“I think we are all attuned to the fact that people from different racial backgrounds experience Charlottesville differently,” says Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris.
Racial tension has surfaced in the city time and time again. “There is a lot of social segregation in our community, and that’s on all sides. It’s incumbent upon all of us to try to open our eyes a little,” says Norris.
In the past, there have been failed attempts to carve a plan to address discrimination and racism in the city. This time around, City Council has put race relations at the top of its priorities for the new year.
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“We are thinking of engaging the entire community in an ongoing discussion,” says Assistant City Manager Maurice Jones, who has been charged by City Council with putting together a plan to tackle racism and racial misunderstanding. |
Assistant City Manager Maurice Jones was appointed to develop a concrete and detailed plan for a city-wide, sustainable dialogue on race and racism. “We are still in the early stages,” says Jones. “What we are thinking of doing is engaging the entire community in an ongoing discussion to first better understand each other, our backgrounds, our history, our perceptions.” City staff is assessing what other localities, such as Dayton, Ohio, and Little Rock, Arkansas, for example, as well as Richmond and Lynchburg have done to improve racial harmony among residents. (More on Lynchburg presently.)
Key to the success of this plan, says Councilor Holly Edwards, is to understand the value of being a diverse community. “It means recognizing the history of racism that has existed within the African-American community for a number of years,” she says.
“It manifests itself in the achievement gap,” as well as health care, education, housing and the economy. “It may not be blatant segregation that we see in terms of we no longer have to get on the bus and sit in the back, but we still have to get on the bus because we don’t have access to transportation,” she says.
Edwards says that ever since Vinegar Hill was demolished in the 1960s, “the economic power of the African-American community hasn’t been quite the same.”
As for communities that are doing a good job addressing racial discrimination, Edwards heard that Lynchburg, some 60 miles to the south, was forging ahead with its study circle model.
Study circles bring groups of residents from different backgrounds together to discuss the most effective ways to help their own community solve problems and create plans of action. With the help of Everyday Democracy, a New England organization that helps communities deal with issues and find solutions, Lynchburg has engaged more than 1,000 people in the two-year process. Action committees meet regularly throughout the year, and national speakers come to town to address and train community leaders. The “Many Voices, One Community” initiative “has a vision that says that Lynchburg is a community where race or ethnicity is not the most powerful predictor of how one fares socially, economically, and educationally,” says Lynchburg City Manager Kimball Payne.
But is Charlottesville ready to have uncomfortable conversations? “I don’t think there is any question that we are,” says Jones.
City staff will prepare a memorandum of recommendations and will present it to the Council on January 20.
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