One of America’s most accomplished entertainers has joined a prestigious, District-based think tank to study and come up with strategies to confront the nation’s structural racism and examine the well-being of people of color.
“When we study the stories of people and places, we see that everyone can thrive if given the right tools and opportunities,” said artist and social activist John Legend at a forum sponsored by the District’s Brookings Institution (Brookings) on April 29. “I’m proud to partner with Brookings to fight for sustained investment in our local communities and reframe the narrative around racial equity by focusing on solutions.”
Legend, 44, has been an entertainer for over two decades. He is the first Black man and second youngest person to have won all four of the major American entertainment awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. The celebrated artist founded HUMANLEVEL, a national initiative designed to uplift communities unevenly impacted by institutional racism.
Brookings, located in Northwest and founded in 1916, is a research group that specializes in subjects dealing with the social sciences and produces books, papers and workshops on its findings. The partnership is tasked with providing research and policy analysis, challenging current disparity-focused reporting on equity and racial justice issues, and promoting stories of local grassroots momentum for community leaders and policymakers focused on shutting down barriers causing racial and economic strife.
Bending the Moral Arc Toward (Racial) Justice
A panel discussion—Bending the Moral Arc Toward (Racial) Justice– sponsored by Brookings and moderated by Legend consisted of Brookings scholars and leaders and executives with nonprofit organizations. The discussion took place at the Gallup Building in Northwest before an audience of 70.
Brookings senior fellow Dr. Andre Perry made a presentation primarily focusing on the well-being of minorities.
“We need to talk about well-being,” said Perry. “Why is it crucial to race?”
Perry revealed statistics showing the American people in general are happiest in southern states such as North Carolina and Georgia and the saddest in the Great Lakes and Appalachian states. In charts showing the country’s metropolitan areas where Americans regardless of race are happy, the Washington, D.C. area ranks in the top 10 for all groups except Latinos. The charts show that the Atlanta metropolitan area is tops for happiness for Blacks and Latinos while whites are the most satisfied in Hawaii’s urban areas. Additionally, Perry’s charts reveal Blacks in small and mid-sized southern cities, such as Greenville, South Carolina, are thriving.
“We need to change the narrative when it comes to our cities,” Perry said. “We focus on what is wrong with our cities, but we should also look at what is right.”
Bree Jones, who served on the panel, is the founder and chief executive officer of Parity, a nonprofit that purchases vacant buildings and homes in Baltimore and sells them to interested homebuyers. Jones said well-being financially often is the result of whether a person owns a home and builds wealth in that manner. She said Baltimore presently has 15,000 vacant building but has so far sold 40 of them to families.
Jones said it is common to view the term capital in strictly financial terms related to wealth.
“We need to broaden the definition of wealth,” she said. “There is political capital, social capital, and capital in the form of such things as clean water and clean air. We don’t have to define wealth solely by how much money one has.”
Legend said creating happiness and a positive well-being for people of color doesn’t start on the federal level, but locally.
“We have to start at the human level,” he said. “We start by improving our neighborhoods. From there, we can increase the well-being for all our citizens.”
