December 2020 Newsletter

The Child Well-Being Research Network Executive Committee

As the Doris Duke Fellowships transitions to the Child Well-Being Research Network, new leadership has stepped up to the plate to plan and guide the network over the next two years. Executive Committee members will join current leaders Jackie Duron, Assistant Professor, Rutgers University; Lisa Schelbe, Associate Professor, Florida State University; and Lee Ann Huang, Researcher and Doris Duke Fellowships Project Director, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. New committee members include:

Communication Chair: Yonah Drazen, Researcher, Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Chair: Jaymie Lorthridge, Senior Study Director, Westat

Membership Chair: Kyndra Cleveland, Research Scientist, UCLA

Networking Programming Chair: Carlomagno Panlilio, Assistant Professor, Pennsylvania State University

We’d like to thank the Leadership Committee members who have worked tirelessly over the past two years to identify the next steps for the strong network created by the fellowships. Members include: Bart Klika, Lisa Schelbe, Jackie Duron, Megan Finno-Velasquez, Kaela Byers, Leah Gjertson, Francesca Longo, Elizabeth McGuier, Jennifer Daer Shields, Alysse Loomis, Maria Schweer-Collins.

In the next couple of months, recruitment for standing committee participants will occur to help implement the vision of the Child Well-Being Research Network. Stay tuned for updates and announcements!

Spotlight: Clinton Boyd, Jr. & The New Documentary The Color Tax: Origins of the Modern-Day Racial Wealth Gap

Clinton Boyd, Jr., Postdoctoral Associate at Duke University, recently served as a panel member for a preview of the new documentary The Color Tax: Origins of the Modern-Day Racial Wealth Gap, covering discriminatory housing policies in Chicago. Fellowships staff member, Mickie Brown, connected with Clinton to discuss his work on and thoughts about the documentary.

Q: Tell me about the documentary. How did you get involved?

The Color Tax: Origins of the Modern-Day Racial Wealth Gap is Episode III of the Shame of Chicago docuseries. The film chronicles how predatory housing contracts drained vast sums of wealth from the pockets of Chicago’s Black families between 1950 and 1970. With vivid imagery and riveting narration, the film reveals that Chicago’s extreme racial residential segregation is the byproduct of racist housing policies and discriminatory housing practices carried out by immoral actors, individuals who placed profit above people. The documentary also goes beyond depicting Chicago’s Black residents as mere victims of economic exploitation. Instead, it showcases Black Chicagoans' stern unwillingness to yield to the unjust power structures designed to ensure the super-rich remained wealthy and the dispossessed remained impoverished.

The Shame of Chicago's creator and producer, Bruce Orenstein, is a colleague of mine at the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. After learning of my academic interests and personal journey, Bruce felt that the docuseries would resonate with me. The Color Tax tugged at my heartstrings, piqued my intellectual curiosity, and stirred my soul to action. Before I knew it, Bruce and I were hosting private film screenings, where we discussed the film’s far-reaching implications and encouraged viewers to promote the Shame of Chicago docuseries within their networks.

Q: What are the ripple effects of discriminatory housing policies? Is this specific to Chicago?

One thing comes to mind when I think about the ripple effects of discriminatory housing policies: How America’s housing system undermines wealth building in communities of color. Wealth accumulation is inextricably linked to land possession and homeownership. Lawmakers have long understood this and have enacted policies to create pathways to property ownership for American citizens. However, the downside is that these policies have primarily favored white households and left communities of color in the lurch.

American housing policies have resulted in the intentional and systematic displacement of people of color – primarily Native and Black Americans - from their land and homes. U.S. housing policies have also led to Black families’ exclusion from the wealth-building homeownership programs of the 20th century, as witnessed in The Color Tax documentary episode. With constrained residential options, racial and ethnic minorities – particularly Latin and Black Americans – have been funneled into segregated neighborhoods due to discriminatory housing policies. In a nutshell, federal, state, and local policies have exacerbated racial inequities in America.

Q: How does housing policy discrimination impact the capacity of families to meet the needs of their children?

Let us consider how discriminatory housing policies have shaped residential segregation patterns in America. Due to a wide array of racist U.S. housing policies and practices – from racial zoning to restrictive covenants to mortgage discrimination to redlining to predatory lending practices – Black families have been channeled into isolated communities plagued by immense social problems. It is extremely taxing for Black parents to rear their children in an environment afflicted by mass unemployment, concentrated poverty, underachieving schools, and intrusive police surveillance. Not to mention that their children are placed at a grave disadvantage as well. Children growing up in areas marked by racial and economic segregation are less likely to have access to nutritious foods and more likely to be exposed to environmental toxins that jeopardize their health. They also have limited access to safe and secure recreational spaces that promote physical health.

Turning briefly to my own work, discriminatory housing policies also wreak havoc in the lives of Black fathers, their children, and their families. For example, several federal housing policies prevent individuals with an incarceration history from staying in subsidized housing. Due to their disproportionate incarceration rates, Black men suffer the greatest from these misguided policies. For Black fathers returning to civilian life, their chances of reuniting with their children are reduced if their child resides in subsidized housing. Consequently, far too many children are deprived of the opportunity to share a residential dwelling with their father and bond with him under the same roof.

Q: What are some concrete steps to remove these systemic barriers in housing policies?

As the sun sets on the Trump regime, the Biden-Harris administration is preparing to take center stage. There appears to be a genuine desire on their behalf to infuse equity into America's housing policies, which is sorely needed as up to 40 million people are facing eviction as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Transforming their dream into reality, however, will require a great deal of people power. Building on the protest movement's success from this summer, we must continue to plot, strategize, and mobilize for social change. The racist power structures behind U.S. housing discrimination will not surrender quietly. Therefore, organized people must be called upon to defeat organized power.

Click here for a recording of the Chicago South Side Film Festival Q & A with Clinton Boyd, Jr., Bruce Orenstein, and other leaders.

Click here for more information on this docuseries and other resources.

Fellows Updates:

Byron Powell, Washington University in St. Louis - Brown School of Social Work, co-authored an article in American Psychologist on implementation strategies for digital mental health interventions in health care settings.

Tova Walsh, University of Wisconsin-Madison, presented a webinar with colleagues on “Increasing Engagement of Fathers in Services through Father-Specific Programming." The webinar was sponsored by the Wisconsin Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board and the Institute for Research on Poverty. Webinar recording and slides are available here.

Christina Mondi-Rago, Brazelton Touchpoints Center & Harvard Medical School, and her academic mentors published a new article in Evaluation Review on early childhood educational intervention and depressive symptoms in emerging adulthood.

Christina Padilla, Child Trends, recently published a paper in AERA Open on variation in Head Start treatment effects on parenting behavior.