Democracy, Diversity and Voice Project
Holds First Advisory Board Meeting

The Democracy, Diversity and Voice Project (DDVP) held the inaugural meeting of its Advisory Board at the University of Maryland on September 26-27, 2002. The central purpose of this new project is threefold:

1. To amplify the voices of people of color in scholarly and popular discussions concerning civil society
2. To insure inclusiveness in dialogues and debates about the current state and future of democracy
3. To find means to maximize democratic representation.

Through producing research that is useful and usable — in short, "research for practice" — the DDVP aims to highlight the importance of full inclusion in a democracy that is not only procedural but substantive; acknowledge the centrality of ethno-racial diversity in the American social order — combining individual, institutional, and cultural aspects; and recognize the significance of voice — how people of color's voice differs from the dominant voice; how it is informed; how it is expressed, and how it can have influence.

The first step in this process will be to advance a bridging project that will facilitate dialogue, understanding, and collaboration among diverse ethno-racial communities. In short, we will begin by establishing a new venue for leading scholars and practitioners to come together to comprehend root causes of continuing problems in American democracy linked to race and class and develop new strategies for progress.

Toward that end, the inaugural Board meeting produced important recommendations. The meeting brought together leading experts in the field of the civic engagement of people of color, including key scholars, practitioners, and advocates from across the nation. Please click the following link in order to download a Word document containing the list of DDVP Advisory Board members (39K).

The goals of the inaugural meeting included the following:

• To assess what we do and don't know about people of color's civic and political participation in the United States.
• To assess what we do and don't know about how fuller civic and political participation on the part of people of color can contribute to the achievement of economic democracy in the United States.
• To identify research to help fill remaining gaps in knowledge and prioritize the best ways to fill existing research gaps.
• To begin to forge links between researchers and practitioners and close the gap between scholarly knowledge and the everyday practice of people of color's and other related civic organizations and policymakers.
• To answer this question: what kind of research can The Democracy Collaborative's Democracy, Diversity, and Voice Project produce, facilitate, and disseminate, in order to contribute to the process of increasing people of color's involvement?

Thus, the focus was on two inextricably linked questions:

1. What policies and practices are most likely to increase people of color's civic and political engagement?
2. How might building civic capacity advance people of color and other disproportionately low-income populations' economic and social well-being?

Since both research and practice often require funding, the meeting began with a dinner panel in which two members of the Foundation community, Donna Edwards of the ARCA Foundation and Geraldine Mannion of the Carnegie Corporation, discussed both the challenges in grant-making in the atmosphere of stock market declines and the priorities in grant-making vis a vis projects related to democracy.

The following day centered around an intensive discussion about what is known and what is not known about civic and political participation of people of color and how such participation grows out of its economic context as well as its potential to impact on economic democracy. Participants in both main sessions (“Research and Activism around Civic and Political Engagement of People of Color in the United States” and “Research and Activism around Economic Democracy”) discussed recent research conducted in their areas, the view from the field according to practitioners, and priorities for research that is useful and written in a usable style. Several general themes emerged:

Developing new models and forward visions. It was emphasized that the 1960s movement can no longer be the model for the civic engagement of people of color and their struggles for economic democracy. Much more attention in research needs to be devoted to comprehending current socio-economic conditions in communities of color and how these communities at the neighborhood level are identifying their own interests and forging a new politics.

Understanding American democracy in a global context. Advanced research must understand domestic political and economic developments within the context of globalization. Architects of a new society must produce research that provides understanding of how not just the corporate world but the poor are globally connected.

Learning from successful past initiatives. Particularly, moments of history in which progress has been made and successful past initiatives should be researched in order to find ways to transform them into new initiatives with more far-reaching impact. For example, few, if any, comprehensive analyses of the GI Bill of Rights have been done. More study of it could lead to a new, more comprehensive, Bill of Rights that could be used to awaken a sense of injustice and employ rights and social justice claims to develop mechanisms for change and specific policy means for progress.

Conducting comparative analyses. While the body of literature on the civic engagement of individual communities of color is rapidly growing, there are few comparative analyses. Do Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and other ethno-racial groups respond to different stimuli regarding their decisions to participate or not? Do their different historical experiences and different current plights lead to different political and economic preferences and behaviors? On which grounds and issues might they form coalitions and on which might they separate? The current body of comparative literature is so sparse that practice cannot be informed by research. Comparative analyses also need to focus on aspects of class and gender among and within ethno-racial groups. In particular, research focusing on the intertwined destinies of race, class, and gender in political efforts and policy outcomes is key to understanding political and economic democracy.

Analyzing whites. Currently, most organizing occurs in communities of color; yet progress depends upon whites, too, becoming more of an oppositional force in a democracy which is not fully inclusive. To analyze whites, assigns everyone a place in the relations of race, racism, hierarchy, and collectivism. Without an explicit examination of both people of color and whites--groups disadvantaged and group's advantaged in American democracy, whiteness becomes normalized and invisible, relations of dominance are submerged, and a path forward cannot become the popular will. Meanwhile, a fuller understanding of the points at which whites – masses and leaders alike – historically have become allies of people of color in relatively successful efforts to expand democracy and promote equality should provide important lessons.

Conducting democratic audits. Although there are important surveys such as the Panel on Income Dynamics that regularly measure the economic well-being of the nation, there is no regular survey of democratic attitudes and behaviors, especially ones that regularly oversample various communities of color in large enough numbers to understand their views of democracy, civicness, and participation. To better understand how to increase engagement among people of color, democratic audits based on appropriate-size surveys must be conducted on a regular basis. Over-sampling people who will soon make up that oxymoron in America, a "majority-minority" of the population, would provide a way to understand whether different demographic categories of people of color (e.g., age, gender, class, religion, etc.) require different prompts to increase their engagement.

Broadening the civic debate. While much remains to be learned about the civic and political participation of people of color per se and research about the decline of civic life in communities of color is crucial, much more research needs to focus on continuing structural barriers to meaningful participation and especially to power. What laws, policies, and structures have barred people of color from participation in the past and left them without a habit of participation in the current context? How is participation influenced by growing inequality? What are the outcomes of participation? What rewards to participation do people of color experience and see? What can be done to give citizens not just a sense of power but the reality of it? Perhaps more than any other theme, Board members emphasized that true citizenship in a democracy has economic pre-conditions. In a capitalist system, economic independence is a pre-condition for self-esteem and self-development. Without some minimum level of security, well-being, and dignity, people cannot function as citizens: thus the need for research which focuses on the necessary connection between political and social citizenship, political and economic democracy.

Dividing and sharing research responsibilities. Practitioners were confident of their capacity to organize and suggested that academics would be most helpful if they did what they do best: research and educate. That is, academics through including the knowledge practitioners have gained in the field could produce research for use, not book shelves.

A full report of the meeting will be available in late November

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