TACOMA REFUSES TO LOSE werefusetolose.org TRUTH IS ESSENTIAL. Introducing the We TRUTH IS POWER. Refuse to Lose Series TRUTH IS HEALING. AN EDUCATION FIRST PRODUCTION The We Refuse to Lose series explores what cradle-to-career initiatives across the country are doing to improve outcomes for students of color TRUTH FOR TACOMA. and those experiencing poverty. The series profiles five communities— Buffalo, Chattanooga, Dallas, the Rio Grande Valley and Tacoma —that are working to close racial gaps for students journeying from early education TRUTH IS COURAGE. to careers. A majority of these students come from populations that have been historically oppressed and marginalized through poorly resourced schools, employment, housing and loan discrimination, police violence, a TRUTH IS URGENT. disproportionate criminal justice system and harsh immigration policies. Since early 2019, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has supported these five community partnerships and convened their leaders as a learning community. It commissioned Education First to write this series TRUTH IS JUSTICE. to share how these communities refuse to lose their children and youth to the effects of systemic racism and a new and formidable foe —COVID-19. TRUTH IS YOURS. TRUTH IS NOW. Cover Photo: Courtesy of Deeper Learning 2 WE REFUSE TO LOSE TACOMA PROFILE 01 LYLE QUASIM, COMMUNITY LEADER school for the Black Panther Party, defending Native With the help of Graduate American fishing rights and serving as a college president and cabinet member as the head of state Tacoma, the city’s cradle-to- agencies for two governors, Quasim sits behind his home desk for a virtual interview. On the wall behind career community partnership, him, photos of Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela and commemorations from the Washington State Patrol, Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, the NAACP Tacoma has closed its 33 Photo: Courtesy of The News Tribune and other organizations reflect his aspirations, percent Black-white graduation ideals and life accomplishments. A book on the history of lynching in America is a permanent fixture rate gap. Graduate Tacoma on his coffee table. Quasim says it prepares him “We can’t psychologically for going out into the world each day. continues to advance its “In some ways, I can say there’s been a significant unring that evolution in the Tacoma Public Schools. But if time commitment to equity of has any value, I look at 50 years of students who have come through this system and who have opportunity for students of bell,” been discounted and marginalized and who never had opportunities. For them, the die has been cast. color in the era of COVID-19 says community leader Lyle Quasim, reflecting on the Their ability to be full participants in the Tacoma rich lives lost to generations of students of color who and Washington experience and the experience of and a renewed fight against passed through the Tacoma school district’s doors the America has been marginalized. There is no way to go last half century. back to retrieve that.”1 racial oppression and violence. Quasim is on the board of the Foundation for Tacoma Students (FFTS), the organization coordinating the city’s cradle-to-career education initiative, Graduate Tacoma. Retired after a career that included teaching 02 WE REFUSE TO LOSE TACOMA PROFILE 03 never herded out of the city, they and other people of color and immigrants were isolated in separate parts Tacoma’s of town, specifically South and East Tacoma and the Hilltop neighborhood. TACOMA REDLINING MAP history bears Worse to come were discriminatory banking and lending practices fostered by the United States government and directed at citizens in witness to its these communities. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, the federal government decided to oppression of nurture home ownership by guaranteeing long- term loans for middle- and working-class families. It established the Home Owners Loan Corporation, people of color. which created what came to be called “Redline Maps” to provide guidance to banks about neighborhoods they should consider safe for loans. Exclusively white Only a decade after its incorporation in 1875, Tacoma communities, designated as green and blue zones was no stranger to organized coercion, cruelty on the maps, were deemed suitable for investments; and violence leveled against nonwhites. Like other yellow and red zones had “undesirable populations” communities in the Pacific NorthWest, it engaged or were subject to the “infiltration of a lower-grade in the wave of anti-Chinese sentiment and violence population” and were considered “hazardous” for that swept the region in the late 1800s. Then, lending. The practice meant that banks made loans opinions authored by Tacoma’s newsmen reflected only to homebuyers in the white neighborhoods. the organized efforts to terrorize the city’s Chinese citizens. One called on Tacomans to “furnish them with The redlined maps developed for Tacoma show the lots on the waterfront, three fathoms below low tide.”2 bulk of South and East Tacoma as yellow and red zones. In a 2018 article headlined, “How racism kept In October 1885, inflamed rhetoric led to the terror of Black Tacomans from buying houses for decades,” a white mob headed by Tacoma’s mayor. It raided the The News Tribune articulated the dire consequences city’s Chinatown and force-marched its residents to of the American banking industries’ perspective the train station, herding them onto railcars bound for that “nothing downgraded an otherwise acceptable Portland. Mobs later burned two Chinese settlements neighborhood like the presence of Black families.” to the ground.3 Today, those living in these neighborhoods earn far less, are less likely to have a college degree African Americans came to the Pacific NorthWest or own a home and have lower life expectancies in larger numbers following the Civil War, eager for than those living in what once were deemed better opportunities they did not have access to in other neighborhoods. Economically, the practice denied parts of the country. However, they never enjoyed any Black families financial security and generational sense of parity with white citizenry. As discriminatory wealth; national data reveal that white families have barriers increased in the South and East coast from almost 10 times more net worth than Black families.5 the late 19th century into the first decades of the 20th, discriminatory practices increased their intensity in the West at the same time.4 Though Black Tacomans were 04 WE REFUSE TO LOSE Data presented by Tacoma’s Office of Equity and racial inequities of the nation have been baked into TACOMA EQUITY INDEX Human Rights make obvious the impact the broken housing markets from the start. This ongoing history and racist American housing system has had on helps explain disparities we now see—wealth, health, Tacoma’s citizens of color. The office “scores” equity life spans, educational attainment, employment and HIGHER OPPORTUNITY for areas among each of the city’s council districts, earnings. At the present rate, it will take generations to combining multiple indicators such as education and outgrow this history.” livability to place each of them on an equity index from low to high (see right). In South and East Tacoma The history of racial oppression, including but not LOWER OPPORTUNITY (areas formerly identified as yellow and red zones), the limited to housing discrimination in Tacoma, goes a equity indicators in 2020 don’t add up to opportunity long way toward explaining why inequities in student for the more heavily minoritized and immigrant opportunities and outcomes in education exist, communities living there now (see below). suggests Brian Boyd, a local foundation executive and funder of Graduate Tacoma. “You can nod your head “Housing is one of the notable ways families prosper and say, ‘Yeah, people achieve differently because of and transfer that prosperity to the next generation,” race.’ This of course is a racist idea,” Boyd says. “Or notes Michael Mirra, executive director of the Tacoma you can look and see broken systems and policies. Housing Authority, a Graduate Tacoma partner. “The Never before have more people understood that.” THE MODERN-DAY EFFECTS OF REDLINING IN THE CITY OF TACOMA AND THREE CITY COUNCIL DISTRICTS1 CITY OF TACOMA NORTH TACOMA EAST TACOMA SOUTH TACOMA 1 Source: Office of Equity DEMOGRAPHICS EDUCATION INDEX LIVABILITY INDEX (MEDIAN HOME VALUE) and Human Rights, City of Tacoma. “Tacoma Equity Index.” n.d. Chart. Accessed 100 100 100 August 12, 2020. 94% 94% 90 90 93% 90 2 Specific demographic 88% 88% 83% 83% 80 82% 80 80 groups include Black, 80% 80% 77% 77% 70 70 70 Hispanic/Latino, Native 66% 66% American, Asian, Pacific 60 60 60 58% 58% Islander and Other. 53% 53% 50 51% 50 50 49% 49% 49% 49% 48% 48% 3 4-year high school 43% 43% 40 42% 40 40 38% 38% graduation rate. 36% 36% 36% 19% 30 34% 30 30 30% 13% 13% 28% 28% 28% 28% 4 10% 10% Percent of residents over 22% 22% 21% 21% 20 20 20 6% 18% 18% 18% 18% the age of 25 with bachelor’s 16% 16% 16% 16% 15% 0% 10 10 10 0% degree or higher. 5 Percentage of 3rd and 7th WHITE BLACK, IMMIGRANT H.S. DEGREE TEST MORE THAN $200K–$300K LESS THAN grade students who are (NOT HISPANIC) INDIGENOUS POPULATION GRADUATION ATTAINMENT4 PROFICIENCY5 $300K $200K proficient on state tests. OR PEOPLE OF RATE3 COLOR2 06 WE REFUSE TO LOSE TACOMA PROFILE 07 The Graduate Tacoma movement was forged in this About The national outcry for change. Hundreds of Tacomans— Graduate residents, educators and representatives from Foundation for foundations, faith- and other community-based organizations (CBOs), business and labor interests Tacoma Students Tacoma refuses and the early learning community—came together to establish FFTS to coordinate what is now a coalition to lose more of nearly 350 organizations focused on increasing The Foundation for Tacoma graduation and college completion rates.