CRITICAL COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Issue Analysis of KOCO: On Racial Exclusion

In the North Kenwood and Oakland communities, residents are in good hands when they find their voices too small facing urgent and devastating issues since 1960s. Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) has been facilitating and organizing campaigns with aim to increase the resources and services available to North Kenwood and Oakland families and residents. According to Statistical Atlas, North Kenwood and Oakland communities consist of a total of 2,175 families, and a population of 4,491 residents. Children occupy a total of 1,027 count in the total population of North Kenwood. The neighborhood consists of predominantly Black population at up to 84.5% while 8.2% is White, and 3.3% is Asian.

In term of household median income, North Kenwood is one of the lowest 20 of lowest household median income in Chicago out of the total of 228 neighborhoods in Chicago. This is due to the neighborhood’s high unemployment rate, in which is reported at 11.3% while only 60.7% of people are employed. Around 2,173 people rely their lives on food stamp and that almost account for half of the population in the neighborhood. Apart from these, the most shocking numbers come from educational attainment. It turns out that it is not the 84.5% of the Black population are not getting enough education, it appears that they do and African American female tend to obtain more higher education up to doctorate level than African American male; however, it was the 27.7% of young Asian girls are not even getting a high school diploma in the North Kenwood and Oakland neighborhood (Statistical Atlas).

Taking the last piece of statistic included on above paragraph and combining with my observation at KOCO’s afterschool program, the conclusion is that KOCO is yet to be inclusive of the 3.3% Asian community living within North Kenwood and Oakland. The shocking number of 27.7% of young Asian girls are not getting a high school diploma, comparing to 9.1% of African American young female who are also not getting a high school diploma is devastating to learn. Yet KOCO’s afterschool program is predominantly black, with more male children than female children. The major issue facing this neighborhood and KOCO as a whole is that, racial exclusion might be happening. The existence of racial exclusion only challenge the mission of KOCO in which it is said to improving the quality of life in the North Kenwood and Oakland low-income communities. Although at the very same time, the message that was placed right after the above mission statement is “KOCO develops new generations of African American leadership that will build stable, viable, and just communities where opportunity is not denied based on race or economic status.” It occurs to me that KOCO seems to see the low-income communities only associating with the African American race.

The biggest challenge addressing this issue, is also about racial exclusion, even the unintentionally ones. During my engagement with KOCO, I have yet to come across a volunteer or organizational staff that is of Asian descent apart from our current batch of Chinese students from DePaul University. KOCO is also not founded on the ground to protect any other races apart from African American. Yet, as a community organization with integrity, it must stand with its own stated mission statement and that is about the inclusion of low-income communities in North Kenwood-Oakland. The point is that, the underlying and biggest issue is that the Asian community is not recognized as part of North Kenwood-Oakland. To layer the issue out, we must first identity what it means by a community. By definition, a community may be united by shared racial, ethnic, gender, cultural, or other identities, though not necessarily sharing of geographic location or all common values (Pyles, p.9). Placing this definition on KOCO, it is safe to conclude that it define the North Kenwood-Oakland by ethnicity, culture or racial. As African American has much longer history than the Asian American, and the former is also much more vocal in injustice expression. The latter, faces less institutional discrimination, making the discrimination less severe, yet not entirely inexistent.

In order for KOCO to stay true to its mission statement, it must be inclusive of all. The first step is to organize events that truly welcome all races in the community to gather together. According to researchers, it is found that there is a lack of close and general friendship among racial/ethnic minority adolescents in between African American, Latino, and Asian American adolescents from low-income families (Niobe and Way, p.234). Yet, when it come to economic struggle, it is recognized by all that they “shared similar struggles.” hence there is an opportunity for the minories in low income communities to gather together and bond over shared activities. Food is a nice lubricant to cultural or ethnic differences; food is seen as a pride across culture. For instance, KOCO can organize a multi-ethnicity partially funded potluck and bring forward everyone together to build trust and comfort.

Language barrier might be one of the problems that the Asian community is not being included as part of the North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood. Yet, understanding Asian culture, there is a high chance that the issue is not due to language barrier but timidness. Based on my years of experience learning about the behavior and feeling of Asian American living in Chinatown, they refrain themselves from spending time with other races and ethnicities mainly due to their shyness and lack of confidence in conversing in ‘American style’ of communication. They know English, but knowing is one thing, and using it to talk about things that interest the Americans in general is another thing. If I were to lead the program, I can foresee reaching out to each household with two mix-race representatives from KOCO would be effective.

Apart from that, trust is also an issue when it comes to organizing around the community. Currently, KOCO afterschool program consists of fully African American children with more male than female. Based on personal interpretation, perhaps families trust adults with young boys than young girls. In my after school class, the male to female ratio is 6:3. On this particular point, KOCO should encourage more young girls to be part of the afterschool program by having more female volunteers to watch over the children. Female as an identity is recognized as the best and kindest nurturer, therefore having more female staff is more likely to increase trust in between families to KOCO. Apart from gender ratio issue, racial ratio is equally crucial. As of now, the racial ratio cannot be compared as the afterschool program consists of all African American children. There are unknown issues that are beyond the capability of secondary research, as it has to do with KOCO’s student recruitment practice, true organization’s mission statement and the proximity of the center to homes of other races. Nevertheless, it is only a good idea for children of different races and ethnicities to grow up in the same social environment since young.

Ideally, the best case scenario is what activist Ella Baker described in “” in which she described her childhood world as a “family socialism” - “a world in which food and tools and homes were shaed...a world with a minimal sense of social hierarchy...your relationship to human beings was far more important than your relationship to the amount of money that you made.”(Payne, p.886). The benefits of having children to start young in making friends and building trust across races and ethnicities are plenty. Children get to learn about each other’s cultural values with very little societal taught judgment which tend to come in later days. In addition to that, children also get to be comfortable in an environment seeing many different skin colors. Most importantly, as pointed out by Baker, having being raised in that racially inclusive environment would “help(ed) to strengthen personal’s concept about the need for people to have a sense of their own value and their strengths.” (Payne, p.887). Overall, such environment will build a resilient and sympathetic mixed-race generation.

The practice of social inclusion is not unknown of, and the yield benefit is proven. When a Vietnamese immigrant youth organizing program bring together Asian and the African American communities, all participants in the end demonstrated the disappearance of expressed apprehension and prejudice toward each other in the early days. They are reported to understand each other better now that they were given a chance to learn about each other’s hardship and shared history of immigration (Nguyen, p. 639). This could apply the same to KOCO, because the North Kenwood and Oakland communities are made of multiple races and ethnicity with all facing one common problem - families struggling with low income.

Moving forward, KOCO must first seek for clarity in its organization and mission before adopting any of the above suggested solutions. Right now, I see that KOCO’s is organizing its activities based on observation-oriented clarity. As Pyles suggested, the success of a community organization must obtain clarity that is “...not just by observation, but also through critical reflection grounded in a power analysis that questions the social constructions and hegemonies of economic policies, social welfare programs, and institutions.” (Pyles, 29). Based on the statistic on Statistical Atlas, the social constructions of the North Kenwood and Oakland communities are certainly beyond African American only. More inclusion of other races are encourage if KOCO truly intends to increase the resources and services available to North Kenwood and Oakland families and residents. Then all must be included.

Reference

Nguyen, Chi. ‘We share similar struggles’: how a Vietnamese immigrant youth organizing program shapes participants’ critical consciousness of interracial tension. Race Ethnicity and Education. 2016. pp. 626-642.

Payne, Charles. Ella Baker and Models of Social Change. Common Grounds and Crossroads: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in Women's Lives. The University of Chicago Press. 1989. pp. 885-899.

Pyles, Loretta. Progressive Community Organizing: Reflective Practice in Globalizing World” Routledge. 2014. Print.