The Urban League of Greater Madison held its 14th annual Excellence in Workforce and Economic Development May 6 at the Monona Community and Convention Center.
The summit is a day-long venture that bridges attendees with speakers and workshops in issues in economics, workforce and community development. Its larger goal is to push a collective effort to advance talent, opportunity and growth through experts in various careers like business, tech, human resources, consulting and many more.
“The energy in the room, the exchange of ideas and the collective commitment to making a difference, has truly been uplifting. This has just been a very impactful day,” said Dr. Ruben Anthony, CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison. “These types of gatherings remind us of our shared vision and our collective strengths that we bring to the table. There were so many good things brought out today that I think we can take away with us.
Main features of the summit were a panel discussion and addresses from two keynote speakers in the morning and afternoon.
The panel discussion, “Depoliticizing DEI,” saw Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, Black Oxygen podcast host and TruStage Chief Diversity Officer Angela Russell and President of United Way of Dane County Renee Moe dissect the current political landscape of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Mayor Rhodes-Conway affirmed Madison’s continued support for DEI initiatives in the city despite continued political pressure from the Trump Administration.
“I have trouble with the language. What even is DEI? I don’t think we know what they mean when they say that,” Mayor Rhodes-Conway said. “It hasn’t changed what the city is doing.”
The Mayor notes that the city does still want to receive federal grants if doable. She points at the language on social media from the Trump Administration not lining up with the language that is still being put in grants. Chiefly, the bottom line is that city’s like Madison are being pushed to follow federal law — which Mayor Rhodes-Conway affirmed is still in line with legal requirements. ‘’
Russell gave valuable insight into the private sector conditions of DEI. While she feels like her job hasn’t changed in its function, but does interact more with TruStage’s government relations and legal teams.
“I have been surprised about how much I’ve actually had to define diversity, equity and inclusion,” Russell said.
Russell dipped into her path to TruStage when it was CUNA Mutual. At the time of her hiring around a decade, she pushed that she didn’t want to be an empty figurehead to soothe diversity-based initiatives. Her employer was happy at the notion.
She came at a time before companies made firm DEI pushes, when efforts were in its infancy. Post-George Floyd, she noticed that companies that made an effort in DEI don’t appear to be as concerned with political pressures.
“Organizations that started their DEI work [later], they didn’t have the depth of knowledge systems change buy-ins that they needed to have in order to stay the course,” Russell said. “Apparently, staying the course is advocacy at this point.”
Moe offered the current state in Madison’s rich nonprofit sector. Much like Russell and Mayor Rhodes-Conway, Moe is pressed to stay the course.
“One of our board members said to me, ‘Don’t let the words get in the way of the work,’” Moe said. “There are historic consequences to outcomes that we see today, and the work that we’re trying to do to change outcomes is critical to who we are.”
One of the keynote speakers at the summit was Diana Patton, a former civil rights attorney and current consultant for leadership development. Patton is the granddaughter of civil rights activist Luella Talmadge Jackson.
Her grandmother was a prominent figure in Ohio with a breadth of work in civil rights with the founding of the state’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Patton’s address tied the power of overcoming circumstances to prosperity with her grandmother’s story.
“How is it that you had an eighth-grade education and came into the small community, predominantly white, yet you didn’t look at those circumstances and make them kill you? What made you think you could take the wounds that you had in your past and just put those aside to start the NAACP in Fostoria, Ohio?” Patton said. “My granny knew who she was. She knew what her power was.”
(Photo by Omar Waheed.)
The afternoon’s keynote speaker was Andre Perry, senior fellow and director of the Center for Community Uplift at the Brookings Institution, who spoke on how Black life expectancy has improved and its contributing factors.
His most recent book, “The Black Scorecard,” the focus of his speech, shows how Black people are thriving in different places contrary to counter negatives.
“There is this played-out narrative that black people are in the negative. Actually, in many different sectors, we are improving. The reason why we have this focus is because we’re always comparing Black to white,” Perry said. “We have different policy contents. It is apples and oranges in some cases.”
Perry criticizes the models typically used to measure conditions of Black communities. Comparisons are almost always negative due to constant comparison to other racial and ethnic groups rather than tracking individual improvement.
His book looks at the life expectancy of Black communities to other Black communities around the country which ascertains its data points through factors that have an impact on all other groups.
Data points are gathered through factors like educational attainment, homeownership, public infrastructure, safety, marriage, access to income and many others. The data is used within Perry’s model to predict the average life span of any Black person in a city and compares it to national data.
For Madison, the predicted life expectancy, weighted from pertinent data from Perry’s research, is 75 years. The actual life expectancy of Black people is actually 72.6 years. The average life expectancy for Black nationally is 74.9, according to the Black Progress Index.
Perry said cities like Madison are promising with its education attainment, safety, income access and public infrastructure, but homeownership and its weakness in retaining Black workforce post-education needs work. Legislation and policy will accomplish more positive outcomes, Perry said.
“We’re not going to nonprofit all these problems away,” Perry said. “We need to take what you’re doing [nonprofits] and make it into policy. If it can’t be made into policy, then what are you doing? This is the time for philanthropy to demonstrate what can be done. This is the time for nonprofits to demonstrate what can be done, not just do poverty remediation, which is the work of the government.”
