Lived Experiences

“#BlackLivesMatter”, the continued racial injustice put on public display in the George Floyd murder, and the grossly racialized impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on vulnerable communities of color have stimulated a domestic and international discourse that seeks to challenge racial injustice and economic inequality by organizing against it. I have had to grapple with issues of economic vulnerability and racial disadvantage very early in my own life experience as a kid growing-up in the inner city and I continue to grapple with these issues as an adult who is committed to ensuring America lives up to its democratic promise.

I grew-up during the height of the Civil Rights period. In 1967, the social unrest in Newark, New Jersey took place and is forever etched in my memory. I was in elementary school then. School was out and the summer was hot, literally and figuratively, as the emotions of the most racially oppressed segments of our nation boiled over. The decade of the 1960’s provided witness to the dramatic internal struggle for social and economic justice in America, gave witness to the deaths of President Kennedy, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and brought in sharp contrast America’s claims to being the most democratic nation in the world.

That summer, I was on an outing with my mother and my siblings at the Dairy Queen in downtown Newark, New Jersey. My twin sister, my brother and I were sitting in our old Ford station wagon with holes in the floorboards and wooden side panels that were popular in the day, waiting for our ice cream cones. Suddenly, we saw my mother bolt for the car without the ice cream cones and we sped away from the Dairy Queen. The next thing I saw and heard was a big bottle crashing against the glass of the rear window of the station wagon. My mother said her suspicions were raised by the odd behavior of the Caucasian males who were hanging around the Dairy Queen, which is why she decided to leave so quickly. That day was the first day of a week of unrest in Newark, but Newark was only one of a few places in which unrest was happening.

As a child, that experience caused me to wonder about a number of things. Why were those men at the Dairy Queen angry enough to throw a bottle at our station wagon? What was at the core of the unrest happening in Newark and other cities? What should cities and their citizens do about the unrest? What should the country do about this tension and anger and where does it come from? I came to understand how the plight of African Americans was inextricably linked to individual attitudes, governmental policies and institutional practices that contradicted the iconic symbol of America as the world’s leading democracy and the home of the “free and the brave.” The exploration of that paradox became the foundation of my personal and professional quest. It is why I studied government and public policy at the graduate level, why I decided to go to law school, and why I committed myself as a planner to place racial equity and social justice at the core of my policy and system change efforts and planning work.

My commitment as an academic and as a practicing urban planner focused on social planning is to respond to the demand for change. At the core of planning practice is the idea of advancing a democratic commitment that lessens the paradox that is America.