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(In)Equity and My American Dream Score

On the 4th of July this year the United States celebrated its 241st year of independence from the British Commonwealth. For some communities in the United States this “birthday” celebration is an annual (sometimes painful) reminder that people have been resisting subjugation and fighting for freedom since colonizers arrived in the Americas. Independence Day in the United States is also a reminder to some individuals that there is a profound difference between the ideals of freedom and equity, which are central components of the American Dream, and their lived experience.

The Ford Foundation has been “talking and thinking a lot about how inequality affects our ability to achieve the fabled American Dream: the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules then you should be able to get ahead.” The American Dream is a fable for some populations of people in the United States, particularly Native Americans and Black people, because no amount of hard work has ever been enough and the rules for upward mobility have changed constantly. In effort to “jump-start honest discussions about the role of inequality and opportunity in our lives,” the Ford Foundation, in partnership with Moving Up, developed a “tool that aims to help us examine the many experiences, systems, and institutions that have helped—or hindered—our path to where we are today.” Moving Up is an initiative “based on the premise that if we want to engage people on the issues like poverty, inequality and opportunity, then we must find new ways to bring them into the conversation.” Based on a series of questions about who you are, your parents, where you grew up, your childhood, your health, your education, your luck, your friends, your use and access to public services, your character and your effort, the tool, a calculator of the aforementioned factors, produces an American Dream Score.

My American Dream Score is 74/100. The message with my score stated that, “while hard work contributes to success, each of us have encountered different people, experiences, systems, and services that have helped or hindered our efforts. Your score of 74 means you’ve had some factors working for you, but more that you’ve had to work to overcome.” As for how my score compared to the range of scores, a score of 53 or less means that “nearly every factor has been working in your favor. If your score is 54-65 then the majority of factors have been in your favor. If your score is 66-79 then you’ve had more working against you than for you. If your score is 80 or higher then almost every factor has been working against you.”

The tool identified factors that helped me “move up,” including that I was “able to tap into a strong social network, grew up in place great for raising kids;” had “access to a good education;” was “bless[ed] by some good fortune;” and “benefited from public goods and services.” I have a lot of questions about the evidence and validity of the algorithm the tool is predicated on. Despite my questions, one of the factors in the calculation, “where you grew up,” included reference to research by Raj Chetty and his Equality of Opportunity Project. This factor is of particular interest to me as a student of the relationship between physical space and power. Chetty “has identified five factors that are correlated to neighborhoods that promote upward mobility: two parent households, good schools, high social capital, and low segregation and inequity.” Patriots fighting in the American War of Independence understood that freedom is linked to land. That link has not changed, which is why neighborhood (i.e., residential location) matters. In a blog I wrote earlier this year, Marching Peacefully Towards Being More Separate and More Unequal?, I discusses the importance of understanding how individual decisions about residential location affects inequality.

The tool also identified the factors I worked to overcome as: “the economy wasn’t as strong when you entered the job market, needed to develop strong character traits to cope, your parents may have struggled to give you all you needed, had to deal with some tough things as a kid, experienced some health issues, had to work harder than most, some may have held your race against you, you were more likely to be discriminated against based on gender.” The authors state that the calculator does not weigh any one factor more than the other and argue that “while research generally shows that some factors correlate more to success than others, that doesn’t mean they were more important to you personally.” While there are likely others, a critical factor not accounted for in the calculation is the ability for one to be able to be one’s authentic self as a (im)mobility factor. Equity cannot be achieved without inclusivity; inclusivity cannot be achieved without authenticity. Being able to be one’s authentic self is not a factor one can work to overcome. What one often does is suppress their authentic self after considering the tradeoffs (i.e. weighing the cost and benefits) of being one’s authentic self. I am constantly making decisions about where and how to show up in places and spaces. Sometimes I choose to show up just as Dr. Green, which pays into the politic of credential capital, and sometimes I show up as La Tonya, which to some immediately signals that I am a Black woman possibly with a certain political leaning. While this suppression of authentic self is probably not a mental or spiritual tax individuals in the dominant culture and/or in certain contexts pay, suppressing my authentic self is a strategy I employ often as I try determine how to live free; being upwardly mobile and pursuing the American Dream is a luxury until equity is achieved.

Advancing equity requires understanding how power is distributed and maintained; it also requires addressing the impact of power inequities. Equity is one part of economic, political, racial, and social justice. The United States has never had equity and we do not have a shared vision of concrete outcomes. In order to create a shared vision we must be willing to talk openly not only about race–including having honest dialogue about attitudes, culture, false and singular narratives, policies, practices, and procedures that reinforce differential outcomes or fail to eliminate them–but also how all individuals can participate and prosper in this country to the best of their ability regardless of ability, economic class, geographic location, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Advancing equity is not a destination, a fable, or a dream. We can create a fair inclusion country, and world, where we can truly live our dreams. In order to build that society, we must be willing to both share our individual and collective stories authentically and to listen deeply to each other’s individual and collective stories without gaslighting, the doubting or questioning of one’s experience, memory, or perception. If you are uncertain exactly where to begin, begin with the Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America website; you can utilize the tool, post your score, share your story, and read other people’s story. Utilizing our individual American Dream Score could be a provocative (or safe) jumping-off point or subject matter to continue to have honest conversations about the role of inequality and opportunity in our lives and communities.

La Tonya Green, PhD is FFI’s Director of Evidence and Knowledge. She is responsible for generating knowledge and evidence about the applicability and effectiveness of the Full Frame Approach and the Five Domains of Wellbeing. La Tonya is heading up FFI’s race and equity initiatives.

Two new opportunities to join our team and build an organization with national impact!

FFI is growing and looking for two new members to join our dynamic team!

We’ve added a new position for a creative and energetic Director of Communications who will lead the charge of developing a strategic communications plan for equitable access to wellbeing and for FFI. This person will grow brand awareness, expand FFI’s reach and resources, and help propel a movement for wellbeing. Learn more about this opportunity and how to apply!

We are also looking for a spirited, “can do” person to join the team as the Special Assistant to the CEO. This position provides advanced, wide-ranging and confidential strategic, operational, administrative and programmatic support to the CEO and plays a vital role in FFI’s success by maximizing the CEO’s time to best achieve the organization’s goals. Learn more about this opportunity and how to apply!

Deadline to apply for both open positions is July 18.

New resource for supporting wellbeing for youth involved in the juvenile justice system

Throughout our deep partnership with Missouri Division of Youth Services, the Five Domains of Wellbeing has become more and more embedded in the state’s juvenile justice system and is supporting youth in successfully transitioning back into the community and making sustainable, positive change. FFI collaborated with DYS to develop The Five Domains of Wellbeing for Youth and Youth Involved in the Juvenile Justice System, a new resource for anyone engaging with and advocating for these youth, with specific guidance for juvenile justice staff who wish to reinforce existing and develop new practices and systems that support wellbeing.

FFI is hiring! Join our team in MA and MO!

The Full Frame Initiative has new opportunities to join our amazing team! We are looking for a new Human Resources Manager and an Administrative Assistant in our Greenfield office, and a Training & Capacity Building Manager and a Community Engagement & Capacity Building Manager in Missouri. Work with us to increase access to wellbeing to break cycles of poverty and violence. Are you, or do you know, someone who thrives in a fast-paced environment, is passionate about social change and eager to grow with a growing organization? Apply now or share widely with your networks! Learn more on the Jobs & Internships page.

Marching Peacefully Towards Being More Separate and More Unequal?

On Saturday, January 21st several FFI staff members participated in the Women’s March in Washington, DC and in sister marches in Boston and Greenfield, Massachusetts and in New York City. The pictures and reflections posted on FFI’s Twitter and Facebook page are testimony of the multitude of reasons people marched that day, including for the rights of undocumented immigrants, for the rights of individuals with a disability, and for the right to have control over our own body. I was in New York City with hundreds of thousands of people who were marching, standing, and dancing together for equality and freedom as we made our way west on 42nd Street and north on 5th Ave or through adjacent side streets and avenues when that crowd was too robust to move. While we were a part of the millions of people around the world who marched for a myriad reasons that day, the future of our democracy is not teetering on whether or not we all show up when it is time to march for change in public policy. Our democracy depends on our willingness to pay attention to and not be agnostic about how our individual decisions can affect the wellbeing of others. Colloquially, wellbeing is often described as what can occur after one has moved through the hierarchy of needs—physiological, safety, belonging/love, esteem, and self-actualization—psychologist Abraham Maslow identified. Wellbeing, however, is not achieved when one is able to maintain a state of self-actualization nor is it a destination point. It is a state of being that requires the weighing of assets and consideration of tradeoffs. Our collective wellbeing depends on the decisions we make as individuals as we weigh assets and tradeoffs.

BostonMarch

The Sunday before the Women’s March, on January 15th, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 88 years old if he were alive. Would he think the marches would result in meaningful positive change for the marginalized? What assets and tradeoffs would he argue need to be weighed? Would he be skeptical? The August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom he helped lead included a “What We Demand” statement with ten points including “comprehensive and effective civil rights legislation from the present Congress—without compromise or filibuster—to guarantee all Americans access to all public accommodations, decent housing, adequate and integrated education, and the right to vote.” The March resulted in increased momentum for the civil rights movement, which resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. While it is too early to know what the Women’s marches will produce, what I do know is that despite federal legislation and resources, we are still fighting—over 50 years later—for many of the demands from the March on Washington to be met. Although according to the University of California, Los Angeles’ Civil Rights Project’s 2014 report Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future that “there has not been a major national study on school segregation, its costs, and solutions for almost 50 years, since the 1967 report requested by President Johnson, Racial Isolation in the Public Schools,” it has been argued that schools in the United States were more racially segregated in 2015 than they were in the 1960s. Civil rights legislation was signed 10 years after the US Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka. Brown vs. The Board of Education overturned the 1896 US Supreme Court decision in the Homer A. Plessy v. John H. Ferguson case, which upheld state racial segregation laws (e.g., Jim Crow Laws) of public systems including education and transportation. Racial segregation under the ideology of “separate but equal” systems was standard doctrine in laws across the US until the Brown vs. The Board of Education decision. In addition to the consequences of legally sanctioned racial segregation, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, in the The New York Times Magazine article, “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City,” details how individual decisions made by well-meaning individuals about where to live and which school to send their child to can affect other students’ and families’ access to opportunity and various forms of capital—including credential, cultural, and social. Because of individual decisions that uphold unjust systems, coupled with other mechanisms such as discriminatory employment and housing policies and practices, some schools in the US are more racially and economically isolated than they were when the marchers demanded the “desegregation of all school districts in 1963.” More specifically, in the interview “How The Systemic Segregation Of Schools Is Maintained By ‘Individual Choices’,” on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Hannah-Jones argues that individuals can make good decisions for their children and other people’s children too. Making those decisions requires weighing assets and tradeoffs, which can cause tension when trying to reconcile one’s beliefs and values with one’s actions. Being willfully blind to the collective results of our individual decisions does not invalidate school demographic data that reveals that we are making decisions based not only on what we desire for our own children but also based on our beliefs about other people and their children. We are making decisions that secure or maintain advantage for our own child while ignoring or being indifferent about systems that are unjust for other people’s children. No matter what the circumstances, we all want the same thing—wellbeing for ourselves and for those we care about. The harsh reality, however, is we are maintaining a country that is not only segregated educationally but also racially, economically, politically, residentially, and socially. Being civically engaged is not the same as resisting nor is resisting the same as offering alternatives to systems that value the wellbeing of one group at the expense of another. In “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” Dr. King wrote: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” In short, even the most social justice-minded individuals might be making decisions that are contributing to the country being more separate and more inequitable.

In a recent letter to allies, “Increasing Access to Wellbeing in Small Spaces and Interactions,” Katya Fels Smyth, FFI’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, reflecting on the legacy of Dr. King on his national holiday, wrote about the ways she can increase access to wellbeing for others in her day to day interactions. Our collective right to wellbeing is dependent upon us not only resisting the policies, procedures, practices, and norms that do not uphold and/or that undermine the mandates of the Constitution, but it is also dependent upon our commitment to making individual decisions and taking deliberate actions that increase access to wellbeing for some of the individuals and groups of people we marched as a member of or in solidarity with. We cannot wait. We must act with urgency and have the moral fortitude to not only speak truth to power while we march but also while we make individual decisions. Onward?

Juan Carlos Areán elected to FFI’s Board of Directors

FFI is delighted to announce that international activist and longtime ally Juan Carlos Areán has been elected to our Board of Directors. Juan Carlos was one of the first people to join FFI’s council of advisors in 2008 and has since been an active advocate for our work through his anti-violence, gender equity and racial equity work.

Juan Carlos is an internationally recognized activist, public speaker, trainer and facilitator, and published author. Since 1991, he has worked to engage men across different cultures to become better fathers, intimate partners and allies to end domestic violence and achieve gender equity. He is presently the Director of the Faith and Community Based Youth Violence Prevention Initiative at Futures Without Violence. Previously, he served as Director of the National Latin@ Network at Casa de Esperanza and as a Sexual Assault Prevention Specialist at Harvard University.

Juan Carlos is a founding member of the United Nations Network of Men Leaders to combat violence against women created by former Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. He has served as an expert in many media outlets and has led hundreds of workshops and presentations throughout the United States, the Americas and the Caribbean, as well as in Europe, Asia, the US Congress and the United Nations in New York and Geneva.

A person of many interests, he has a Master’s degree in music composition and is an ordained interfaith interspiritual minister.

Investment from The Kresge Foundation will fuel FFI’s growth

FFI is thrilled and honored to announce we have received a multi-year grant from the Kresge Foundation. This investment of operating support will help us to grow dramatically and sustainably in the coming years, expanding our infrastructure and operations and leveraging additional investments so that we can eventually work with over 50 nonprofit organizations and systems seeking to create the conditions that provide more equitable access to wellbeing for people and communities living at the intersection of poverty, violence, trauma and oppression.

“Full Frame Initiative shows how human services organizations and policies can evolve to advance person-centered supports that increase access to opportunity for people,” said Sandra Ambrozy, senior program officer with The Kresge Foundation’s Human Services Program. “With our investment, we hope that FFI will be able to scale and expand its model and approach and build the case for a wellbeing framework in the human services sector.”

Increasing access to wellbeing in small spaces and interactions

Dear Allies,

For me and perhaps for you, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was particularly relevant, resonant and poignant this year. In the face of forces and messages that can erode people’s access to wellbeing, we’re all called on to take peaceful action to hold the line. Many of us are joining larger conversations, groups, events and public statements, and there is an energy around many of these that is positive and infectious. Some of us are reclaiming our activist voices, and others, like my kids, are just discovering theirs for the first time. I find myself newly hopeful but (I think) not naive.

Yesterday, as news of activist voices in protests, counter-protests and marches dominated, I took a moment to reflect on where so much of access to wellbeing is enhanced or blocked: in seemingly small, invisible actions that are important and meaningful that have nothing to do with political party or polarities.

As an imperfect person, some of these are harder for me to do consistently than I like to admit, which is exactly why I need to engage in them: I need to own where my deep, fierce commitment to access to wellbeing isn’t always matching up to my actions. Hard work. I’d love your company.

So here are my first two commitments for January:

1) Have a conversation with someone who sees the world very differently from how I see it, do less than half the talking, and really listen for how that person’s perspective makes sense even if I disagree.
Why this increases access to wellbeing: Our drive for social connectedness to others is strong, as is our related need to feel we belong. But this drive can create echo-chambers and bubbles, and that fuels division.

2) In settings and situations where I feel safe as a straight, white, middle-class woman, taking a moment to try to identify whether there are things occurring that might make someone else feel less safe, and remedying those as much as possible, even if that pushes me to be less comfortable.
Why this increases access to wellbeing: Safety is a combination of external situations and our personal perspectives and histories. What is safe for one person many not feel or be safe for another person.

The response to my earlier post, Why It’s Time for a National Right to Wellbeing, was inspiring and galvanizing, and reaffirmed FFI’s deep belief that it is, indeed, the time for a right to wellbeing. So I invite you to join me in taking your own first steps in the small spaces of individual interactions in addition to whatever actions you’re taking in a larger sphere. FFI is working on simple ways to collect and disseminate actions people across the country are taking to build access to wellbeing; in the meantime, please feel free to share by email, Twitter (tag @FullFrameInitv and we’ll retweet it!) or on Facebook (@FullFrameInitiative).

You can also help seed a national right to wellbeing movement by sharing Why It’s Time for a National Right to Wellbeing with your friends, colleagues, allies, and those with whom you disagree, too. And please share with me resonant posts, organizations and work.

FFI is pivoting quickly to steer into this work more intentionally and explicitly. We all need to keep calling for change, and being the change we want to make in this world.

I look forward to hearing from you again.

Onward!

Katya

It’s time to build a wellbeing infrastructure—are you in?

Too often, we treat wellbeing as something that’s nice to have. An extra.

It’s not: wellbeing is vital. It’s what we’re all hardwired for.

When it’s treated as an extra, we’re sicker, lonelier, less safe. Our families fare worse, too.

When it’s taken seriously—when systems, services and communities enable us to access wellbeing and to follow our inner drive for wellbeing—we have the fundamental ingredients for health and hope.

That access to wellbeing requires infrastructure. Not roads and bridges, but the places and spaces that support social connections and belonging; where the color of a young person’s skin or the language in which a parent prays for a child doesn’t increase or decrease their safety; where people actually can be agents in shaping their destinies, and more. This is the infrastructure of wellbeing.

The Full Frame Initiative is dedicated to increasing access to wellbeing for the people and families who have been struggling at the margins, often for years or generations. People who are caught in systems designed to solve specific problems that, in reality, often create new roadblocks to wellbeing, furthering downward spirals instead of helping people break cycles of poverty, violence, trauma and oppression.

Imagine a young mother mandated to attend parenting groups that conflict with her job, so she loses her job and then she can’t afford home heating oil in the winter. Her kids get sick when she tries to heat the house by turning the stove on all day, and the spiral continues.

This was never the intent of the parenting class mandate, but it is the impact when we don’t have the required infrastructure to support real change and progress.

Right now, more and more people in America feel the onramps to wellbeing are blocked or riddled with potholes, and their attempts to move forward only create more problems and less wellbeing.

We—together—can fix this: we can build a national wellbeing infrastructure so that everyone has equal opportunity for wellbeing, including those who are now the most marginalized. For that young mom, this means that instead of a mandated parenting class that creates more harms for her and her family, she is supported in finding a way forward that is meaningful and sustainable for her.

For FFI, this means continuing our groundbreaking work with government systems, nonprofits and communities that seek to transform themselves to be more effective, efficient and aligned with what people need and crave.

We can’t do it alone. It takes allies and advocates, champions and friends.

And it takes funding.

FFI’s work is more urgently needed and more relevant than ever. If you believe that wellbeing is essential, please give generously to pave the potholes and remove the roadblocks so that everyone has equal access to wellbeing.

Thank you,

Katya Fels Smyth
Founder & CEO

What it takes to build a national wellbeing infrastructure and what that infrastructure looks like for people.

More Ways to Give

What does it look like to address violence and oppression by learning from what is going well for people and communities most affected?

For the last 18 months FFI has been engaged with four project partners and three California community-based teams in a collaborative initiative to apply asset-based strategies in addressing multiple forms of violence and oppression. Throughout the project, partners and teams explored what it really takes to move away from a problem-defined, deficit-based approach in order to improve access to wellbeing for the people, families and communities living through violence and oppression. This project summary shares the asset-based methodologies that were explored and lessons learned throughout the project.

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