COVID-19 and Evictions in Memphis

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By Andrew Guthrie, PhD (Assistant Professor, City and Regional Planning The University of Memphis), Courtnee Melton-Fant, PhD (Assisant Professor, Division of Health Systems Management The University of Memphis), and Katherine Lambert-Pennington, PhD (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology The University of Memphis).

From the 2021 edition of the Hooks Institute Policy Papers “Race in the Time of COVID-19.”

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing racial inequalities in employment, financial security, and health access, and the economic repercussions have been disproportionately shouldered by women (Jin et al. 2021). Nationally and locally, Black, Latinx, and Asian people have higher rates of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality compared to White people (Lopez, Hart, & Katz, 2021). Structural racism – the intersecting and reinforcing policies, systems, and institutions that create advantages and disadvantages based on race (Bailey & Moon, 2020) – have resulted in racial disparities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the housing sector. The pandemic amplified housing insecurity, as millions of people lost income, jobs and dealt with COVID related health challenges and deaths.

Housing insecurity, lack of access to safe, affordable, and stable housing, disproportionally impacts communities of color. Black and Latino families have lower rates of homeownership, live in more segregated neighborhoods, pay more for housing, and have been at greater risk of foreclosure than White homeowners. Further, Black and Latinx households are more likely to be renters than White households; they also face evictions at a much higher rate (Greenberg et al., 2016). Given income and job loss, Benfer et al. (2020) estimate that 30-40 million renters are at risk of eviction. To help mitigate this risk and stem the likelihood of COVID transmission (Nande et al., 2021; Jowers et al., 2021), the federal government imposed a national moratorium on evictions recommended by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and provided $25 billion dollars to states and local governments to fund emergency rental assistance.

Research has shown that the national mortarium on eviction hearings and decisions was effective in slowing evictions and allowed households to use financial resources to meet immediate needs (An et al., 2021). However, as the economy slowly recovers, and enhanced federal unemployment benefits end, the long-term impact of the pandemic on housing security is likely to be devastating. While data is not fully available, two key indicators of housing affordability- income and the proportion of income to rent cost, often referred to as cost-burden- serve as important determinants of a household’s risk for eviction. Additionally, racial disparities in housing security and employment in essential worker roles, and vulnerability to COVID-related job loss are crucial to understanding what policy steps would be most effective to address the impending housing crisis in Memphis. Manifestations of structural racism that are particularly relevant for Memphis include racial residential segregation, the proliferation of housing insecurity in Black neighborhoods, and the overrepresentation of Black and Latinx workers in the service industry.

Early Indications of Pandemic Effects

With one of the highest rates in the nation, evictions in Memphis have been an acute problem for years. Despite a state eviction moratorium in the spring and summer of 2020 and the CDC order, which was extended until October 3, 2021, eviction filings in Memphis have continued. Over eighteen thousand evictions have been
filed since the start of the pandemic and are continuing at a rate of between 200 and 300 per week (Princeton University, 2021).

Systematic analysis of the effects of COVID-19 on the housing sector is complicated by the ongoing, dynamic nature of the pandemic and the 1- to 2-year time lag in availability of most sources of social data at the fine geographic scales needed to fully understand the social and spatial dynamics at play in Memphis. In particular,
the lack of unemployment data at less than county scale obscures a crucial link in the chain of events most likely to lead to an eviction as a result of COVID: pandemic-related job loss leading to an inability to make rent. In the interest of providing as much timely information to policymakers and the public as possible, proxy measures—such as residential locations of workers in sectors especially likely to experience job loss—can approximate unavailable data.

Data

The table below shows specific measures of COVID’s implications for housing in Memphis, as well as definitions of each measure and data sources. These measures consider vulnerability to eviction directly via pre-pandemic housing unaffordability and susceptibility to job loss as well as in a context of structural inequality and historic marginalization.

Measure

Description

Source

Rent-Burdened Households

% of households paying >30% of monthly income in rent

American Community Survey (2015-2019)

Black Residents

% of population who self-ID as “Black or African American”.

American Community Survey (2015-2019)

Service Workers

Number of workers in the Retail Trade, Accommodation and Food Service and Arts, Entertainment and Recreation sectors

Longitudinal Employer and Household Dynamics (LEHD) Database (2018)

Evictions

Number of legal evictions recorded by the county. Expressed both as a count and as the ratio of evictions to rental households

Shelby County Housing Court (via Innovate Memphis); American Community Survey

Geospatial Analysis

Although this data is preliminary, strong spatial relationships exist in Memphis between key measures of social marginalization and economic vulnerability and the prevalence of evictions in 2020. The following four maps show these measures as densities. Density maps allow us to explore where in the city the greatest numbers of people experience eviction, housing insecurity and other social factors which increase vulnerability to both. For each map, we select a social condition to explore—i.e. paying more than 30% of one’s household income in rent, being a service worker before the pandemic or being evicted—count the number of times that condition occurs within a quarter-mile grid, and use a heat-map algorithm to smooth the result into continuous gradients based on surrounding squares’ values. All five maps use a quintile scale, with the darkest gray squares showing areas in the 80th percentile or above, next darkest the 60th-80th percentile, etc. This mapping approach allows us to see patterns of social disparities from one neighborhood to another while also focusing on neighborhoods with relatively the most intense housing injustices.

Map 1

Map 2

The second map (above) shows concentrations of Black residents. Memphis is a racially segregated city, as can be seen by how tightly concentrated the Black population is, compared even with the rent-burdened population. (i.e., Memphis is still a highly spatially segregated city, with the vulnerabilities of rent burden and service-industry employment compounded by historic disinvestment and structural racism). Note, however, that concentrations of Black residents do follow the most intense concentrations of rent burdened households quite closely.

The third map (below) shows concentrations of where workers in the retail, sales, hospitality, food service and entertainment industries lived before the pandemic. County-level data indicate workers in these sectors were disproportionately likely to have suffered job loss. Note again the general similarity with the preceding maps, with the degree of concentration falling between Black residents and rent-burdened households. In particular, the spatial relationship between workers likely to have lost jobs and households already facing unaffordable rents beforehand shows the susceptibility of their neighborhoods to an economic and health shock like COVID.

Map 3

The final two maps (page 8) show concentrations of evictions, both in absolute terms (for consistency with the preceding maps) and weighted by the number of renter households in each census block group (for consistency with standard measures in the housing field). Eviction densities do not show all the housing precarity or injustice in a neighborhood, but they do represent a rapidly-available, geographically precise measure of extreme housing injustice due to legal filing requirements. Though the scale of the (upper) absolute map is somewhat dominated by a single, intense cluster of evictions to the southwest, the overall spatial pattern is both stark and by this point familiar, tracking those of Black residents and service workers especially closely. The most intense areas of the (lower) weighted eviction density map show a largely similar shape to those of the absolute map, but do not stand out as strongly from their surroundings, likely due to smaller numbers of renter households in wealthier and/or suburban areas. It is important to note, however, that this final map shows evictions are a problem county-wide and may only appear not to be in outlying areas due to lower densities of renters.

Map 4

Map 5

We can see from these maps that the highest rates of evictions in Shelby County have a strong spatial relationship to long-standing patterns of structural inequality—particularly in the case of the unweighted map. However, the weighted map shows us that evictions are a problem throughout Shelby County in the context of an individual renter household’s likelihood of being evicted, though it is crucial to note that patterns of structural inequality still appear in the weighted map, even accounting for inter-neighborhood differences in numbers of renters. In other words, though a robust policy response is required throughout the county, special focus must be placed on neighborhoods affected by structural racial and economic inequality. Finally, the close spatial correspondence between eviction rates and pre-COVID rent burden shows that evictions are both an acute problem and a chronic one: the pandemic did not create a crisis where there was none before; in large part it seems to have pushed households who were already struggling over the edge. Understanding this does not change the need for rapid, emergency assistance to Memphians facing eviction, but it does also call for a longer-term policy response to ongoing issues of housing unaffordability and insecure tenure.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the existing housing crisis in Memphis, but the full effect of housing insecurity on eviction rates and neighborhood stability have yet to be fully revealed. The ongoing housing crisis in Memphis and the COVID-19 pandemic require multifaceted policy solutions that not only respond to immediate needs but also address the larger housing affordability issues in the city. While policy interventions are needed at all levels of government, we focus our recommendations on state and local level policies that are most relevant to the Memphis context. As shown in Figure 1, Memphis is already implementing eviction prevention and mitigation policies and working to increase housing stability.

Figure 1. Policy levers for improving housing stability

* Denotes policies and programs that are currently being utilized in Memphis

Recommendations

  • ŸIncrease outreach and education about the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA)
    The Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA), funded through the CARES Act and administered in Memphis by United Housing, provides eviction settlement funds to households who have suffered a finan- cial loss due to COVID-19 and live on less than 80% of their county’s median income. A total of 1,320 Shelby County residents received rental assistance in June. Though data are only available at the state level, the Census Bureau’s most recent Household Pulse Survey estimates 84,447 Tennessee households fear being evicted in the next two months. Proportional to population, Shelby County’s share of that total would be 11,593—over ten times the number currently being helped—even ignoring our high rates of pov- erty and structural inequality. Though funding is available to help significantly more households, difficulties in applying and obtaining cooperation from landlords have reduced numbers served.

    • Providing additional community outreach and education about the program and direct assistance in applying as well as encouraging landlords to participate as strongly as permitted by law are im- portant steps to ensure Memphians who could be helped are not needlessly evicted.
    • In addition, though CARES Act funds are limited to renters making less than 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI), roughly 15% of households earning 81-100% AMI in Shelby County make more than that, but not enough to afford a median rental cost (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2021). These households may face additional risk of eviction due to the “benefit cliff” coming at an income low enough to still render most housing unaffordable. Other options should be explored for providing assistance to households facing eviction who fall outside CARES Act eligibility requirements, as a means of funding unmet needs while, crucially, holding those renter households most in need harmless.
  • Provide sustainable infrastructure and funding for the Eviction Settlement Program (ESP)
    The ESP is currently being funded with federal CARES Act dollars to provides tenants with legal assistance and mediation when they are behind on their rent. This program relies on volunteer attorneys and mediators and could provide more assistance to tenants if they had more resources. The services provided by the ESP are critical for preventing evictions and preserving affordable housing (Benfer et al, 2020, Sabbeth 2018).
  • Enact laws at the state and local level to prevent evictions and lessen the negative downstream effects
    • Tenants who are represented by attorneys are less likely to be evicted (Sabbeth, 2018), but Ten- nesseans do not have a right to counsel in eviction cases because eviction proceedings are civil actions, not criminal matters. Right to counsel laws can ensure that tenants have representation during eviction proceedings.
    • Having an eviction or eviction filing on one’s record makes it more difficult to find housing because many landlords do not want to rent to them. Eviction record sealing and eviction expungement laws can improve tenants’ access to housing following an eviction or eviction filing (Fleurant, 2020).
  • Increase investment in historically underserved communities that were disproportionately affected by both COVID-19 and housing instability
    Memphis needs an estimated 30,000 affordable housing units (Innovate Memphis, 2020) and is using multiple levers to address this gap including the establishment of the Memphis Affordable Housing Trust Fund (MAHTF) and the Memphis 3.0 Plan to guide investment and land use regulation in the creation of healthy affordable communities. However:

    • The MAHTF is underfunded compared to peer cities and funding for 2021 was not included in the budget because of COVID-19 (BLDG Memphis, 2020).
    • Memphis has comparatively low capital investment that is segregated by race and poverty (Theo- dos et al, 2021). The Memphis 3.0 plan is the city’s comprehensive approach to equitably develop and invest in the city. Time will tell if the plan will be able to overcome historical and longstanding patterns of disinvestment and policy that have contributed to the current housing crisis.
  • Stronger enforcement of existing laws
    In addition to affordability issues, many Memphians live in substandard housing conditions that are harmful to their health. Like many other states, Tennessee has laws requiring landlords to maintain their properties and provide habitable conditions for tenants. Yet, these laws are not always enforced, and tenants may not be aware of these laws (Sabbeth, 2018). Enforcing these laws is necessary for increasing the supply of affordable, healthy housing and keeping tenants in their homes.
  • Increase vaccination access and uptake in structurally vulnerable communities
    Recent research has shown that neighborhoods with higher eviction filing rates have lower vaccination rates indicating that the higher risk of evictions and of contracting and passing COVID-19 are spatially con- centrated. Place-based interventions, tailored to the specific concerns and desires of these communities, are needed.

Interested in more? Watch the lecture of “COVID-19 and Evictions in Memphis” on the Hooks Institute YouTube page.

References

  • An, X., Gabriel, S.A. & Tzur-Ilan, N. (2021). More than shelter: The effects of rental eviction moratoria on household well-being. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3801217 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.3801217
  • Bailey, Z.D., & Moon, J.R. (2020). Racism and the political economy of COVID-19: will we continue to resurrect the past?. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 45(6), 937-950.
  • Benfer, E.A., Vlahov, D., Long, M.Y., Walker-Wells, E., Pottenger, J.L., Gonsalves, G., & Keene, D.E. (2021). Eviction, health inequity, and the spread of COVID-19: housing policy as a primary pandemic mitigation strategy. Journal of Urban Health, 98(1), 1-12.
  • BLDG Memphis. (2020). Memphis affordable housing trust fund. Retrieved from https://www.trustfund901.org/ affordable_housing_trust_fund.
  • Collinson, R., & Reed, D. (2018). The effects of evictions on low-income households. Unpublished Manuscript. [Google Scholar], 1-82.
  • Cunningham, M.K., Hariharan, A., & Fiol, O. (2021) The looming eviction cliff. The Urban Institute. Retrieved from https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/103453/the-looming-eviction-cliff_0.pdf
  • Princeton University .. (2021). Eviction Lab: Memphis, Tennessee.. Retrieved from https://evictionlab.org/eviction- tracking/memphis-tn/.
  • Fleurant, S. (2020). Eviction expungement: A civil legal tool to improve housing stability and health. The Network for Public Health Law. Retrieved from https://www.networkforphl.org/news-insights/eviction-expungement- a-civil-legal-tool-to-improve-housing-stability-and-health/.
  • Greenberg, D., Gershenson, C., &Desmond, M. (2016). Discrimination in evictions: Empirical evidence and legal challenges. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 51, 115–58.
  • Hepburn, P., Louis, R., Fish, J., Lemmerman, E., Alexander, A.K., Thomas, T.A., Koehler, R., Benfer, E., & Desmond, M. (2021). U.S. eviction filing patterns in 2020. Socius, 7, 1-18. https://doi. org/10.1177/23780231211009983
  • Jin, O., Lemmerman, E., Hepburn, P., & Desmond. M. (2021). Neighborhoods with highest eviction rates have the lowest levels of COVID-19 vaccination. Eviction Lab Updates. Princeton University. Retrieved from https://evictionlab.org/filing-and-vaccination-rates/
  • Jowers, K., Timmins, C., Bhavsar, N., Hu, Q., & Marshall, J. (2021). Housing precarity & the COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts of utility disconnection and eviction moratoria on infections and deaths across us counties (No. w28394). National Bureau of Economic Research.
  • Jowers, K., Timmins, C., Bhavsar, N., Hu, Q., & Marshall, J. (2021). Housing precarity & the covid-19 pandemic: Impacts of utility disconnection and eviction moratoria on infections and deaths across us counties (No. w28394). National Bureau of Economic Research.
  • Lopez, L., Hart, L. H., & Katz, M. H. (2021). Racial and ethnic health disparities related to COVID-19. JAMA, 325(8), 719-720.
  • Nande, A., Sheen, J., Walters, E. L., Klein, B., Chinazzi, M., Gheorghe, A. H., … & Hill, A. L. (2021). The effect of eviction moratoria on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1-13.
  • National Low Income Housing Coalition. (2021). Gap Report: Tennessee. Tamarack Media Cooperative. Retrieved from https://reports.nlihc.org/gap/2019/tn.
  • Sabbeth, K. A. (2018). Housing Defense as the New Gideon. Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, 41, 55-117. Theodos, B., González-Hermoso, J., & Meixell, B. (2021). Community development finance in Memphis. Urban Institute. Retrieved from https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/104511/community- development-finance-in-memphis_0.pdf.

Hooks Policy Papers: Race in the Time of Covid

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As the world confronted the pandemic unleashed by COVID-19, new language emerged. “Social distance” transformed from Georg Simmel’s concept referring to social relationships between racial, gender, and economic groups to the 6-foot physical distance vital for stopping the virus spread. Concepts like “isolation” and “quarantine” took on new meaning. People grew comfortable with medical terms like “asymptomatic” or “incubation period.”

Yet, even as we faced an unprecedented and deadly global test, tragically familiar and stubbornly persistent disparities were amplified by the encounter with the pandemic. Alongside the new vocabulary, familiar concepts reasserted their relevance in phrases like “racial inequality,” “housing insecurity,” and “health disparities.” While these societal failures have always demanded action, the crucible of the pandemic has even more directly made them matters of life and death.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone, but it has certainly not affected everyone equally. Preexisting conditions in our nation’s communities have ensured that those already most vulnerable to depressed economic, educational, and health conditions were impacted the most. In the healthcare field, “social determinants of health” have emerged in recent years as a powerful way of connecting disparities in health to social inequities that exacerbate those disparities. In Memphis and Shelby County, as elsewhere, the roots of the unequal impact of COVID-19 can be found in inequalities that long predate the outbreak of the disease. Our community’s social determinants of health have amplified the effects of the pandemic on our most vulnerable neighbors.

This issue of the Hooks Institute Policy Papers addresses the varied ways COVID-19 has magnified and worsened racial and socioeconomic disparities in Shelby County and other communities. Beginning with housing, educational, and employment effects, and concluding with health disparities and the impact of COVID-19 mortality disparities on the preservation of wealth, each writer connects preexisting social circumstances to the travails of the pandemic. Offering a wide range of expertise, the papers recommend short-term interventions to the acute crises brought on by the pandemic and long-term preventative changes to address the underlying social deficiencies.

In “COVID-19 and Evictions in Memphis,” Andrew Guthrie, Courtnee Melton-Fant, and Katherine Lambert-Pennington provide staggering spatial representations of social marginalization and economic vulnerability in Shelby County, focusing on susceptibility to evictions. They note the ways in which the pandemic amplified housing insecurity but observe that the pandemic did not create that crisis; rather, it merely pushed those already struggling over the edge. They further note that with the removal of pandemic-related protections, evictions are likely to increase the deterioration of circumstances for the county’s most economically vulnerable, a group made up disproportionately of African Americans.

In “Race & COVID-19: Illuminating Inequities in Education,” Cardell Orrin and Kelsey Jirikils highlight how the pandemic more clearly revealed the vast disparities in resources available to students throughout Shelby County. Of note, as schools moved to virtual learning, disparities in access to technology ensured that some students would have difficulty in even accessing education at all. Further, despite increased needs due to the social isolation and trauma of the pandemic, students were unable to access mental health services that would have strengthened their ability to get the most out of schooling.

Elena Delavega and Gregory M. Blumenthal build on these themes in “COVID-19 and Work: Employment Disparities Magnified,” where they quantify the ways in which the pandemic’s work disruptions fell most harshly on the most vulnerable, again, a group made up disproportionately of racial and ethnic minorities. The pandemic exposed a divide in who could work from home (and thus maintain employment, health care, and oversee children in virtual school) and who could not. The authors critique the fact that workers deemed “essential” in terms of providing services for the more privileged were not provided protections and salaries consistent with such “essential” status.

In “The Power of Will – And Its Limits,” Daniel Kiel provides a slightly different perspective by examining the emergency policy responses to the pandemic’s most urgent social needs. A mortarium on evictions, free provision of technology for students, and expanded unemployment benefits were not new ideas when the pandemic arrived, but it took the shocks of COVID-19 to make them viable policy options. To Kiel, this demonstrated that solutions to longstanding social problems are possible, but only where there is sufficient public will and need, something that will be difficult to maintain as the pandemic subsides, but that is no less urgent.

Turning more directly to the health impacts of COVID-19, Albert Mosley discusses the social determinants of health in the age of the pandemic in “Through a Glass Darkly: Musings on the Harsh Realities of COVID-19.” Highlighting racial disparities in hospitalizations, mortalities, and vaccination rates, Mosley laments that such distressing statistics were entirely predictable given this community’s history with systemic racism which has perpetuated economic and educational disparities. In addition to bearing shortcomings within the healthcare system, COVID-19 provided a harsh mirror to the broader community on the topic of providing wellness, the most basic of human needs.

Finally, in “Life After Death: COVID-19’s Impact on the Wealth of African American Families,” Daphene McFerren describes the deterioration of wealth that results when individuals pass away without a will or proper direction as to how to distribute their estate, a problem made tragically more vital during the pandemic. Urging more attention to estate planning in the African American community, McFerren pushes for greater access to legal resources and a shift in community attitudes in order to stop the massive racial gap in net worth from growing even larger due to a loss of intergenerational wealth.

Cumulatively, these papers examine the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic augmented some of society’s most obstinate problems and each display how these problems are interconnected. While the pandemic has brought much suffering and further social division, it has also provided an undeniable perspective on the urgency of these lingering social problems. The recommendations here provide a starting point for meaningful discussions and effective treatment.

Daphene McFerren, JD Executive Director, Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change the University of Memphis

Elena Delavega, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Social Work the University of Memphis

Daniel Kiel, JD Associate Director, Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change FedEx Professor of Law, Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law the University of Memphis

Read the policy papers here.

“Duty Before Race”: The Life of Colin Powell

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Colin Powell. Charles Haynes, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

by Le’Trice Donaldson

Colin Powell, the trailblazing statesman, and beloved American patriot was laid to rest recently. One of the most common statements proclaimed about the late general was that he loved this country. Indeed, Powell, the protégé of Henry “Gunfighter” Emerson and Casper Weinberger, was viewed as loyal, someone who followed orders, and one who always did his duty. These past few weeks, I have been reflecting on the late general’s military career and the one thing that stood out was that Powell always put his America before race.

Growing up in a Black West Indian immigrant household in the Bronx and Harlem exposed Powell to Black people from throughout the Diaspora. Despite being familiar with a sense of Black solidarity, the former commander’s long and distinguished career is laden with moments where he chooses duty over racial obligation. Powell firmly believed his loyalty should always be to the country first. Yet, the reason he is a trailblazer has everything to do with his race.

Powell proclaimed in one of his autobiographies, “The Army has always been good to Blacks.” When Powell joined the Army in 1958, the U.S. Armed forces were still struggling to desegregate and become fully integrated. At Fort Benning, Powell trained in a predominately white world and traveled long distances to eat at Black-owned establishments and worship at a Black church. Despite these inconveniences, Powell enjoyed the structure and clear path to success that the military provided. When his mentor and commander General Emerson put him in charge of rooting out and cracking down on Black militants in the Eighth Army’s First Battalion in 1973 in Seoul, Powell eagerly jumped at the chance to prove his worth.

A race riot broke out within a few days of Powell’s arrival. The racial tensions amongst the men ran high because of fights between white and Black soldiers at local bars and symbolic infractions, including the removal of a Black Liberation Flag. General Emerson believed that showing Brian’s Song (1971) would be the best way to achieve racial harmony. Powell, a Lt. Colonel, did not attempt to understand the source of these tensions. He discharged Black soldiers who had organized to have their racial grievances heard and drilled his battalion so hard that they could not fight one another. By viewing the Black soldiers as troublemakers, Powell proved his allegiance to the Army to the detriment of other Black soldiers. Historian Jeffery Matthews in his book Colin Powell: Imperfect Patriot, described Powell as a loyal follower and subordinate. Major General John A. Wickham asserted, “He was very reassuring to those above him.”

Powell moved up the ranks both militarily and politically. He became the senior military assistant and protégé to Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in 1980. In 1983 he helped organize the 1983 invasion of the small Black Caribbean nation of Grenada. The U.S. military began conducting mock invasions of Grenada in 1981. The Reagan Administration took full advantage of the assassination of Maurice Bishop to ensure a pro-American government was installed. The Reagan Administration viewed Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Leftist movement as a Soviet satellite, even though it was not. Powell was the first Afro-Caribbean American to serve in that position. He helped orchestrate the Grenada invasion without considering the long-term consequences for the rest of the Caribbean or his representation as a Black man of Caribbean descent aiding in the invasion of a Black Caribbean nation.

In 2001, a few days before the world-changing events of September 11th, Secretary of State Colin Powell decided to withdraw U.S. participation from the World Conference Against Racism. In a letter to Dr. Dorothy Height, the then chairperson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Powell cites the possibility of the conference focusing on “divisive regional issues, thereby preventing the Conference from addressing the larger issue of racism affecting all societies.” The divisive issue was related to tying Zionism to racism. Powell chose to follow the Bush line rather than participate in a global initiative to fight racism, xenophobia, and intolerance. He chose duty before race.

The legacy of Colin Powell reflects the life of a fallible but loyal patriot; yet, in all the eulogies and reflections on his life, it is important to remember the totality of his legacy including what he did during the Obama years, the Reagan years, and in Korea. He repeatedly chose a path most pleasing to the military community rather than the Black community.

Le’Trice Donaldson is an Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and a Benjamin L. Hooks Academic Research Fellow. She is the author of Duty Beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920. 

The Power of Language for Brain Function

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Hooks Academic Research Fellow Dr. Kami Anderson was a recent guest on Brain Power TV hosted by Dr. Hokehe (Eko) Effiong. In the episode, they discussed the brain benefits of learning another language in children and adults. Dr. Anderson is a trained scholar and master teacher of Afrocentric teaching strategies that ensure language retention, not just learning, and speaks directly to the neurological ways in which people of African descent process and embody languages.

Watch the episode below:

Transitioning from Fate to Destiny

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by Paige Pirkey

Have you ever wondered how to transition from fate to your chosen destiny? I have, too. After years of reading, reflecting, and searching, I believe I’ve found the answer; and I’d like to share my learned lessons with you in this article. My learned lessons center around this idea called “purpose”. Our purpose is our chosen destiny, but how do we find it?

The first step is to meet yourself where you’re at. We must be open and honest with ourselves. We must be willing to dive deep into the inner recesses of our hearts to discover what lies beyond the veil of our emotions. Under every negative emotion lies a fear: A fear of abandonment, rejection, betrayal, being found unworthy, unlovable, broken… As we identify this fear and bring it to the surface, we’re able to unlock another layer of armor around our hearts by greeting it with the keys of love, compassion, and presence.

The second step is to trust yourself. Trust is essential and requires patience. In fact, to fully develop trust, one’s patience may need patience. Both patience and trust are skill sets that must be developed along the path to finding one’s purpose. Even as I type now, I notice the physiological experience of tightness in my chest and jaw… I then notice the stories I tell myself: That this process is taking too long or that I’m not doing it right… But perhaps, instead, I’m hoping to deliver the best, most uplifting message… If I choose to shift my interpretation of my perception, the understanding and experience of it also shifts, from anxiety to enthusiasm. After all, my purpose, or at least discovering it, should bring me joy. I’ve learned that, sometimes, we must unlearn what we’ve learned and trust our decision making, that we’re on the right path. And it takes patience to rebuild that trust in ourselves and our unfolding process.

The third step is to recognize our strength, our resilience, our bravery! We need to give ourselves credit for our tenacious efforts; again, we cycle back to phases 1 and 2: Meeting yourself where you’re at and trusting yourself. The process of discovering and living your purpose requires time, effort, and practice –all of which require strength; this will lead us to our chosen destiny. By purposefully, continuously choosing to disrupt our old ways of experiencing life, we create a new story, our destiny. This is one of the most loving acts we can do for ourselves –and passing along this strength to future generations is one of the most loving acts we can do for them.

And we can do this together. As promised in my previous article, I will now dedicate time to introducing the pilot project that I recently created, implemented, and evaluated:

Yoga and mindfulness practices are supportive on the journey from fate to destiny. Yoga uses the mind, body, and breath as tools for self-realization and self-actualization. By engaging with a physical pose, one enters a moderately uncomfortable, stress-induced state; this state of being reflects the stress we encounter in our daily lives. In that process, we focus on our breath in the present moment. And in that moment, we discover those repetitive stories that we tell ourselves that lead us to our fate. This realization presents us with the opportunity to choose a different story, to change how we engage with and interpret our experience. And with time and disciplined practice, this effortful process becomes automated and thus, actualized. We have, then, embodied the skills needed to transition ourselves from fate to destiny…

These life skills are exactly what I taught to kindergarteners, 1st graders, and 2nd graders at a local school system. The school system serves mostly minority students (54% Latino; 38% African American; 5% European American; 2% Asian); ninety-five percent of students’ families reside in the urban Memphis area with 77% living in Shelby County zip codes below the lowest median household income (below $42k). Approximately 91% of students meet the federal guidelines for free/reduced lunch.

The pilot program was 3-weeks long wherein students [and some teachers] received 4, 30-minute sessions per week. Below comprises selected excerpts from this study:

  • Students’ post-program excerpts:
    • “Yoga taught me more about myself, about what I think is better than what other people think I should think.” –1st grade, girl
    • “[When I’m feeling sad or stressed or overwhelmed], I do yoga to feel better, to remind us that we can do anything.” –2nd grade, girl
    • “We also learned that we can feel how we want to feel –even if we feel sad. It’s okay to feel our feelings.” –1st grade, boy
    • “It teached me how to be creative, like trying the yoga thing made me excited, and then, I went back home, and it made me build new crafts. I used to give up.” –2nd grade, boy
    • “It’s helped me learn about how our feelings communicate.” –2nd grade, girl
  • Teachers’ post-program excerpts:
    • “…[T]hey showed patience… I definitely saw some growth with independence and self-direction.” –Teacher F
    • “I’ve seen that change in my students as well; they definitely are more eager to help each other after the program, too.” –Teacher J
    • “A lot of my kids took your breathing technique… I would watch them do it in the room when they were upset.” –Teacher A
    • “I want to say thank you for creating an environment for my student to be relaxed and calm and to be a kid… I was pleasantly surprised, and it made me so happy. I think he was truly comfortable around you, and just truly relaxed around you, which is truly amazing because you’d only known him for a few weeks.” –Teacher A

To be sure, I learned just as much from my students [if not more], as they learned from me. For persons interested in learning more or collaborating in some capacity on this project, please reach out to me via email at paige.pirkey@memphis.edu.

For an audio recording of this post, click here.

Paige Pirkey is a Benjamin L. Hooks Institute Academic Research Fellow. Her current research focuses at the heart of change-making education, centering on urban schools by adopting a bottom-up approach that promotes healing and self-empowerment. 

 

 

 

Intertwining Destinies: Heroes’ Hearts Beating as One

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by Paige Pirkey

Have you ever wondered about your potential –the possibilities for your life? Life is to be expressed, a story to be lived. Stories give meaning and life to our existence; they represent the truths we tell ourselves. Stories can either serve as a gift filled with little treasures or as a landmine filled with loss. How we see these stories reflects a pattern, and that pattern reflects the probable possibility of our life. But as conscious creators of our story, we have the power to decide, to choose between fate and destiny: Fate is the outcome of recycling past stories, whereas destiny is the outcome of choosing to create a new story. But how do we change our outcome, our possibility, our story?

We must first begin by evaluating our role in our own story. What roles, or characters, do we tend to play; which feel more comfortable, and why is that? I encourage us all to explore this with openness and curiosity. WE are the conscious creators of our life, and we get to choose whether to shame, judge, or criticize. Life is but a dream, a dream to be chosen and lived. But how can we be expected to live that dream if we continue in a recycled pattern of shame? This is not to say this process is easy. Part of choosing our role requires that we discover our true, inner strength. Our roles are for us to choose, and this strength is required to choose that role in the creation of our dream.

I am grateful for the opportunity to choose, for this opportunity to exercise free will –yet with this power, I’ve learned, comes great responsibility. Our choices impact future generations. The choices we make in our lives influence their choices –their stories. We weave our destinies. We forge our own destinies through the truths we tell ourselves, but what are we forging, what are we choosing to create, if it is based in shame, judgment, and criticism? What kind of world are we creating for ourselves and future generations? We get to decide what that world will look like –and I can’t hope to do it alone, which is why I’m writing this article… I need your help. The world is neither mine nor yours to create. It is ours –but we must be willing to combine our strengths, intertwining our destinies, for the greater good of humankind.

This brings us to the second step… We all must decide the role we hope to play in not only our own lives but also the role we choose to play in the lives of others. Do we hope to be the ruler, the bystander, the jester –or can we choose a different character, a different role? Across religions and cultures, there seems to be one such character that we all secretly aspire to be: the Hero. But again, will we choose it? Our ancestors: Were they aware of this choice, or did they unknowingly succumb to their own fate? Do we choose to repeat the mistakes, the wounds, the traumas of our past –or do we choose to create a new story, together? I realize what I’m saying doesn’t feel easy or simple –and yet, all it requires is a decision, a choice. A choice to forgive: to release the transgressions of those who chose to act in alignment with their fate, rather than their destiny. This choice not only frees them, but it frees us –to move forward, free from the pain and destructive nature of the past, to move forward with hope, love, and grace.

Although forgiveness begins with a choice, it is a process. And even though it will take time and effort, your destiny, our destinies, are worth it. And this kind of forgiveness, the type that can transcend us from fate to destiny, requires the strength of a hero. We all have this potential, this possibility, within us, but we must decide whether to choose it. The quality of our story, of our destiny, depends upon whether we are willing to show up as a hero to test and develop our strength.

Notice now, if you are doubting your own ability and the ability of others: Is that your fate talking –or your destiny? I believe in you. I believe in your abilities, but you must be willing to believe in yourself. If you say you cannot, then you are probably right… And the same can be said if you say that you CAN.

So, what will your decision be? Will you step into your destiny and be the hero you were always meant and able to be…?

I am open and willing to cooperate, to co-create our destiny. My intention is to begin the development of a project. In fact, I’ve already conducted the pilot phase, yet am seeking collaborators to expand this initial effort.

For more information, please see “Transitioning from Fate to Destiny.” If this sounds of interest, please contact me via email at paige.pirkey@memphis.edu. On the other hand, if this project is not of direct interest, yet you believe I may be able to support your efforts, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you for holding space, devoting the time and effort to read this article, and allowing me to share my truth. I am honored by this opportunity to share my joy, love, and passions with you.

For an audio recording of this post, click here.

Paige Pirkey is a Benjamin L. Hooks Institute Academic Research Fellow. Her current research focuses at the heart of change-making education, centering on urban schools by adopting a bottom-up approach that promotes healing and self-empowerment. 

 

 

 

 

SOREN LIT: Reclaiming the Southern Renaissance

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by Melodie J. Rodgers

As a ferocious act of self-care, I intentionally dove into outlining what I needed in a writing community during this pandemic. I discovered I needed a sanctuary—a sanctuary consisting of those who were questioning their place, empowered by lessons, and who were also deconstructing traditions of the South. I began reflecting on the communities of creatives that I was drawn to… and who helped shape me as a writer.

In my early 20’s, I lived in the Little 5 Points district of Atlanta. This area was the Greenwich Village of the South. Back in those days, I rented a room with other creatives in a slightly run-down Victorian with the most welcoming paint-peeled porch in the world. The tenants, my beloved friends, were all writers. All of us were thrown together… identifying as either women, femmes, and/or non-binary. We had open mics around our campfire in the backyard while listening to the train go by. Smells of menthol cigarettes, Jameson, patchouli incense, and citronella would swell inside our noses as we eagerly awaited the next brave soul to present their creative work to us under the glow of the flames.

These memories made me realize just how privileged I was to be amongst such beautifully bold beings, and that I really wanted to create a platform for women, femmes, and/or non-binary writers. And so, I launched a Southern Renaissance literary journal called SOREN LIT.

SOREN LIT serves as a reclaiming of the Southern Renaissance literary movement. However, the steadfast mission of SOREN LIT is to bring together the vital voices of those primarily left out of the first movement. By centering on women, femmes, and/or non-binary writers with Southern connections, it is our wish to empower these writers (from all backgrounds) and merge them together as one would the key ingredients of a gumbo… into a new Southern Renaissance of literature with fresh eyes and fierce stories to tell.

Our primary goal is publishing the work of women, femmes, and/or non-binary writers with Southern connections. We crave poetry, fiction, and nonfiction…

unapologetic, visceral, and authentic.

As an exquisite extension of our literary journal, we have also launched the SOREN LIT podcast in order to learn more about our published writers and their unique writing journeys.

SOREN LIT podcast is also available on the Apple, Spotify, and Google podcast platforms.

Melodie J. Rodgers is a Benjamin L. Hooks Institute Academic Research Fellow and the Founding Editor of SOREN LIT. Melodie received her MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte’s Latin American program and she is currently a Ph.D. student at Georgia State University in the Department of English and Literary Studies. 

No Future in this Country: Book Talk with Andre E. Johnson (Video)

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The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change hosted the Inaugural Hooks Social Justice Series event where Hooks Scholar in Residence Andre E. Johnson gave a lecture on his book, No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner. The event was moderated by UofM Communication and Film graduate student Tom Fuerst and took place February 24 at 1pm CST on the Hooks Institute’s Facebook Page and was free and open to the public.

About the book:

No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) draws on the copious amount of material from Bishop Henry McNeal Turner’s speeches, editorial, and open and private letters to tell the story of how Turner provided rhetorical leadership during a period in which America defaulted on many of the rights and privileges gained for African Americans during Reconstruction. Unlike many of his contemporaries during this period, Turner did not opt to proclaim an optimistic view of race relations. Instead, Johnson argues that Turner adopted a prophetic persona of a pessimistic prophet who not only spoke truth to power but, in so doing, also challenged and pushed African Americans to believe in themselves.

At this time in his life, Turner had no confidence in American institutions or that the American people would live up to the promises outlined in their sacred documents. While he argued that emigration was the only way for African Americans to retain their “personhood” status, he would also believe that African Americans would never emigrate to Africa. He argued that many African Americans were so oppressed and so stripped of agency because continued negative assessments of their personhood surrounded them that belief in emigration was not possible. Turner’s position limited his rhetorical options, but by adopting a pessimistic prophetic voice that bore witness to the atrocities African Americans faced, Turner found space for his oratory, which reflected itself within the lament tradition of prophecy.

 

When #CRT Legislation Hits the Language Learning Fan

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by Kami Anderson

In my rites of passage group, my Babalawo said one day, “The greatest example of ego is white supremacy.” What more poignant moment to take this quote head-on than by addressing the recent influx of governors across the nation banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) from being taught in the k-12 classroom?

Now, let’s be clear: Critical Race Theory is NOT being taught in the k-12 classroom.  But from a pedagogical perspective, limitations on CRT can significantly impact the type of content a teacher can offer in the classroom. I want to take a moment to provide examples from a specific place in the k-12 school, the foreign language classroom.

Crenshaw explains that CRT acknowledges that the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the imposition of second-class citizenship on Black Americans and other people of color continues to permeate the social fabric of this nation.

LangCrit, or Critical Language and Race Theory, is a critical theory of language and race that challenges fixed assumptions related to language, identity, and race and argues that these categories are socially and locally constructed. Specifically, it is a theoretical and analytical framework that puts the intersection of the subject-as-heard and the subject-as-seen at the forefront of interpretation and analysis. It looks for ways in which race, racism, and racialization intersect with language, belonging, and identity issues.

The work I do in CRT is in the classroom. Specifically, my foreign language classroom uses an Afrocentric derivation of LangCrit. I want to take a moment to use Tennessee as my example. Looking at the Tennessee law, it “will restrict what public school teachers can discuss in Tennessee classrooms about racism, white privilege, and unconscious bias.” This limits authentic identity for the racialized child in the classroom.

What does that mean exactly? It means that the whole and complete child cannot be acknowledged. It means that the sociocultural history of various racial and ethnic groups represented in the classroom cannot be fully recognized in the books or lessons.

I say this boldly and without apology, because my research examines how black culture, history, and identity are critical for language retention in the foreign language classroom.  In particular, I use raciolinguistics to analyze how language is used to construct race and how ideas of race influence language and language use.

Rosa and Flores purport raciolinguistics is “part of the broader structural project of contesting white supremacy.” From an Afrocentric perspective, studying raciolinguistics would examine the impact of race on foreign language learning and the influence of race on foreign language retention.

Raciolinguistics can be applied to the study of Blacks and foreign language learning because of the hegemonic presentation of language within the classroom and the hegemonic presentation of language outside of the classroom. It not only allows one to approximate race and culture in the classroom but also challenges examining how race plays a factor in language acquisition and retention. It is this intentional act that brings social and racial justice into the foreign language classroom.

By restricting CRT, teachers cannot complete this work. If you insist that race is no longer be a prominent factor, I am no longer allowed to question its absence in the foreign language classroom. As Brown and Edouard note, being able to see authentic representations of race and culture relatable for the student, particularly the Black student, is an “untapped intellectual resource.” By allowing students to identify similar racial and linguistic features in course content, students can witness the “perceived authenticity of language” This can’t be adequately tested without methods in CRT.

Language activism examines the structures of privilege and power exacerbated through the supremacy of language. It attaches language to contestations of power and critiques standard forms as codes of power. Specifically, in the foreign language classroom, it perpetuates supremacist elitism of foreign language learning among monolinguals seeking access to bilingual education.

In seeking to further Afrocentric language activism, I can focus and center the Black student in languages and focus on the Africanisms present in language and analyze how the appearance of Africanness affects our listening to language. For example, I can teach the West African connection between yam and ñame (they are the English and Spanish names for the same root vegetable), demonstrate and teach the history of how when in a Palenque neighborhood in Colombia you may hear “Lo no hagas pa’na” and it has the same connotation as “You bet’ not” in their communities. No, it is not grammatically accurate. It is culturally accurate, and that is just as important, especially in the foreign language classroom. This cannot effectively be taught without CRT methods and analysis.

Critical Race Theory is a threat because of the lack of acknowledgment of the research as it relates to Black children and education. To use a proverb as an analogy, we allowed the lion to share its side of the hunting story and then chose to rewrite the narrative back to favor the hunter because we were too uncomfortable talking about the hunter’s role in the lion’s pain.

There is an assumption that students of color in the classroom and carefully placed non-threatening images of well-known people of color as decoration in the classroom and the school are adequate in ensuring Black students see their identity represented. However, one can argue that this representation is shallow at best and exacerbates white supremacy issues within the education system. Shallow will not move our people. We are deeply profound, deeply critical, and deeply connected to an ancestral history with multilingualism. Limiting discussions around this can cripple our beloved community.

Kami Anderson is a Hooks Academic Research Fellow and founder of Bilingual Brown Babies, a specialized service for families of color who are serious about raising their children bilingual in English and Spanish. She was also one of the panelists for our event, “Critical Race Theory: What It Is and What It Isn’t.”