Rinku Sen brought her expertise on racial justice to the first General Session on Wednesday morning. Sen, president and executive director of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation, stressed that the work of local governments is to create the conditions in which we can be a society, a community. An important element of that work is to provide equitable opportunities for people of all races.

Our inclination may be to to put our energy into being colorblind – not noticing race at all. But Sen says that’s not really possible to achieve. The stress of having our conscious minds tell us that we’re not to see what our unconscious minds see all the time creates racial anxiety that’s hard to move past.

Rather, she says we should focus on making things better for people of color AND everyone else. The whole community benefits in the long run.

Sen recommends three approaches:

1. Be explicit about your racial justice commitment – Focus on systemically fair treatment of people of all races, and concentrate on measurable outcomes. She cited the example of the Idaho Community Action Network’s health insurance program for low income white, Native American and Latino families. A large number of eligible families were being denied coverage, so they implemented a race test. They discovered a number of problems, including an application that was long and complicated, office hours that competed with applicants’ work hours, and intrusive questions, such as how did you get across the border. Addressing those problems would help people of all races.
2. Focus more on racial impact – Sen highlighted the poisoning of the water supply in Flint. People are being prosecuted not because there was racial bias, but because there was racial impact. Impact can be measured to show racial disparities. She suggests adopting a racial impact equity analysis. Cities that are part of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity find that when you apply a racial justice lens to all practices and laws in a community, you can make changes that are better for everyone. For instance, Seattle had a policy of changing street lights based on who called and reported that their neighborhood light was out. That resulted in lights being changed primarily in white areas of the city where residents were more inclined to call the government. They implemented a new policy of putting all streetlights on timers, so now all streetlights get changed on time.
3. Remember what’s at stake and craft a strategy – Sen says that what’s at stake is whether we are going to care for each other or be on our own, operate as a multiracial democracy or a racially unjust autocracy. At the core of our strategies should be what we want the future to look like. That’s at the heart of what government leaders are elected or appointed to do.