Education, African-Americans and Louisville

The Greater Louisville Project just released a study comparing Louisville to it's peer cities with concerns to educational attainment of Black folks in Louisville. As you may have guessed, Louisville ranks near the bottom. Here are some choice quotes:

"More alarming: Based on three years of data from the American Community Survey, 30% of white adults held a bachelor’s degree or higher, but only 13% of African Americans did – the lowest among Louisville’s 15 peer cities. The racial gap in college attainment has widened since 1990, although the percentage of African Americans with either an associate’s degree or some college has increased."

To better illustrate that point here is the chart from that same report:


Yes, there we are dead last. We also aren't doing so well with high school graduation rates either. All of this begs the question. Why? I think I may have a theory. I would argue the main reason is that African-Americans that have college degrees leave Louisville, or if they graduate from a local school they leave. Let's be honest. Louisville isn't Atlanta. We just don't offer the same, or any really, opportunities for young Black professionals. Most of the people I grew up with left and will never come back.

Louisville doesn't have enough "middle management" jobs in the 30-60K range. The ones that are here you pretty much have to know somebody to get your foot in the door. That's the other problem. Louisville is a cliquish city. If you run the right circles you will always be employed at some level. If you don't. Well, sorry about your luck.

Cities like Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, and Chicago make it relatively easy for young blacks to move to and plug themselves in. Louisville doesn't.

Segregation, Why Should I Care?

I was talking to one of my friends about my latest blog post and he said something interesting to me. "Why should I care about Western Louisville?" He liked what I wrote, and he understood where I was coming from. He just didn't see why he should care. So, I thought I would explain why he should care, or at least take an interest.

I can some up why you should care in one word. Demographics. If you care at all about this city then you should care about where the demographics and what they mean. In the not to distant future there will be more Black and Brown folks than White folks. The vast majority of kids under 13 are either Black or Brown. That's even true in Jefferson County. Did you know the US is the 5th largest spanish speaking nation in the world?

The city can't keep ignoring the neighborhoods in which the vast majority of these populations live. Why? Because they are the future of the city. The future of the country. If things don't change then more and more young Black and Brown will do like most of friends have already done. Move.

Almost every black kid I knew growing up has either moved to Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, and Chicago. Most of them to Atlanta. They moved because they wanted to be around other young black professionals. Something that you really don't see a lot of in Louisville.

I know a lot of young white kids move as well. We need to keep all of our young, bright, and talented professionals. The only problem is that the pool of young white talented kids are shrinking while the pool of young black and brown kids are growing. We can ignore the black and brown kids like we have been, but that would put us at a serious disadvantage going forward. Why do that yourself?

The other problem is that we don't treat all people the same. The years of racial and economic segregation have taken their toll on the Black community. This means it's going to take great resources to improve those communities. These are resources that we are going to have to spend if we want to remain competitive. Not just Louisville, but the nation as a whole. If Louisville can start now then we will have a HUGE leg up on every other community.

It's not hard to attract to young black professionals. You just have to make us feel wanted and that we have the same opportunity as everybody else to compete. The city may have to start to black chamber of commerce, or an arts center in Western Louisville. We have to do our part as well. It can be done.

When I was in high school and college all of my friends were telling me that Atlanta was the place to go. When I went to Atlanta for college i could see why. I had never seen so many young black professionals in one place. A few years later the hot cities were Charlotte, Houston, and Dallas.

Louisville can do the same thing. The West-End is a beautiful part of town. It doesn't have anywhere near the blight that black communities in other cities have. The foundation is here or are we afraid that Louisville may become to poor, old and black?

Revitalizing Russell Pt 2

Times are rough and tough like leather...

C.R.E.A.M.

Raekwon the Chef

This has been much harder to write than I had initially thought. In part 1 I gave you a short history on how we got to where we are. In this part I wanted to give some concrete solutions about what can be done. I was going to write a long piece about what should be done, but because of my radio show and other events we are doing I didn't have the time. Instead I'm going talk about a couple of ideas that I had.

1) 8664

I can't speak for CARR on this one, but I can speak for myself. We need to tear down 64 as it runs through downtown, and create waterfront park west. This would help to reconnect Western Louisville to the rest of the city and would also help to spur redevelopment dollars west of 9th street.

The reason I like the 8664 plan is because it reconnects our city back to our biggest resource. The River. It would save Kentucky almost $1 Billion. Build the East End bridge, tear down 8664, and expand Waterfront Park west.

2) If you are going to build low income housing and apartments all over Russell at least make them mixed income. If you are going to build a low income apartment complex make it mixed income. Have 1/4 for residents of public housing, 1/4 for senior citizens, 1/4 income based, and 1/4 market rate.

This brings the diversity that a neighborhood needs in-order to re-stabilize itself. If the city is going to build apartment buildings they should also look at building a mixed use building. Apartments above and retail below.

3) Bring back the forgivable second mortgage. When we purchased our house we used the forgivable second mortgage and it was a big help. However, that money was just for new construction. We should expand that to include rehabbed housing. That way we could save some of the older houses that are still in the neighborhood and keep our identity.

Although the housing market is relatively weak, I think having a second forgivable mortgage, the one time $8000 first time home buyer, and the recently passed tax breaks for building/remodeling green we should be able to move some houses.

4) If we build these houses and apartments then we should look at partnering with Youth Build to build some of these units. That way we can train kids in the area to build houses in their/our neighborhood. They would learn not only how to build houses, but to build green. Thus preparing them for the future, and hopefully providing a financial foundation on which the community can grow.

These are just some of my ideas. More to follow.