Title: The Displacement of Black Families and Communities: San Francisco as a Case Study in Political Response: An Interview with N'Tanya Lee
Abstract: N'Tanya Lee is the Executive Director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth in San Francisco, California. Lee began working for social justice as a Black, thirteen-year-old, free-lunch kid fighting against Ronald Reagan's ketchup is a vegetable policy. Professionally, she has been the education policy advocate for the Community Service Society of New York City, street outreach director for Ozone House Youth Services, youth empowerment coordinator for the San Francisco Youth Commission, and a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies/African American History at Yale University. Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth is a local community organization that works to transform San Francisco's services and policies in order to create a more family-friendly community. Through combining political advocacy, community organizing, and leadership development strategies, Coleman has created a powerful and cost-effective model for promoting social change and facilitating the participation of community residents (particularly youth and parents) in the city's policy-making process. Tanene Allison of the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy interviewed N'Tanya Lee on 15 January 2006 at her home in San Francisco. HJAAP What has led you to the work you do, and what are your present priorities as the executive director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth? LEE I have pretty much lived my life around social justice issues since I was about thirteen. I grew up between parents, one who was in poverty and one who was upper-middle class. I was politicized by witnessing the differences between their economic statuses and opportunities and just the injustices that my mother faced, being poor, Black, and female. I became executive director of Coleman Advocates after working there for five years on their youth organizing project, Youth Making a Change. And my primary focus is the organization's ability to do real justice policy work. HJAAP There has been a dramatic decline in the number of families in San Francisco, and this phenomenon is seen most strongly in San Francisco's Black community. What do you believe are the key forces that have brought about this exodus out of the city? LEE There are a number of causes. The number one reason is the lack of affordable housing, not just in the city but in the entire Bay Area. The second thing is the concern middle-income families have about the quality of the public schools. We have a really high rate of middle-income families sending their kids to private schools in San Francisco, which is I think directly related to the issue. And then the third, which--we don't have as much good data on, but lots of anecdotal information, particularly for poor and working-class folks--has to do with safety issues and people basically feeling really unsafe. HJAAP How do you see Black families fitting into those factors? LEE I think those factors affect almost everyone, from very low-income people to higher-income people. In regards to the African American community, there are a couple different things going on. Before World War II there was a very small Black community in San Francisco. During the war there was a surge in Black migration into the city and a surge in Black living-wage employment here. After the war, Blacks were basically kicked out of the employment that they were able to hold during the war. That was the heyday of Black life in San Francisco, and it more or less hasn't returned. African Americans in San Francisco have never had a strong foothold in the city's economy. In terms of this city's economic development over the last 50 years, Black people have become marginalized. Oftentimes such marginalization comes along with displacement. The city has evolved into this new Pacific Coast center for globalization; there's basically just no place for Black people here. …
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-06-22
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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