Anyone Listening?
We are all on a journey of listeing and awareness. Some of us need to try harder.
As an economic developer we are taught to be agnostic, color blind or whatever term applies when it comes to applying our economic development skills and practice in business attraction, business retention, workforce development and entrepreneurship development. I want to say I have done that. But I actually have no way to know if my actions were truly color blind. There is no outcome measure that will tell me if this is true or not. As Drucker would say you cannot manage what you cannot measure.
Our hope as an economic developer is that we are providing a service that will provide jobs for people. People of any color, race, ethnicity or gender. We hope those jobs will be of the type that provides a living wage for those individuals and that the company providing those jobs will prosper and contribute to the community. Again, unless one has a policy that does not accept a project or provide incentives for a project unless they attain a certain level of income, guaranteeing those living wage jobs is hard to do in this economy. It may be even harder in the post-pandemic-post-racist-awoken world.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. To some extent we take what we can get, right? We so desperately need to show our boards and stakeholders that we are performing and sometimes we will justify a lower level job by accepting them and modifying our output by concentrating more on the economic impact, i.e. sales tax, property tax, spending in the community rather than the jobs.
Are we being responsible? Are we concentrating on the real issue of bringing people up from the poverty they suffer and the lack of mobility that is so part of the racial policies embedded in our system. I know in my career I hardly gave it a thought. So how did we get here?
Researchers have found areas that impact the lives of African-Americans ability to succeed financially, the measure of economic success in America. These areas of discrimination have been institutionalized and ingrained into our system over time. Take public education for instance which has often been underfunded in African-American majority schools, limiting skill acquisition and upward mobility for black Americans. Our system of public school funding which has largely been on the backs of property taxes automatically discriminates against poor black neighborhoods. Suburban schools are funded at a much higher level than inner city schools where many African Americns live and are concentrated.
Employment discrimination, which makes it more difficult for black families to escape from poverty or build wealth in their community.
The social safety net system, where there is an increased likelihood of sanctioning and spending is less generous for black communities.
The criminal justice system, where poor outcomes for black Americans include higher bail and greater likelihood of monetary sanctions, among other penalties.
Can the simple act of economic developers paying attention to these factors and areas, or simply being more aware of these issues as we practice our trade bring change? Frankly I doubt it. I think it will take much more deliberate action on the part of our profession.
Economic Developers have by and large remained agnostic when it came to issues like this. Someone will remark that they haven’t been that way, in fact they have been out front on this issue. Good. I hope you are louder and more forceful, because we need you.
What can we do? It will take getting out of our comfort zone. Since I started in economic development over thirty years ago a lot has changed and little has changed. It is still an industry dominated by white privilege. There are absolutely people on the front lines working the problems mentioned above that are in the inner cities and should be recognized but more importantly they have things to teach us. However many of us continue to plow the transactional economic development field hoping and praying some site location consultant likes us and picks our community.
We can do better but I am afraid and confess I don’t know what it is. As a white privileged, gray haired 59 year old man I lived a life of non-discrimination and comfort. Right now all I know to do is to listen.
Are any economic developers out there talking about this? Are any economic developers doing something? I promise to listen. And then I shall do.
