction; it once inched up to 16%, but is now back at 12%. Also, Asheville did not have the benefit of a historically black college or university.

“Universities create an intellectual class. Why did the sit-in movement happen in Greensboro? In large part because NCA&T and Bennett College helped produce the people who would challenge the status quo.” He said that even today there are only 13 or 14 African Americans on the faculty at UNC Asheville.

Simmons agreed that the sit-in movement in Greensboro was inspirational to the youth who participated in ASCORE in Asheville, in helping provide a framework and a model for non-violent protest. She and Viola Spells, both students in Asheville public schools, non-violently brought about the integration of the Asheville Public Library, and she went on to become the first black student enrolled at Mars Hill College in 1961. “We learned about Dr. King, and we studied Gandhi’s call for nonviolence; it was so important to achieve our own education—that would open the door to opportunities for all of us.”

YWCA led in integration

Maczka discussed the role of the YWCA in Asheville in combatting racism. The local Y originated in 1906 as a boardinghouse to provide a safe place to live for single working women. That same decade a group of black women established an employment club for young black women—which became the Phyllis Wheatley branch of the YWCA. Half a century later a committee of six members of the two groups—three black and three white women—began meeting to discuss ways to improve race relations in the city. The group decided to invite former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt to speak, but she would only address integrated audiences. So the two branches jointly invited her, and she spoke to a sell-out crowd of 800 residents, black and white.

In 1965, when both branches were considering expanding to new facilities, the boards of directors of the two organizations named Thelma Caldwell—Executive Director of the Phyllis Wheatley branch—to lead the Central branch as well, making the Asheville YWCA the first in the South, and only the second in nation, to be fully integrated.

Ms. West, who in addition to her VA work and YMI role works as an ethics consultant, was inspired by the late Dr. Charles Blair, founder of what is now ABIPA, to learn about disparities in health and healthcare access, whose cost in the 2003-06 period was $1.3 trillion, or approximately $400 billion per year in added health costs, lost wages, lost work opportunities, disabilities, etc.

She noted that infant mortality rates for black babies is the same today as in 1950, and that while black women are diagnosed less often with breast cancer, they die at a rate 2.5 times higher. Similar disparities exist for diabetes, prostate cancer, and other conditions.

Call to Action

“To know where you’re going you have to know where you’ve been.”

The panel discussion was followed by a Call to Action, during which Lisa Eby, chair of the WNC Engagement Coalition; Pastor James Lee; Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan; A-B Tech Executive Darryl Rhymes; and Shiela Meadows, VP of Human Resources at Mission Health, discussed approaches to improving both the climate of racial justice and specific goals for accomplishment.

Statistics show that 57% of Asheville’s black community lives in poverty; only 3% own their own homes. Nationally, the jobless rate is 5.7%, but 10.4% for blacks; for black teens, the rate is 30%, reflecting a lack of education, training, and the prevalence of minor infractions that eliminate black youth from the job market.

Name it an own it

Eby emphasized the importance of acknowledging the obstacles to racial justice. “Notice it and name it—unconscious bias exists in all of us. Identify it … become educated.” She suggested noticing what kind of pictures and magazines are found in waiting rooms, becoming aware of how we identify “we”—our own group.

She said, “We are biologically wired to see friend or foe in instants, and then react accordingly. We tend to look at the out group, the other, as a flat, two-dimensional image, without specificity or individuality.”

Talk about it

The Racial Justice Coalition was established to create dialogue among groups and individuals who are already working to improve the community’s climate. James Lee explained: “We invited people to come to the table and talk about what is important, how do we build a safe community. We’re working with the Asheville Police Department, the sheriff, and other groups. We want to provide an entity that can leverage resources and reach across communities. Whether you live in public housing or in the Ramble, you want safe communities.

Buncombe County is now 6.5% black, in part due to the continuing influx of retirees, mostly white, into the county. The same ratio holds in the Sheriff’s department, where, according to Van Duncan, the department has taken steps to overcome, institutional racism in its hiring and retention. Especially in light of ongoing national issues of police shooting unarmed young black males, the Sheriff said he considers it essential to continue working to combat racism.

Act upon it

“In 2006 [immediately after being elected] I turned over employment decisions to a committee, with the goal of hiring the best and the brightest. That committee of five had to have at least one minority, sometimes more, and always at least one female. One very important hire we made is spokesperson Natalie Bailey, who is now the face of the Sheriff’s office in the media, on TV, etc.”

Duncan said he hoped that her high visibility as an African American woman would encourage minority candidates to feel comfortable applying to the Sheriff’s department for jobs. He added, “We’re not Ferguson, that’s not us. All law enforcement gets painted with that brush, and it makes recruiting even more difficult.” But, he says, “We continue to look at training, follow programs on unconscious racial bias from the Department of Justice, we work with the Racial Justice Coalition and ABCRC.”

A-B Tech

Rhymes, an African American and Asheville native who recently was appointed Special Assistant to the President for Inclusion by King, discussed A-B Tech’s efforts. Rhymes described how his team brings staff and faculty together for dialogue. “Also we had Building Bridges on campus last year and hosted an all-day “Unconscious Bias” workshop on campus. The school also conducts outreach through MAHEC, and a number of other organizations—including outreach ministries and programs to help ex-offenders get an education.

Rhymes teaches a class in “Supervision” for the Engineering department. “One chapter is diversity, and there are so many variables in that curriculum. They target one particular variable, which might or might not be on the radar,” but many variables have to be taken into consideration.

And the Minority Student Enterprise program begun by Dr. Joseph is still in place to offer mentorship and guidance. “We get 17% of students into school, but retention is the problem. The mentorship program helps ensure they get their degrees.”

Three pillars of diversity

Meadows, of the Diversity Engagement Coalition, defined three pillars of success in diversity empowerment. The first, she said, is networking. “Unless you know people, you don’t get jobs; so one of our goals is to provide opportunities for networking.

“The second pillar is developing opportunities for personal professional development, teaching participants, for example, to discover what are the unwritten rules of an organization that you don’t know about, but need to?”
Then, in addition to helping prepare and develop individuals, “We want to help the organizations we work with, and others, assess what they’re doing well and how to do better in the future. To create an environment and culture where everybody can thrive.”

Participants included Sheriff Van Duncan, a member of the board of AB Community Relations Council and participant in the Racial Justice Coalition, which works to leverage resources of a diverse group of area organizations; Lisa Eby, Human Resources Director, Buncombe County Health & Human Services; Jacquelyn Hallum, Director of Health Careers and Diversity Education at MAHEC, who gave the keynote address; AB Tech President Dennis King; James Lee, cochair of the Racial Justice Coalition; Beth Maczka, Executive Director, YWCA Asheville; Sheila Meadows, VP HR at Mission Health; Darryl Rhymes, AB Tech Employment Coordinator & Special Assistant to the President for Inclusion; Oralene Simmons, founding chairperson of the MLK Association of Asheville & Buncombe County; Darin Waters, Assistant Professor of History at UNC Asheville; and Sharon West, Chair, YMI Board and Ethics Consultant