—EDITED TRANSCRIPT— and the CENTER FOR NEIGHBORHOOD ENTERPRISE present a discussion entitled A Post-Racial America? Thursday, January 15, 2009 ▪ 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. Hudson Institute ▪ Betsy and Walter Stern Conference Center ▪ 1015 15th Street, NW ▪ Suite 600 “It’s been said that the ascendancy of Barack Obama signals the beginning of a ‘post-racial’ America. I wish. What we have witnessed, I think, is something less profound but still hugely significant. Obama’s election means that in America, including at the highest levels of our politics, race is no longer an automatic deal-breaker. That’s a major step forward in the thinking of white America.” So begins a November 11 piece by retired Washington Post columnist WILLIAM RASPBERRY entitled “A Path Beyond Grievance.” Whether or not America has entered a “post-racial” era and what that might mean was the topic of a January 15 panel discussion co-hosted by Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal and the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE). The panel featured RASPBERRY and three other long-standing writers, neighborhood activists, and community leaders who have been eloquent spokesmen both for the nation’s obligation to address its racial divisions and for the positive steps that minority communities can take on their own behalf: the Reverend DeForest Blake “BUSTER” SOARIES, Jr., attorney EDWARD W. NORTON, and CNE founder and president ROBERT WOODSON, Sr. The Bradley Center’s WILLIAM SCHAMBRA moderated the discussion. PROGRAM AND PANEL 12:00 p.m. Welcome by Hudson Institute’s WILLIAM SCHAMBRA 12:10 Panel discussion ROBERT WOODSON, Center for Neighborhood Enterprise BUSTER SOARIES, First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens (Somerset, NJ) EDWARD NORTON, attorney WILLIAM RASPBERRY, formerly with The Washington Post 1:10 Question-and-answer session 2:00 Adjournment FURTHER INFORMATION THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS PREPARED FROM AN AUDIO RECORDING and edited by Krista Shaffer. To request further information on this event or the Bradley Center, please visit our web site at http://pcr.hudson.org, contact Hudson Institute at (202) 974-2424, or send an e-mail to Krista Shaffer at [email protected]. HUDSON INSTITUTE 1015 15th Street, N.W. 202.974.2400 Suite 600 202.974.2410 Fax Washington, DC 20005 http://pcr.hudson.org Panel Biographies Edward W. Norton is a Washington-DC based attorney with a long history in race-related issues. He served as general counsel for the New York City Housing Authority from 1973 to 1977, and as deputy general counsel at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1977 to 1979. Next, he was general counsel for the US Small Business Administration (SBA) until 1981. Norton also served as the chair of the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics, a post he held from 1982 to 1989. He was a visiting lecturer at Princeton University in 1989 and 1990, where he taught a seminar on race, ethnicity and public policy. Norton’s primary focus since 1989 has been minority business access to government contracts. William Raspberry is the president of Baby Steps (http://www.takebabysteps.com/), a parent training and empowerment program he created in his hometown of Okolona, Mississippi. He was a columnist for The Washington Post for nearly four decades, as well as Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy Studies at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. He retired from the Post at the end of 2005, in part to devote more time to Baby Steps. Raspberry’s commentaries, often on public policy concerns such as education, crime, justice, drug abuse, and housing, earned the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1994. Raspberry’s newspaper career began with a summer job at the Indianapolis Recorder in 1956. His duties there as reporter, photographer, and editor inspired him to join The Washington Post in 1962, after serving two years in the US Army. At the Post, he was hired as a teletype operator, and quickly advanced to general assignment reporter, copy editor, and assistant city editor. His coverage of the 1965 Watts riot in Los Angeles earned him the Capital Press Club’s “Journalist of the Year” award. Raspberry’s column first ran in 1966 in the local section of the Post. In 1971, his column was moved to the paper’s op-ed page. Syndication by The Washington Post Writers Group began in 1977; at its peak, the column appeared in more than 225 newspapers. William A. Schambra is the director of the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. Prior to joining the Hudson Institute in 2003, Schambra was director of programs at the Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. Before joining Bradley in 1992, Schambra served as a senior advisor and chief speechwriter for Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Director of the Office of Personnel Management Constance Horner, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan. Schambra has written extensively on the Constitution, the theory and practice of civic revitalization, and civil society in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Policy Review, Christian Science Monitor, Nonprofit Quarterly, Philanthropy, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Crisis, and is the editor of several volumes, including As Far as Republican Principles Will Admit: Collected Essays of Martin Diamond. Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, Jr. is the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey. A pioneer of faith-based community development, Soaries has led First Baptist in the construction of a new $20 million church complex and the formation of many not- for-profit entities to serve the community surrounding the church. In addition to his pastoral duties, Soaries is a popular speaker at colleges, universities, conferences and churches around the world as well as a frequent advisor to major corporations in the areas of diversity, philanthropy and community relations. From January 12, 1999 to January 15, 2002 Soaries served as New Jersey’s 30th Secretary of State, making him the first African American male to serve as a Constitutional officer of the State. Appointed by former Governor Christine Todd Whitman, he managed one of the premier departments of state government and served as a senior advisor to the governor on issues that transcended traditional departmental lines. In February 2003, Soaries was appointed by President Bush to serve as a public director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. He was a member of the affordable housing committee of the bank. Soaries is also the former chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission, established by Congress to implement the “Help America Vote Act” of 2002; in November 2004 this Commission was the first federal agency to oversee a Presidential election. Soaries has also taught courses at Princeton Theological Seminary, Drew University Theological School, Kean University, and Mercer County College. Robert L. Woodson, Sr., is founder and president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE, online at http://www.cneonline.org/), which he founded in 1981 with the name National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. Often referred to as the godfather of the movement to empower neighborhood-based organizations, Bob Woodson’s social activism dates back to the 1960s, when as a young civil rights activist, he developed and coordinated national and local community development programs. During the ’70s he directed the National Urban League’s Administration of Justice division and then served as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. For more than 40 years Woodson has been a source of guidance and support for grassroots organizations around the world. He was instrumental in paving the way for resident management and ownership of public housing, and brought together task forces of grassroots groups to advise the 104th Congress, the Pennsylvania Legislature, and the Wisconsin Assembly. He is consulted by cabinet officials, numerous governors, members of Congress, academicians, business leaders, and the news media. In 2006 he received a Presidential appointment to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Woodson has worked with youth intervention and violence prevention programs since the 1960s and has written several books on the subject, including a Summons to Life. He is also the author of The Triumphs of Joseph: How Community Healers are Reviving Our Streets and Neighborhoods, published by The Free Press in January, 1998, and as well as many articles. Woodson is a recipient of the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to as the “genius” award. In 2008 he received the prestigious Bradley Prize and the Manhattan Institute’s Social Entrepreneurship Award. And most recently, Woodson was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President George W. Bush. Proceedings WILLIAM SCHAMBRA: My name is Bill Schambra, and I’m director of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal at Hudson Institute. My Bradley Center colleague Krista Shaffer and I are pleased to welcome you to today’s panel, entitled “A Post-Racial America?” which we’re proud to co-sponsor with Bob Woodson and his Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE, online at http://www.cneonline.org/). We’re now less than one week away from the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama, the prospect of which brought nationally syndicated columnist William Raspberry out of retirement to write a Washington Post op-ed on November 11, 2008, entitled “A Path Beyond Grievance.”1 In it, he suggested that while it may be too much to say that the ascendancy of Barack Obama signals the beginning of a post-racial America, it is not too much to say that we are entering an era in which the problems of black community demand something beyond, as he put it, “civil rights – or grievance-based – solutions.” Are we indeed entering such a period – and if so, what might such solutions look like? This is an issue that Bob Woodson’s Center for Neighborhood Enterprise has been wrestling with for over a quarter of a century, now.