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THE NEW NORMAL Diverse, Equitable & Inclusive 2021 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY www.stateofblackamerica.orgABOUT THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE The National Urban League is a historic civil rights and urban advocacy organization. Driven to secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and justice for our nation’s marginalized populations, the National Urban League works toward economic empowerment and the elevation of the standard of living in historically underserved urban communities. Founded in 1910 and headquartered in New York City, the National Urban League has improved the lives of more than 2 million people nationwide through direct service programs run by 91 affiliates serving 300 communities in 37 states and the District of Columbia. The National Urban League also conducts public policy research and advocacy work from its Washington, D.C., bureau. The National Urban League is a BBB- accredited organization and has earned a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, placing it in the top 10% of all U.S. charities for adhering to good governance, fiscal responsibility and other best practices. PUBLISHER Marc H. Morial EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Shu-Fy H. Pongnon CREATIVE DIRECTOR Rhonda Spears Bell RESEARCH PARTNERS Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Center for Policing Equity Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity EXECUTIVE EDITOR Sabine Louissaint SENIOR EDITORS Teresa Candori Dr. Silas Lee DESIGN Untuck CONTENTS 03 About the State of Black America ® 04 From the President’s Desk 06 Tribute to Vernon Eulion Jordan, Jr. 10 PANDEMIC #1: ECONOMIC COLLAPSE A New Normal for Banking 12 PANDEMIC #2: HEALTH INEQUITIES A New Normal for Treating Hypertension 14 PANDEMIC #3: STRUCTURAL RACISM A New Normal for Responding to Police Calls 16 About the Authors 22 National Urban League Affiliates National Urban League ABOUT THE STATE OF BLACK AMERICA ® The State of Black America ® is the signature reporting of the National Urban League. Since its first appearance in 1976 under the stewardship of the late Mr. Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., the organization’s fifth president, the State of Black America ® remains one of the most highly- anticipated benchmarks and sources for thought leadership around racial equality in America across economics, employment, education, health, housing, criminal justice and civic participation. Each edition contains penetrating commentary and insightful analysis from recognized authorities and leading figures in politics, the corporate and tech sectors, the nonprofit arena, academia and popular culture. The 2021 State of Black America ® , The New Normal: Diverse, Equitable & Inclusive, continues to build on our COVID-19 reporting and asks: “Where do we go from here?” The coronavirus, fueled by America’s pre-existing condition of structural racism, spread with a fatal swiftness through Black, Latino and Indigenous communities. No American community was spared, but communities of color bore the heavy brunt of sickness and death. The cellphone video of George Floyd’s killing and the revelation of Breonna Taylor’s final hours sparked an international outcry during the pandemic’s tightest grip. This compounding crisis mobilized a long overdue national reckoning on the legacy of structural racism, police violence and the need for police reform. Measures to contain the spread of the virus shut down businesses and schools. Economic devastation inevitably followed. The established pattern of disproportionate damage in communities of color, once again, bore out in the face of the pandemic-induced recession. In every instance, Black and brown people lost their lives and their livelihoods at predictably higher rates. One pandemic threatened America; three pandemics ravaged its communities of color. Today, vaccines are slowly getting into arms; states are beginning to drop masks mandates; and lockdown restrictions are easing. We are living in a historic moment that demands that historical injustices are recognized and repaired. However, we have yet to solve for the deep-rooted inequities that pre-dated the pandemic, accelerated the virus’s spread in communities of color and exacerbated the “undeniable effect of racism” in every facet of American life. Instead, as the risk of infection and death plummets, there is an overwhelming desire to “get back to normal.” Given the litany of disparities that defined our pre-pandemic “normal,” we cannot— and must not—return to our inequitable status quo. We are called to reimagine and forge a new, diverse, equitable and inclusive normal. Through our partnership with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, we explore a new normal that prioritizes partnerships between health care institutions and the communities they serve. Our focus on health care and health inequities addresses a wide range of topics, including the push to declare racism a public health crisis and the success of telehealth in increasing access to care during the pandemic. We collaborated with the Center for Policing Equity, subject matter experts on the topics of police reform and reconstructing public safety in Black and brown communities. Our authors also tackled the urgent issues of voter suppression, student loan debt and prison reform. Through our research partnership with the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, we examined potential solutions to close the generational wealth gap—which remains a perpetual defect of our nation’s economy. Our reporting also features authors who delve into the erasure of Black wealth and job loss in the wake of the recession and record-setting unemployment. Our authors highlight our broken child care system, questioning how America can get back to work without a comprehensive plan to fix it. During the worst of the pandemic, Americans unified as one voice in the fight against injustice. As the pandemic becomes more of a memory, we are challenged to keep the same energy and finish what we started. We may not yet have solutions to our problems, but we do have hope. And we do have the strength of our collective will to insist that our nation lives up to its proposed values. The National Urban League will not forget. The National Urban League will continue to fight for justice. The National Urban League stands at the ready to usher in a new normal. WHERE IS THE 2021 EQUALITY INDEX™? Given the incremental rate of change in the areas measured by the Equality Index—economics, health, education, social justice and civic engagement—the National Urban League publishes the Equality Index every two years. Explore the 2020 Equality Index (and indices from 2011–2018) on the State of Black America ® website. www.stateofblackamerica.org National Urban League THE NEW NORMAL: DIVERSE, EQUITABLE & INCLUSIVE 3It was a year that saw the nation both historically united—with support for the Black Lives Matter movement hitting an all-time high—and historically divided—as white resentment of Black and Brown voting power peaked with a deadly insurrection and a nearly unprecedented effort to ballot access to white voters. The pandemic didn’t simply unmask the stark racial inequities in our economic, health care, and criminal justice status quo; it gave rise to a determined resistance to that status quo and fueled a demand for racial justice that grows more intense with each passing month. That growing demand, in turn, has triggered a backlash that resists any suggestion that structural and institutional racism even exist, much less need to be dismantled. The tension between these competing forces has stalled America at a crossroads of racial reckoning. One path leads backward, toward the “old normal”—a return to the marginalization, discrimination, and segregation that left Black and Brown Americans exceptionally vulnerable to a deadly virus and economic desperation. The other path leads forward, toward The New Normal: Diverse, Equitable & Inclusive. It is a glimpse of an America where police approach the communities they serve as allies and collaborators and not as hostile combatants; where every citizen has equal access to the ballot box; where fatal complications in pregnancy are just as rare for Black mothers as they are for white mothers; where the value of a home is not determined by the race of its owner. The New Normal: Diverse, Equitable & Inclusive makes the case that dismantling structural racism—identifying and repairing the cracks in our national foundation—will result in more resilient and dynamic institutions that expand opportunity for everyone. To quote a flippant sentiment frequently shared on social media, “ Equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It’s not pie.” Perhaps the most vivid illustration of the tension between the forces competing for the soul of America was the January 6 insurrection, when a violent mob dissatisfied with the results of the 2020 Presidential Election stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn it. Led by white supremacists and right-wing extremists, the insurrection represented both a counterresponse to the ongoing protests against racial injustice and an almost perfect example of the injustice that inspired them. In the months leading up to the insurrection, peaceful racial justice protesters around the nation were met with the aggressive tactics of militarized police who were clad in fatigues and armor. They were assaulted with tear gas and rubber bullets and were buffeted by the violent winds of swooping helicopters. The extremists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 had openly plotted the insurrection on social media, declaring their intentions to “storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents.” Yet they were met with no troops in riot gear. No military helicopters. No tear gas was deployed as the mob shoved its way past barricades. Vastly outnumbered police stepped aside and allowed the mob to storm the Capitol. FROM THE PRESIDENT’S DESK BY MARC H. MORIAL President & CEO, National Urban League Few events have shaped American history and our national perspective on racial inequity as profoundly as the grief, civil unrest, and economic devastation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. 4 2021 STATE OF BLACK AMERICA ®The mob was motivated by furious resentment over historic Black and Brown voter turnout that contributed to the loss of their preferred candidate, Donald Trump. Baseless claims of fraud sought to tarnish the integrity of elections in Black and Brown communities, and lawsuit after lawsuit sought to invalidate votes in those jurisdictions. The “Big Lie”—the myth that the election was “stolen”—succeeded largely because it blamed voters of color for stealing it. It frames the promise of a multicultural, pluralistic democracy as an act of theft from the dominant white majority. Whether we are to achieve a “New Normal” that is truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive will depend in large measure upon our response to the “Big Lie.” A capitulation on voting rights is not only a fast track back to the “old normal,” it would further entrench the white supremacist ideology that has warped our society over centuries. Witness the recent hysteria over “critical race theory,” an academic discipline that was developed more than four decades ago to examine how our nation’s laws and legal institutions reinforce and maintain racial inequality. It holds that oppression of racial minorities is a feature, not a bug, in our policies and traditions. It represents an existential threat to the myth that white Americans hold disproportionate wealth, social status, and political power because they are more talented and work harder than non-whites. The New Normal: Diverse, Equitable & Inclusive further erodes that myth with compelling analysis from our 2021 research partners—the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, the Center for Policing Equity, and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution—that turns some conventional wisdom on its head. Did stop-and-frisk programs not only fail to curb juvenile crime but contribute to its increase? How does easing financial hardships affect health conditions like hypertension? Can a smartphone app lift unbanked households out of poverty and help repair their credit? In 2021, the National Urban League developed and promoted two major policy proposals to address racial inequities in public safety and the economy. 21 Pillars for Redefining Public Safety and Restoring Community Trust is a comprehensive framework for criminal justice advocacy that takes a holistic approach to public safety, the restoration of trust between communities and law enforcement, and a path forward for meaningful change. The Lewis Latimer Plan for Digital Equity and Inclusion is a strategy for leveraging the tools of the information economy to create a more equitable and inclusive society. They are vital components of the National Urban League’s vision of The New Normal. The National Urban League has produced The State of Black America ® for four and a half decades. This is the first time we have done it without the inspiration and mentorship of our former President, Vernon Jordan, who produced the first State of Black America ® report in 1976. His passing in March has left a void in the Civil Rights Movement that can never be filled, and we dedicate this edition to his memory. This transitional moment in history would have been familiar to Jordan, who assumed leadership of the National Urban League in 1971, at a time when the United States was adapting to the sweeping changes of the Civil Rights Era. We were, as he put it, dealing with the rubble of the walls we tore down in the 1960s. Now we are dealing with the rubble of the walls torn down by COVID-19. As Jordan wrote in the very first State of Black America ® , “It is our hope that this document will pierce the dark veil of neglect that has thus far smothered efforts to right the wrongs of the past and the present. It is presented as an alternative to failed public policies … I hope that it will be read closely in the White House and in the Congress and that it may influence decision-makers to open their eyes to the plight of Black Americans.” THE NEW NORMAL: DIVERSE, EQUITABLE & INCLUSIVE 5 National Urban LeagueTRIBUTE TO VERNON EULION JORDAN, JR. “ We believe that the social fabric of our nation is too tenuous to withstand [the] continuation of the policies that brought us to the brink of survival in the last twelve months. We believe in a ‘new realism’ that brings solutions to our country’s problems rather than one that worsens those problems.” — VERNON JORDAN, 1976 PRESS CONFERENCE STATEMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C. 6 2021 STATE OF BLACK AMERICA ®“ But I think what we have heard today is that we should remember Vernon Jordan as a ‘MAN FOR OTHERS.’ A man who dedicated his life in many ways. He was a ‘Man for Others’ in 1961 when he walked those two students into a previously segregated University of Georgia. He was ‘A Man for Others’ when he steered the voting—the Voter Education Project, the United Negro College Fund—and became president of the National Urban League. And as ‘A Man for Others’ at the National Urban League, he took us to the pinnacle in workforce development, in job training.” —MARC H. MORIAL “ Vernon was the best friend you could have. He was relentlessly focused on BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEOPLE AT EVERY LEVEL— he brought joy into their lives. He was charismatic but genuine, and he possessed great wisdom and judgment. A number of CEOs—including me— said, “If I have an important decision to make, I’m going to go to Vernon.” —KENNETH CHENAULT “ Vernon was my very best friend. Vernon surrounded me, engulfed me, enveloped me and shone a light on me. He gave everything that he had to offer…everything. A WHOLLY UNIQUE AND GENEROUS SPIRIT, Vernon held nothing back from me. He gave me access to amazing people, experiences, great restaurants, his inner circle, his family and his self. He gave me motivation, comfort, love, and very importantly, perspective.” —URSULA BURNS READ THE FULL REMARKS TO VERNON JORDAN AT www.stateofblackamerica.org National Urban League1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 A LIFE OF SERVICE VERNON EULION JORDAN, JR. 1935–2021 1935 Born August 15 in Atlanta, Georgia 1954 Brown v. Board of Education 1955 Murder of Emmett Till 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycotts 1957 Little Rock Nine integrate Little Rock Central High School 1957 B.A. in Political Science, DePauw University 1960 Ruby Bridges integrates William Frantz Elementary School 1960 J.D. from Howard University School of Law 1961 Associate with Donald L. Hollowell Law Firm, which wins lawsuit to integrate the University of Georgia NAACP, Georgia Field Secretary 1963 The March on Washington 1963 Bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham HISTORIC EVENT 8 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 1964 Southern Regional Council, Voter Education Project Director 1965 Bloody Sunday President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House Conference on Civil Rights, Delegate 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Fair Housing Act 1970 United Negro College Fund, Executive Director 1971 Succeeds the late Whitney M. Young, Jr. as National Urban League President 1976 Published the first State of Black America ® (in response to President Gerald Ford’s State of the Union Address) 1980 Assassination attempt (Fort Wayne, Indiana) 1981 Resigns from the National Urban League 1982 Awarded the National Urban League Equal Opportunity Award Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, Partner 1992 President Bill Clinton Transition Team, Co-Chair 2000 Lazard Freres & Co., Senior Managing Partner 2001 Published Vernon Can Read! A Memoir 2001 Awarded the Spingarn Medal for a lifetime of social justice activism 2008 Election of Barack Obama 2008 Published Make It Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out 2011 Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial 2013 50th anniversary of The March on Washington/ The New Civil Rights Era 2016 National Museum of African American History and Culture 2019 Awarded National Urban League Visionary Warrior Award 2021 Died March 1 in Washington, D.C. Howard University names Law School Library in honor of Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. 9Next >