The protests that erupted in Metro Detroit over the past week and in other parts of the country and the deaths that sparked them are spurring employers, once again, to look for ways to break down institutional racism.
It's an issue the nonprofit sector has been focused on for decades.
While there are tangible efforts underway, there are no quick fixes, said Joe Scantlebury, vice president for place-based programs at the Battle Creek-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
"It's hard, intentional work that needs many, many more people to devote themselves to it," he said.
"If people are looking for a … silver bullet to release 400 years of injustice, there isn't one."
New Detroit, the organization founded to address the racial inequities that sparked the '67 rebellion in Detroit, has been working toward racial equity for more than 50 years.
It was the first urban coalition in the U.S., formed to look at what went wrong leading up to the Detroit events, what needed to change in terms of racial disparities and inequities and how to make that change happen.
It made progress quickly and then episodically over the years.
But the organization lost the fire that spurred it to action after the rebellion in '67 over the ensuing years, the group's founder, Joseph Hudson Jr., told Crain's in 2017.
It also lost funding, with total revenue falling from a one-time high of about $6 million to $1.87 million in 2010 and just over $1 million for this year, according to financial data provided by Mike Rafferty, New Detroit's president and CEO.
Over the past decade, corporate funding has dropped to $180,000 this year from $729,000 in 2010. During the same time, foundation grants dropped from $748,000 to $430,000.
After spending his first year at New Detroit bringing expenses in line with revenue, Rafferty is now deploying against a new strategic plan launched in 2018 to achieve racial equity in income, quality education and safety. It's focusing on system change, convening and data that shows the disparities.
As part of that, it's launching industry-specific bias and cultural sensitivity training. Law enforcement and health care are "low-hanging fruit" for that training, Rafferty said.
He points to an article published by the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. last year that said about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police.
COVID-19 has also killed a disproportionate number of Detroit's black residents as a result of health issues brought about by education, housing, income disparities and, more directly, disparities in diagnosis and treatments, Rafferty said.
"New Detroit has not been invested in enough to make the changes happen that we need, to do these trainings, to design them in all the right ways they are effective and impactful," Rafferty said, including advocating that doctors and police must complete bias training before they can practice and ensuring that police do before they go out into the community.
With new funding from a national funder, New Detroit is finalizing plans to launch bias and cultural sensitivity training with a local, undisclosed health system and developing training for the criminal justice and business sectors.
"Racism isn't over; it hasn't ended; interpersonal, institution and social behaviors have not changed substantially," Rafferty said.
"We keep talking about these things like diabetes and death by cops as things to solve for."
But just like with any other disease, "if you work to solve the symptom, you're not solving the root cause," he said.
"Leaders across the country should be declaring racism a national health crisis."
When COVID-19 was declared a public health crisis, more substantial resources went to address it, Rafferty said. Executive orders were issued to keep people safe.
"It was everyone's responsibility ... to do what they can to make sure that COVID doesn't kill more people," he said.
Last week, black lawmakers in Ohio introduced legislation in the House and Senate to declare racism a public health crisis, according to a report in The Columbus Dispatch.
Hudson-Webber and Melanca Clark, president and CEO of the Hudson-Webber Foundation in Detroit, brought a social justice thrust to the foundation's work when she arrived in 2016.
Before coming to Detroit, she served as chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and worked as part of President Barack Obama's task force on 21st century policing, created through executive order in late 2014, following the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014.
The group's work culminated in a 2015 report with practical recommendations that police departments could take to end racism within their ranks.
The recommendations are still good five years later, Clark said.
Under her direction, Hudson-Webber provided funding for the national renowned "ceasefire" violence prevention program targeted at violent criminals, in partnership with the Detroit Police Department. The program uses regular "call-ins" to broker agreements between gangs, law enforcement and the community aimed at ending violence.
Hudson-Webber as also spent the last few years looking at the criminal justice system in Detroit. Most recently, it commissioned the Vera Institute of Justice to study the Wayne County Jail population and make recommendations for safely reducing it to ease overcrowding. The yearlong study was released in May as the number of deaths among incarcerated populations from coronavirus rose and Wayne County stakeholders were making changes that led to a nearly 38 percent reduction in the jail's population. Those reductions followed steady decreases since 2014, according to the study.
Building on those efforts, Hudson-Webber and other foundations on May 29 launched the planning phase of a statewide fund aimed at justice reform.
The group includes the Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan,the New York-based Ford Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Detroit-based Ethel & James Flinn Foundation and the Washington, D.C.-based Public Welfare Foundation.
While the group is still defining its grant making, it envisions support for work addressing racial inequity in the justice system, from the first encounter a young black man in Detroit has with the police, to incarceration, to barriers faced by returning citizens, Clark said.
With the onset of the pandemic, the Michigan Justice Fund has already funded COVID-related response efforts, starting with a grant to test the entire population of incarcerated people in the Wayne County Jail, and support for the development of COVID-19 related testing, care and release protocols, she said.
"The justice system we have is predicated on institutional racism," Clark said.
"Are we coming in to truly save people or doing this in a way that honors people's inherent power and need to be at tables that impact communities where they live? They ought to be at those tables."
The Kellogg Foundation is also no stranger to work aimed at eliminating racial disparities and inequities. All of the foundation's grants are aimed at the structure of racism in the U.S. and how to address it "so that children can actually thrive and not be bound by hidden limits and hidden barriers," that they can walk down the streets and not fear the police," Scantlebury said.
Among other efforts, the foundation made a five-year, $51 million grant in 2017 to strengthen its hometown Battle Creek Public Schools after years of disinvestment in the district, rooted in racial segregation.
The same year it helped fund the facilitation of cross-sector community conversations in several U.S. cities, including Flint, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo and Lansing. The "Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation" community conversations are aimed at unearthing and jettisoning the often unconscious beliefs created by racism, with the longterm goal of creating transformational and sustainable change, Kellogg said on the program's website.
"We have to be willing to face the unfaceable, the uncomfortable," Scantlebury said. "It is not magic ... it is hard ... long, steady work, community by community," with business, police, government, youth, elders coming together and community ownership and co-investment in the process.
"When we face the truth about racism together and hear each other's truths, very often we can see each other's humanity. And that's the goal," Scantlebury said.
He's quick to point out that the program isn't a panacea. Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed and violent protests erupted, is among other national cities participating in the program. But it can't be dismissed that at least three of the Michigan cities where the "transformation process" is underway through the community conversations saw peaceful protests last week. And Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson made national headlines when he put down his baton and walked with protesters, high-fiving as they went, to show his support.
There are other nonprofit efforts underway to end institutional racism.
On the educational front, the Skillman Foundation in Detroit is front and center on efforts to eliminate educational disparities and lead thought on broader impact on families.
Detroit Future City is lifting up economic disparities in Detroit, and the New Economy Initiative the barriers entrepreneurs of color face in accessing capital, much of it due to institutional bias.
Focus Hope is working to close economic gaps with its workforce training and early childhood education programs.
"As ugly and painful as this is, it's not hopeless," Scantlebury said.
"It's a moment where we all say enough ... and decide together we're going to do something."
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Nonprofit leaders: No 'silver bullet' for ending institutional racism, but work is underway - Crain's Detroit Business
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