Reparations For Amherst Releases Draft Report On Black White Disparities In Town

Reparations for Amherst (R4A) has released a draft of their report to the Town Council entitied Report on Anti-Black Racism and Black/White Disparities in the Town of Amherst. A copy of the draft can be found here or here.

R4A will address the Town Council at the Council’s regular meeting on May 17 to support the creation of a town committee on racial justice/equity and for setting aside meaningful funds for racial justice/equity work in town.  That meeting begins at 6:30 p.m and can be joined via Zoom with this link.

The authors note that the report is still being revised and expanded and that they expect the report to serve as an “open document” in perpetuity. The report was authored by Matthew Andrews, Jeff Fishman, Daiana Griffith, Mattea Kramer, Michele Miller, Mary Porcino, and Anita Sarro and edited by Mattea Kramer.

We reproduce the executive summary below with permission of the authors.

Executive Summary
The information provided in this report describes a present-day and historical Amherst that is not the progressive, equitable place that many white residents imagine. Instead, research in key areas—housing, education, health, income and employment, transportation, and policing—reveals systemic racism and classism that marginalizes Black residents and inflicts harm.

Housing

• Communities of color have faced implicit and explicit racial discrimination in housing in Amherst throughout its history. Often deprived of full participation in the local economy, many Black residents or would-be residents find Amherst unaffordable.
• Only 1.8% of owner-occupied housing is occupied by Black residents.
• A disproportionate number of Black households are “rent burdened,” that is, forced to spend one third or more of their income on housing alone. 

In Amherst today, racial bias in housing has primarily taken the form of NIMBYism, or Not In My Backyard. Many white residents say they support the idea of affordable housing—just not in their own neighborhood. Butternut Farms, a 26-unit affordable rental development, was delayed for five years and cost its developer over $150,000 in legal fees in a suit brought by Orchard Valley abutters, who claimed harm for reasons that included 20% of the units would be set aside for minority households.

Education

• The Amherst-Pelham Regional School District’s own data over the past 30 years show that Black students are disproportionately disciplined relative to their white peers and tracked into lower-level courses, and that staff are disproportionately white relative to the student body.
• Complaints from students, parents, staff, and the local chapter of the NAACP have cited harmful racist incidents against both students and faculty of color.
• In meetings with an outside consultant, some stakeholders have question whether both racial equity and academic excellence can be achieved, as they are, in their view, mutually exclusive.
• The balance of power in the school district remains overwhelmingly white, with white stakeholders failing to express sufficient discontent to alter a school system that disfavors people of color.

Public records from the district reveal a pattern in which staff and students of color are asked to participate in time-intensive diversity or equity committees and to make recommendations based on their findings. In the wake of such efforts, administrators undertake little in the way of meaningful change. Subsequently, there is administrative turnover, and the pattern repeats.

Racism also permeates the campus of the University of Massachusetts, where hurtful and sometimes dangerous acts of racial hostility erupt against students and faculty. Likewise, Amherst College, whose founding was supported in part by the intergenerational white wealth accumulated through slaveholding, continues in the 21st century to be an institution where overt racially-threatening acts occur, and where alumni describe a culture that is alienating and in which Black faculty were 33 times as likely to be denied tenure as their white colleagues between 2000 and 2016.

Health

The culture of a community is a strong determinant of the health and well-being of its residents. Marginalization, isolation, and exclusion that results from interpersonal and institutional racism have negative consequences for Black residents in Amherst. The mechanism is clear: living under systemic racism perpetuates a state of physiological stress, ultimately causing physical and mental illness.

• According to Cooley Dickinson, local Black communities bear a disproportionate burden of disease, suffering higher rates of chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular conditions, asthma, and diabetes. Both adults and children suffer disproportionate levels of depression, suicidal thoughts, and self-harm.
• Racism affects Black patients in the form of medical bias. Local providers acknowledge that bias and prejudice exist throughout their agencies, specifically in a lack of staff diversity, policies, assumptions, prejudgments, and intolerance.  Meanwhile, health outcomes, including survival, vastly improve when Black patients receive care from Black providers.
• A significant threat to health, food insecurity affects 38% of all Hampshire county households. Last year, 24% of those using the food pantry at the Amherst Survival Center were Black.
• In Amherst, the safety-net health facilities Musante Clinic and Amherst Survival Center Free Clinic cannot meet all the needs of the local at-risk population.
• Black communities show higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death from Covid-19. Although vaccines are now available, Black residents of Massachusetts have a vaccination rate that is half that of whites.

Income and Employment

• A disproportionate number of people of color in Amherst live below the poverty line.
• As of 2019, the Black median family income in Amherst was $45,464; white median family income was 2.4 times greater, $108,500.
• The University of Massachusetts is the largest employer in town, yet only 5.1% of all employees identified as Black/African American. Already underrepresented, Black employees were more likely to be furloughed indefinitely due to Covid-19.
• Black residents may hold two or even three jobs in order to make ends meet.
• Most small businesses are white-owned, and Black would-be entrepreneurs face particular barriers to establishing a business in Amherst.

Transportation

• Black residents are considerably more likely than their white counterparts to rely on public transit and to be among the 52% of PVTA riders who have no alternative means of travel.
• While the PVTA is fairly reliable and convenient for riders from the Five Colleges, permanent residents face considerable hurdles, including service interruptions and a lack of basic amenities such as sheltered bus stops.
• There are no consistent routes from Amherst to Holyoke, Springfield, and Greenfield, where technical and community colleges are located, affecting access to higher education.

The high cost of living in Amherst and racially-biased practices that routinely impose higher costs for Black people to purchase, finance, and insure automobiles, make care ownership out of reach for many. Lack of reliable transportation then interferes with the ability to access essential health care, fresh food, and educational and employment opportunities, all of which negatively and materially affect overall health.

Policing

Amherst’s Community Safety Working Group is conducting a detailed assessment of policing in town using data provided by the Amherst Police Department. This report does not duplicate their efforts. However, preliminary data from the APD indicate that,

• Black drivers in Amherst speed less and are involved in fewer car accidents than their white peers, but are stopped and searched disproportionately for “investigatory” reasons.
• Black drivers are 1.5 times more likely than whites to be arrested following a traffic stop.