URBAN POLICY WITHOUT BROACHING THE TOPIC OF

RACE, REALLY? RESPONSE TO DAVID IMBROSCIO’S

“URBAN POLICY AS MERITOCRACY: A CRITIQUE”

ROBERT MARK SILVERMAN

University at Buffalo

David Imbroscio’s article “Urban Policy as Meritocracy” (2015) appears to offer an important

critique of the meritocratic paradigm that frames urban policy. However, his analysis has a glaring

omission. It skirts over how race undergirds virtually every aspect of U.S. urban policy. The focus of

Imbroscio’s article is undeniable; he is interested in urban policy as it applies to distressed, inner-city

urban issues. Leonardo (2009) offers an equally poignant discussion of this topic in relation to U.S.

education policy. For example, he describes how urban issues are framed in the media and policy

discourse by evoking images of the “jungle”:

In the “urban jungle” people imagine their city centers as teaming with black, brown and yellow

bodies, which are poor and dirty, criminal and dangerous. Gangs, violence, and drugs are closely

tied to any image of the urban for most people. . . . Because so many people subscribe to the racist

notion that urban areas are “jungles,” many Americans believe that spending money on urban

schooling [or urban policy writ large] is a “waste.” (Leonardo, 2009, p. 154).

It is important to read Imbroscio’s article against this backdrop, since it places U.S. urban policy in

a racialized and contested context. This is not simply a phenomenon that plays out among individual

wrought by racism and discrimination. Meritocracy cannot flourish in a context where prejudice is

ubiquitous and entrenched in institutions.

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM TRUMPS MERITOCRACY

It is important to view the institutions that are at the core of Imbroscio’s critique of meritocracy

through a racial lens. He focuses on failed urban policies implemented through the education and

social welfare systems, as well as a web of housing and community development agencies. Ironically,

Direct correspondence to: Robert Mark Silverman, School of Architecture and Planning 114, Diefendorf Hall, University at

Buffalo, South Campus, Buffalo, NY 14214. E-mail: [email protected].

these are among the institutions that scholars have identified as central to the reproduction of racial

inequality in society. In addition to schools, social welfare organizations and housing agencies,

scholars like Blauner (1969) and Pinderhughes (2011) have identified private businesses and the

police as linchpins in the perpetuation of internal colonialism in black and Latino communities.

Increasingly, the institutional context that black and Latino communities are embedded in is

subsumed in race-neutral language. These places are labeled as urban neighborhoods in popular

discourse. In some instances this lexicon has been adopted by academics, particularly those who

subscribe to a colorblind view of the world. In its most extreme expression, color-blind scholarship

becomes a caricature, akin to s kits by the comedian Stephen Colbert who parodies race-neutral

school reforms, social welfare policies, and housing systems.

Yet, Imbroscio does not broach the topic of race or pursue a systematic analysis of how the

mobilization of stereotypes and discrimination through institutions shapes opportunity structures for

black and brown people in urban American. Instead, his analysis of policies aimed at removing

barriers to social mobility is divorced from the racial context in which the policies are embedded.

Using a narrower, race-neutral construct, Imbroscio argues that liberal urban policies

designed to

remove barriers to upward mobility are inherently flawed because a meritocracy is unobtainable. He

attempts to demonstrate this thesis through an analysis of what he labels an “unholy trinity” of urban

pathway to upward mobility. To him, this is confirmation that liberal urban policies are ineffective.

However, his analysis is divorced from the racial context of urban education. At the micro-level, black

and brown students in inner-city schools are hampered by stereotyping, culturally inappropriate and

alienating curricula, and low expectation by teachers and the broader society. At the macro-level, they

attend schools that are fiscally, technologically, and physically substandard. Leonardo and Grubb

(2014, p. xi) highlight this point, arguing that “students of color are victims of resource inequalities

as well as ideological forms of racism.” In contrast to schools outside of urban neighborhoods, with

predominantly non-minority student populations, they stress that:

and implementation is imbued by pejorative racial stereotypes and perceptions. In addition, reforms

are hindered by social and cultural resistance to spending money on urban schools. As a result, the

schools that students of color attend are perpetually stigmatized and underfunded. In essence, they

are set up to fail. This is due to racial prerogatives in society, not a calculation based on meritocratic

considerations.

Imbroscio builds on his critique of liberal urban policies related to school reform by citing

serval studies that find marginal impacts from social welfare programs designed to assist families,

particularly programs like Head Start that target young parents and pre–school age children. Many

of the programs cited were small demonstration projects, and Imbroscio concludes that they were

Although these conclusions are provocative, they highlight the need for racial oppression to be

a more central component of Imbroscio’s analysis of U.S. social welfare policies. It is not enough

to dismiss comprehensive social welfare policies as normatively flawed and incompatible with

meritocracy. A critical race perspective along the lines articulated by Neubeck and Cazenave (2001)

is needed for social welfare policies to be reimagined in ways that are devoid of racial bias.

The final component of Imbroscio’s unholy t rinity focuses on housing and community development

policies designed to reduce the effects of poverty and social isolation in urban neighborhoods. He

focuses on two types of housing policies: mobility programs like Move to Opportunity (MTO) that

are designed to deconcentrate poverty and suburbanize the poor, and place-based programs focused

options for many minority households. Likewise, the implementation of programs like HOPE VI

was criticized for not replacing affordable units as new development occurred and displacing many

low-income, black and Latino residents. Imbroscio does not fully examine how the underfunding and

inconsistent implementation of fair and affordable housing policy is heavily influenced by resistance

to policy goals like integration due to entrenched racism in society. In some ways, this topic has been

introduced in recent works (Patterson & Silverman, 2011; Silverman & Patterson, 2012), although

there is a need to build on this empirical analysis.

The Prospect of Teaching Old Dogs (a.k.a Anchor Institutions) New Tricks

After deconstructing meritocracy and the unholy trinity of liberal urban policies designed to

facilitate upward mobility for the poor, Imbroscio proposes a Community Paradigm as a remedy

though governance systems heavily biased by the interests of philanthropic, corporate, and suburban

elites. She concludes that Philadelphia’s anchor-based model has contributed to the disempowerment

and isolation of inner-city neighborhoods, and a continuation of geographically based inequality.

When race is considered within the context of institutions, the equitable benefits of anchor-based

strategies become more dubious. Imbroscio fails to acknowledge that large anchor institutions like

hospitals and universities have been in the business of pursuing neighborhood revitalization for

decades, often to the detriment of minority communities. Worthy (1977) described the processes by

which hospitals, universities, and other large institutions expanded their campuses and displaced mi-

nority residents in the 1970s as a form of “institutional rape.” These processes were heavily insulated

from public scrutiny and unaccountable to poor, minority residents. In the contemporary period, some

of the same shortcomings identified by Worthy were attributed to hospital and university expansion

in Buffalo’s inner city (Silverman, Lewis, & Patterson, 2014). Moreover, governance structures in

anchor institutions continue to be hierarchical in nature, and historically underrepresented minorities

and residents from communities impacted by eds and meds revitalization strategies remain absent

Despite new-found faith in the capacity

of anchor institutions to promote equitable urban revitalization, the institutional mechanisms that

perpetuate r acial inequality through them remain in place.

The Merits of Keeping Race Center Stage in U.S. Urban Policy