3/23/2005 Second class citizens: Minnesota's women of color are being left behind
Kelly Westhoff
Minneapolis is home to one of the nation's largest populations of urban Native Americans. Despite this, the Minneapolis Public School Board had never had a Native American member until last fall. In November of 2004, Peggy Flanagan, a 25-year-old member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, successfully won election to the board.
"My ethnicity came up a lot during the campaign," she said, "and I really struggled with that. There was this one woman who asked me, "Are you only going to work for Native American children?'"
Flanagan's reply was curt. Of course she was running to help all children, but the question shook her. Why was it, she wondered, that a voter would question her commitment to children simply because of the color of her skin?
Flanagan's victory was a highlight for the state's Native American community, but it was also a victory for the state's women of color. According to a recent report by the Women's Foundation of Minnesota, women of color are conspicuously lacking from elected office. In fact, no woman of color has ever held a statewide elected office in Minnesota.
The report, "The Status of Women of Color in Minnesota," also shines a glaring light on how the state is failing women of color on issues like health care, education and economic well-being. "Our findings were shocking. They were eye-opening," admitted Lee Roper-Batker, president of the Women's Foundation. "In Minnesota, we see ourselves as progressive. But we learned that an African American woman in Minnesota is paid less than an African American woman in Tennessee."
"Another shocking figure," Roper-Batker continued, "is the number of women of color who start prenatal care in the first trimester. Eighty-nine percent of white women in Minnesota start prenatal care in the first trimester. But only 63 percent of Hispanic women receive prenatal care in their first trimester."
The report was a joint effort of the Women's Foundation and the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a national organization that studies women's issues across the nation. The Minnesota report examined that status of the state's African American, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American women‹a group that numbers 282,020, or 11 percent of the state's population. The report also offers an extensive "checklist for change" in each area, with action items for the workplace and governmental, educational, philanthropic and media organizations.
"We have to ask ourselves, what is going on?" said Roper-Batker. "The talents and skills of 11 percent of our state's population are not being utilized."
We asked three of Minnesota's women of color working in key positions what they thought was going on, and what they think we can do help our state's women of color succeed.
Fact: No woman of color has ever held statewide elective office or represented Minnesota in Congress.
Without representation
Too few women of color are running for political office. Representative Neva Walker (DFL-Minneapolis) knows this all too well. One of only two women of color elected to the state legislature, Walker said part of the problem is the lack of political role models.
"Women are asked to run for office, versus men, who have the role models and have been groomed for office," said Walker. "Their grandfather has been in office, their father, their cousin. But for women of color, we don't have that, we don't have those role models."
Society also has different expectations for women who run for office, Walker said, "We don't expect men to have political experience," she said. "They can just come out of college and run for office. But there are certain demands we have for women, and those demands get even greater for women of color. Women get asked, what is your portfolio? What have you been doing in the community?"
To help combat these challenges, Walker meets with prospective women of color candidates from any party or district to teach them how to run a campaign. "I tell them, "Look, you want representation, you're going to have to stop looking around. You're going to have to step up,'" she said. "The only way that you're going to have more women of color in office is if you can convince them to run for office. Some will win, some won't. But you're never going to get more women of color in there if they don't run."
Other reasons women of color don't run, Walker said: money, pride (they don't want to look foolish if they lose), fear of exposing their own or their family's past and the belief that they need to have a college or postgraduate degree. But the number one reason women of color don't consider running for office, Walker thinks, is lack of exposure to the political process.
That's one of the reasons she sets aside time each week to welcome schoolchildren into her office, or to visit their classrooms. "Third-grade girls need to see a black woman in elected office," Walker said. "They still don't quite understand it, but I tell them "Do you see those green lawn signs? That's me.' I'm showing them that they do have role models out there."
Fact: Hispanic women are the least likely group of women in the state to be college educated. They also have the lowest median annual earnings: $23,500.
Spending cuts fuel achievement gap
Senator Mee Moua (DFL-St. Paul) has represented St. Paul's East Side neighborhood since 2002. The nation's first Hmong-American legislator, Moua has focused much of her attention on education. The state's achievement gap between white students and students of color is a direct result of cuts to education spending at all levels, she said.
"The legislature has done a lot of damage to important school services," Moua said. "You take away opportunities for after-school support programs, you take away opportunities for enrichment programs in schools, and you underfund things like guidance counselors and social workers that help buffer social stressors that young women and girls encounter, and you create a situation where you tunnel them and narrow their opportunities."
Young women of color also face household and economic pressures that get in the way of school. "Many young women growing up in an economically distressed household feel pressure to contribute to their family's income," Moua explained. "When you're living in economically distressed situations, education begins to become irrelevant."
And because many girls of color grow up in low-income families, they see few opportunities for college. "It used to be that if you graduated from high school, that gave you a base-level for entry into jobs. But now, you have to at least graduate from college or some kind of technical school in order to feel like you are competitive. And when we have increased college and technical school tuition, it's a disincentive. We've narrowed the field even more," she said.
Minnesota's exploding immigrant population has also fueled the disparity between the state's white women and women of color. "Through immigration, you are getting people who maybe aren't as skilled, or who have language barrier issues or cultural barrier issues," Moua explained. "Once upon a time, we used to be really good about adult basic education, about English as a second language classes. We used to be really good about re-educating and retooling and retraining all sectors of our workers."
"But if you look at just the last four legislative sessions, if you look at all those areas, they've been dramatically cut and dramatically reduced," Moua said. "Adult basic ed is fighting for resources and funding. And just look at what's happened to technical schools and community colleges. That's where people who are immigrants get their first insertion into the professional. I'm not talking about the University of Minnesota as a research institute; I'm talking about Inver Grove Community College and Dakota Community College."
"It's those small institutions that make the big difference in helping us bridge the disparity," Moua argued. "When those institutions are underfunded and not getting the help that they need, they can't open their doors to be more embracing to people who are disadvantaged."
Fact: Poverty rates for African American, Asian American and Native American women in Minnesota are higher than for the nation as a whole.
Too nice to deal with our problems
Hennepin County Administrator Sandy Vargas says the culture of "Minnesota Nice" has contributed to the state's dismal figures regarding women of color, both in terms of education and economics.
"This topic is difficult for Minnesotans," said Vargas. "We want to be nice. We don't know how to talk with each other about hard issues, about race, about immigration, about poverty. We have a great quality of life, but in some communities, that quality is low. And many are slow to recognize that. Our lack of conversation is part of the problem. How do we create a dialogue of respect to solve these problems?"
Vargas draws a distinction between situational poverty (poverty stemming from a health crisis or job loss) and generational poverty. While a person dealing with situational poverty may need government assistance to help maintain an income, families dealing with generational poverty need more than a welfare check, she said. "We don't have our attention as a state focused to work with generational poverty to get people on track," Vargas said.
Too often, women of color and their children live in generational poverty. To break the cycle, these families need basic education, vocational training and targeted social services. Hennepin County, according to Vargas, took a step towards breaking this cycle when it joined forces with Broadway High School.
Broadway High School is part of the Minneapolis Public School system, and is the district's largest teen-parent program. Here, teen parents can complete a high school diploma or earn a GED. In addition, students can take specialized job-skills programs like office assistant, chef training and retail management. The school offers childcare, parenting classes, a health clinic, counseling and job placement services. In addition, 18 Hennepin County staff members have offices in the school, including corrections officers and economic assistance staff.
Education and training can help break the cycle of generational poverty, but employers also need to be willing to hire adults who are working towards changing their life, said Vargas. One local organization, Twin Cities RISE!, places struggling workers of color in jobs that pay more than $20,000 a year with full benefits. SuperValu and Wells Fargo are two of the employers that work with Twin Cities RISE! participants, said Vargas.
"We are trying to get women of color into areas of work they haven't traditionally held, like librarians and finance," said Vargas. "And the incentive is big for a lot of corporations to hire women of color. Latinas are going to have their hands on the purse strings in a few more years. That market is big and very attractive to business."
Marketing departments, Vargas explained, are already scrambling to hire women of color to ensure advertising campaigns will appeal to diverse consumers. "It is hard, for many companies, to bring in people who don't look like the traditional person who has always filled that role, but they need to if they are going to make sure they don't head down the wrong road and create a divergence of opinions," said Vargas.
While the ever elusive consumer dollar certainly acts as an incentive for corporations to hire women of color, Vargas added another: "Women of color make up 11 percent of our state's population. We are going to run out of workers fast if we don't train women of color."
