Applying Our Research
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 Very soon people of color will comprise a majority of the U.S. population. How are folks reacting to the changing demographics of our country? Why is the American Dream still out of reach for so many people?
ARC's Research Department had the unique opportunity to poll a nationally representative sample of 2,400 adults, who belong to SurveyMonkey's millions of users, about their feelings on race in the late spring of this year.
Despite all the fuss in media and politics about the coming non-white majority, our poll found that most people don’t care about it one way or the other. Importantly, however, those who were fearful were far more vocal about it. We also found that while a majority of folks still believe in the American Dream--that people who work hard generally succeed in life--people of different races have starkly different understandings of what causes racial disparities in achieving the American Dream.
Our findings have been published in two articles at Colorlines.com. Click to read: "A People of Color Majority? Meh, So What?" and "What Explains Racial Disparities?"
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Network News
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 Our debt ceiling was raised in August when President Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011, but at what cost? The rich won’t have to pay; the wealthiest in this country will still receive their tax breaks and subsidies. Guess what, we will. The Congressional Supercommittee will announce over $1.5 trillion in budget cuts come November 23. What’s on the chopping block? Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP/food stamps, and Social Security…safety net programs that are the last buffer for millions of people of color who have never recovered from the Great Recession.
Register today to learn how the planned budget cuts will increase racial disparities and what opportunities exist to formulate alternatives that advance racial equity and inclusion. Presented by the Applied Research Center (ARC) and partners:
- Yvonne Yen Liu, Applied Research Center
- Dedrick Muhammad, NAACP
- Jill Reese, Alliance for a Just Society
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Colorlines.com Spotlight
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 A dramatic rollback in transparency laws five years ago left California residents with no way to monitor police misconduct complaints--and thus prevent future violence.
This month's Colorlines.com investigation, "Deadly Secrets: What Calif. Residents Can't Know About Police Misconduct," finds Oakland is one of the cities left most vulnerable. During the 13-year career of Oakland police officer Sgt. Patrick Gonzales, he has shot four suspects, three fatally. Multiple lawsuits alleging wrongful death, excessive force, illegal searches and racial profiling incidents involving Gonzales have resulted in $3.6 million paid by the city in settlement money. But few know about his record due to a 2006 State Supreme Court decision, which effectively classified all records of individual law enforcement officers.
Policing experts and watchdogs say that Gonzales is illustrative of a larger trend: a small cadre of officers are typically responsible for a large share of shootings of civilians. Closely tracking lower-level complaints and violent incidents for specific officers can reveal patterns of behavior and prompt steps to prevent lethal incidents. But the law has made it far more difficult for the public to ensure police departments are taking those sorts of preventive steps, effectively robbing communities of the power to hold police officers accountable. Read: "Deadly Secrets: What Calif. Residents Can't Know About Police Misconduct"
This story was produced with the support of the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC-Berkeley.
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President's Message
Our feelings about the American Dream are complex. In a national poll of 2400 people, ARC found that two-thirds of folks believe in the quintessential notion that people who work hard generally succeed in life. Yet, there are racial differences in how we see folks who are not achieving that success.
 Unity dissolves as whites are far more likely to credit - and blame - individual initiative alone for someone's social and economic standing, while people of color were more likely to point to race as at least part of the problem. This gap in perception also arose in our research on the racial concerns of young people.
We have a huge rift in the federal government over the manufactured "debt ceiling crisis." And as the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the nation prepares to confront the many changes in our cultural landscape as well.
The challenges we face require us to stick together, but to do that we have to re-examine the rules - both written and unwritten. Are we working towards true unity, one that is going to lift up everyone equitably? Or will we settle for a false unity that accepts a hierarchy of access to the American Dream?
At ARC we elevate the principles of racial justice as a basis for unifying the country, so that everyone can be a part of the whole. We have both an economic agenda and a cultural agenda. Over the coming weeks, as we commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and try to dig ourselves out of this recession, ARC will supply information and tools to meet these heavy challenges, including a racial justice webinar series this fall. Please join us for our September 22 webinar, “Race and the Federal Budget Debate.” And, as always, we invite you to join the discussion at Colorlines.com as we make sense of the day's big race debates.
Rinku Sen
President and
Executive Director
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