Tomás Jiménez: This conversation explores what it means to take stock of multiple truths about racial inequality and what it requires of government, financial institutions, universities, and communities to build the conditions for everyone to thrive. In other words, how can we learn from what's working in thriving communities to build replicable models so we can help everyone flourish? Hi, everyone. This is One Question, a podcast brought to you by Stanford University's Institute for Advancing Just Societies. We explore big questions about what it takes for us to live together in a world where diversity is a fact of life. My name is Tomás Jiménez, and I'm the faculty director of IAJS, which drives solutions-focused research and partnerships for racial and ethnic justice. Today we're joined by Andre Perry, a researcher, author, and commentator whose work has reframed how America understands wealth, race, and cities. He's also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he serves as director of the Center for Community Uplift. Thank you for being here, Andre.
Andre Perry: Tomás it's a pleasure.
Tomás Jiménez: Likewise, likewise, thanks so much for doing this. I'm gonna start with the one question guiding our conversation today, which is how can we learn from what's working in thriving communities to build replicable models so that we can help everyone flourish? And I know this has been something that you've looked at in great detail, so I wonder if we can start there.
Andre Perry: There's reasons why I look at what's working versus what you see disparity research, particularly when you're talking about examinations between races. What happens when you focus on the disparity, you mask over the very real progress or growth, particularly at a local level. So I'm constantly looking at what's working as a model my research. Most people know me through my research on housing devaluation, where we found that homes in black neighborhoods are underpriced by 23%, about $48,000 per home. Cumulatively, there's about $156 billion in lost equity in black communities. $156 billion would have financed more than 8 million new businesses based upon the average amount black people use to start their firms. It would have paid for more than 8 million four-year degrees based upon the average amount of a four-year public education, replaced the pipes in Flint, Michigan 3,000 times over, covered nearly all of Hurricane Katrina damage. It's double the annual economic burden of the opioid crisis. It's a big number. That's why I say, keeps my teeth white, that nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can't solve. When things go wrong in Black communities, we blame Black people. We talk about their choices. We don't talk about the wealth and opportunities that are extracted every single day, that there are practices and policies that extract wealth from communities. My goal is to always to move away from blaming people while there are certainly bad actors out there. I'm going after policy policy is imbued with our values. and can take those personal values to scale. And so for me, it is to change policy so that you can change the neighborhood conditions, so you can change the outcomes. The reality is that the homes, the assets in black communities are much more valuable than they are priced. And in reality, translates, the issue is black people are much more valuable than they are priced. And so for me, I'm constantly looking at what's working because there is a lot of work and there's a lot work to be done. But if we don't acknowledge the real progress that we're making, we're also devaluing the people who are having an impact on our daily lives. So for me, it's to my work to look at what's working.
Tomás Jiménez: this is a larger framework that you've used in your work, both in your books and then also the recent that you did with Brookings. And I might describe it as kind of a bright spots approach. ⁓ can get a bright spots picture by moving away from the disparities research. I also want to ask you about that in a second. this something that we're not used to doing when we talk about race and ethnicity. narrative or I should say the predominant framework for trying to understand race and ethnicity in the United States or elsewhere is to do the comparison between groups. And I just want to ask you about that framework more generally. What does that do for us when we focus not just on the disparities, but on bright spots, on people thriving and in your work, black people thriving?
Andre Perry: Yeah. And one, you remind people that people are not broken, our policies are. And one of the taglines that I have is that there's nothing wrong with black people that ending racism can't solve. And that comes from my research on housing devaluation, where we see that homes in black neighborhoods are underpriced. Part of the racist work in this society is to convince people that black people, brown people, Native Americans, Asian are broken people, or that we have to catch up to white people in order for there to be justice. ⁓ me, I really move away from that because we see great ideas, valuable assets are worthy of investment. We see people doing great work. You see racial cooperation all over our country. For me, it's not just putting our ⁓ rose-colored glasses on an It's acknowledging there's real progress. And it can be measured. It could be tested. We see ⁓ but we have to acknowledge it and get out of this habit of focusing on what is perceived to be broken. And that's often, Tom, means people that are broken. ⁓ When Brookings that report, on devaluation, there were a lot of people, particularly the appraisal community, said, I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not racist. for me, I was like, well, ⁓ not trying just to point fingers and call people racist. I'm looking at the systems that rob us all of opportunity. not I'm always just making an economic case for diversity, but There is an economic case for diversity. you are robbing communities of wealth, you're robbing counties and municipalities ⁓ revenue, of tax revenue. ⁓ then you're robbing ⁓ ⁓ of highly educated individuals. You ⁓ are ⁓ ⁓ power business have. You're innovation. Everyone loses. And likewise, you look at thriving between groups, whenever the people at the lowest rung ⁓ of wealth quintiles are thriving, it increases the thriving levels for everyone else. So an investment in one group does not necessarily take away from the quality of life of another.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, so what would you say to people who would critique that way of approaching and ethnicity in United States, even just as ⁓ an empirical matter, right? So there's an empirical question about, you focus on disparities ⁓ do you focus on progress over time? Like, how well am I doing relative to my parents or great-grandparents? But there are a bunch of other people out there who are changing relative to their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents. And so why shouldn't I do that comparison? Doesn't that tell me something about the health of a society, ⁓ the health of a multiracial democracy?
Andre Perry: Well, yeah, certainly looking at disparities, particularly between various groups, tell, does tell you a lot about, the conditions of a country, of a state, of a city, but we're just over indexing in that, in ⁓ those for my ⁓ book, Black Scorecard, where we looked at life expectancy. the most important factors on life expectancy. We did not compare black people to white people, black people to brown people. We compare people to black people. And that within analysis says a lot about the differences in regions and place that can shed light on the conditions that are throttling. of thriving or accelerating thriving. And so for me, that's the general lens I take because we have a lot of people just constantly doing disparity work and that's important. But rigorous analysis also requires us to do within group analysis so that we can see the differences regionally, differences within a racial category because of us operate as a monolith population. So there's just a lot to be gained when you do within group analyses. But the main point is we this over index in one form and analysis and it's a and I understand why in this country because has been such a ⁓ part, salient part of structuring of society. So we do want to look at ⁓ how groups are treated relative to one another. But if you're really looking for solutions, oftentimes it's found in looking at within groups where you see how particular group in St. Louis or ⁓ ⁓ Bay Area ⁓ these obstacles while others did not.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, that's a great point. You know, it resonates with some of my research and early on in my career, I was studying the Mexican origin population and that was my focus. And one of the things that sparked my curiosity about the population, and some of this comes from my own family background, my dad's side of the family is from Mexico, was the incredible diversity that showed up at a family reunion. You'd have people who have PhDs from Ivy League universities, people who are middle class through a kind of collar route, people who middle class through white collar route, people who are just getting out of prison. ⁓ it was all over the place. And ⁓ always felt like that was a microcosm for larger population. And that the way that you're describing the kind of comparison research can flatten a population, right? We get to know a population by its average. And I hear you saying is that and a qualitative researcher, but I'll speak in qualitative terms, and there's the distribution. And you really want to understand a group, you have to understand where people fall in ⁓ parts of that distribution. You've looked at the distribution in the black population and life expectancy. So there's lots of ways we could measure inequality, right? We could measure how much people are making, we could measure how education they have, we could measure health, which is not altogether different than life expectancy, but you chose life expectancy. and noted that there are some bright spots there, even just looking at the black population, parts of the black population on that distribution compared to other parts of it. And so I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about what you learned from that analysis.
Andre Perry: Yeah, know, first of all, the life expectancy represents a sum total of our social, political, and economic lives. That you have the resources you need ⁓ you live in the neighborhood environments that are healthy, you live a long life. And so your life expectancy, particularly at a geographic scale, tells a lot. about what supports you have or what supports you do not have. And when you do that geographically, comparing black people to black people, you see that there are places in Virginia where people are living to 85. I live in an area that is around 79. But ⁓ you have ⁓ where life expectancy ⁓ is 65. And so important for ⁓ to learn racism is a given, how did this community overcome those factors and this one is burdened by them? And so, ⁓ when you do that, you see different banks, municipal leaders, schools, hospitals, you see economic sort of movements. taking hold. Every place has its own story. And every place has its mixture of strengths and weaknesses. Again, when you look at things in the aggregate, you'll say, ⁓ everything is bad in Baltimore. No. Actually, ownership high. In ⁓ places, was in Jackson, Mississippi, relative to other places, It has a higher level of home ownership. Now, certainly Jackson has environmental issues there. But the point is you can't just paint city or place with broad ⁓ and say, this is all bad or this place is all good. We can ⁓ look the nuances that mix up to get to that. life expectancy. So for me, again, this, all goes back to do not look at things in the aggregate. While it's important, can't just look at black people in this national aggregate and compare it to white people, compare it to brown people. There are stories to told by looking at within group and also looking at locales and and towns. So It can really bring out those qualitative differences one place, group of to another.
Tomás Jiménez: Well, let's talk a little bit about cities and towns. So I take it that your analysis is less about people in a place and more about what the place does to people. Is that a fair characterization? Go ahead.
Andre Perry: When I started doing this research, was an initiative called Place Matters. And there was a movement on looking at life expectancy. ⁓ So of the factors that influence life expectancy really occur at the neighborhood level. And so ⁓ a population treated at the neighborhood level really ⁓ determines much of their quality of life. And shouldn't we be talking about quality of life, not money? That's why I also look at thriving, not just sort of objective measures wealth, but how are people doing? Because ultimately, we want people to thrive. A lot of my research ⁓ is really at the neighborhoods themselves, the cities. and the towns, because for me, that's where the action happens. You can create all of these federal policies, but if the implementation of them on the ground is lackluster, or if there's ⁓ racism, which oftentimes is the sewage and water board level, then you're going to get a negative result. So for me, neighborhoods is... or where the action happened.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, and we'll get into and neighborhoods ⁓ a little bit and kind of connect it to some work we're doing at IHS. But before we do that, I wonder if you can take us inside some of the places that you feel like have ⁓ it well, that have put place a set of policies, a set of practices, have a set of institutions that Create the kind of longevity that you highlighted a second ago take us inside one of those places and tell us what we can learn from them
Andre Perry: A lot of the places that are doing well, their anchor institutions are committed to their residents, their being a good neighbor. If there is a Wakanda in the United States, it's the DMV, the DC, Maryland, Virginia area, and between business development, home ownership, social networking, that's some secret sauce, mambo sauce here in DC that makes it a special place. In the DMV, there is just a lot of activity on not just starting businesses, because actually black people start at the same rate as other groups. But ⁓ difference is the number of employer firms that exist. DC is high on creating not just businesses, but businesses that hire people. And there's a statement there in that for the descendants of the enslaved to now own businesses and hire people. That's a statement. DC has a lot of programs and initiatives that home ownership. When you have higher levels of home ownership, you generally have more wealth. You can ⁓ that equity in your home to deploy to other things. But there is... Also just a level of civic action here that incomparable. When something's not going ⁓ you have groups of that are mobilizing, and finding solutions. ⁓ It's the organizing here that is exceptional. That people without the fancy degrees. They're getting it done for everybody. is something we just don't talk about enough, that social capital that actually makes money makes policy move.
Tomás Jiménez: That totally resonates. I think one way to think about what you just said, or I should say an additional way to think about what you just said is that when we aren't providing equality of opportunity, when people don't have the opportunity to thrive, we as a region, we as a society, we as a neighborhood are leaving so much talent the table. So possibility on the table. And that's not good for anyone. And then think there's another way that I think about it, and I gather you do too, but I just want to offer this, that if somebody is being treated or a group of people is being treated with less the respect, the honor that they that that is a violation of their humanity, and in many ways racism is violation of somebody's humanity. ⁓ And as a fellow human being, that violates my own sense of humanity. So that there's an essence that lives in all of us. And if somebody else's essence is being violated, that should me feel like my essence is being violated because it is.
Andre Perry: You know, I do make economic cases for diversity, but there are moral, spiritual, social cases to be made. You know, even in my devaluation work, it's really not homes that are being devalued. It's people that are being devalued, who are being devalued. And when you hear these stories in the newspaper of homeowners, unquote, whitewashing their homes. that taking down the black artifacts, the hair products, the clothing, putting up white-facing ones and getting a white stand-in, and then all of a sudden you see the second higher. That is an exercise in dignity, Sterling. And people see that, I don't care who you are, black, white, Latino, Asian American, when you see that,
Tomás Jiménez: No.
Andre Perry: kind of dignity stripping, you ⁓ that's wrong. I don't to take down pictures of my family. should anyone else? ⁓ And so for I do also try build connections groups, particularly across racial lines, because we have a lot ⁓ of politicos ⁓ and of instigators on social media that are leveraging our past fears to ⁓ money, to get votes, because so long we've been told we operate in a zero-sum game. And ⁓ what lean on when things get hard. We lean on We lean on classism. We say, I'm going to protect mine. And all we're doing is cutting our noses by their face. And worse, we're hurting people. We are devaluing people. And it results a loss of life and dignity.
Tomás Jiménez: You know, we just launched a big initiative at our institute called the Flourishing Cities Initiative. And the Flourishing Cities Initiative came about out of a recognition that the movement of people is a factor of human life. ⁓ long as there's been civilization, people have been moving. And people move, it introduces the kinds of differences ⁓ that been talking about. The Flourishing Cities Initiative is trying to generate the kind of research and in partnership with practitioners that shows how we can address the real challenges that come about when people bump into each other, of the kind of diverse conditions that come out of the movement of people, the kinds of challenges that come about, but also harness the opportunities. And you've mentioned a lot of those opportunities. ⁓ I've been thinking about the Flourishing Cities Initiative in the context of the recent report that you published with the Brookings Institution, which is about racial attitudes in America. it starts in many ways with the premise that we live in a diverse society, and it a fact of our lives. And you've set out to try to understand how we're relating to each other, how. closely connected are we? What are our attitudes about each other? What would we actually do if we had to make significant decisions with information about people's racial and ethnic background? Would that factor into kinds of decisions? So I want to ask you about this new report that just came out. a full disclosure to our I know a little bit about this report because I was out of Brookings a few weeks ago having a wonderful discussion with you and some colleagues out there. to try and make sense of the findings, but I wonder if you could just lift up some of the main findings, which I think a lot of people will find surprising.
Andre Perry: Well, first of all, before I go into the findings, I wanted to say my career in policy started in my work with migrant populations. movement is so important. My dissertation was on the DREAM Act. worked on it. Yeah, in the 90s.
speaker-2: Really?
Tomás Jiménez: I did not know that.
Andre Perry: And actually the Dream Act was about to pass in 2001, then happened and it squashed that effort. I brought that up because my career, is anecdotal, came about because I was enriched by a moving people. I learned so many... how we're similar in so many ways. The reason why I started working on the DREAM Act in 94, while I was an undergrad, I befriended a guy by the name of Luis Garcia. I was a freshman, so at the time I was probably 19. He was 18. He came in as ⁓ a student I was his counselor. And we pretty much were the same. being, except he was I was American. I am American. But at the time, we were indistinguishable. We liked the same ballplayers. We hung out in the same places. But when he went to college, he went first semester, came back. And became a counselor and he said he had to hold out a year. I said, why? And he said, because I'm undocumented and I don't get financial aid. And for me, that made no sense because substantively we were the same. And I learned so much from him and others and through my exploration around migrant education, around undocumented.
Tomás Jiménez: Hmm.
Andre Perry: immigrant educational rights. And I a great deal to communities that we're moving for our benefit. And how that relates to this work, because this on interracial cooperation that we, that alongside my colleagues at Gallup, we released two reports on this topic. One's a technical report, the other is a more policy driven report looked at people's ratings of their interracial interactions. And some of it was ⁓ pretty eye 81 % of adults have at least one coworker or client of a different race. 50 % of people have a friend of a different race. one stunning finding is that of the people surveyed, ⁓ % of their parents are of race or multiracial, but of their children, ⁓ 26 of their children are, are So you're seeing a shift generationally, in terms of, of, ⁓ of the multi over ⁓ You mentioned that we did a hiring experiment where we asked candidates for job, ⁓ for software job in a laboring ⁓ position various educational background. What we found is that respondents that had exposure to black people were ⁓ the least likely discriminate. They would actually choose black candidates. a lot of this falls in line with contact theory that shows the more contact you have, the ⁓ less and prejudices you ⁓ will hold. But the big picture ⁓ is that are interacting more and more. And for so many of our policies were particularly in of the height of discrimination, they were built to keep us apart. But more and more, we are progressing towards a pluralistic society. Now, this study was not a study on or affirmative action. But what is true, if you look at our day-to-day interactions, people are very high on their interracial interaction. And it's encouraging.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, and I think this actually echoes some of what we find in recent polling on immigration. know, the attitudes about immigration across groups, ethno-racial groups, even among Republicans and Democrats have gotten more positive. Over the years, there was a dip in the kind of positive attitudes. about two years ago and now they've come back to being overwhelmingly positive, including going back to your point about the DREAM Act and your work on the DREAM Act, including overwhelming support for a legalization of people who are brought here by their parents at a young age. And those are the people that we sometimes call the dreamers. And so the story from, I think, the Brookings report and then some larger polling that has come out and including my own research, is a sort of better angels of our nature story. It's a sort of glass half full story. And I want to get to what we do with that. But before I do that, there's the internal skeptic in me, which says that when people are getting asked about their interactions with members of other ethnic or racial groups, they know the game. They know that there's a certain way that you want to respond to those questions to kind of safe face and even feel good about yourself. know, in social science called social desirability bias. So if I am, and I'm not, I guess ⁓ researcher in me, I assume the researcher in you is an inherent skeptic. But imagining that a lot of people would be skeptical of these findings given ⁓ the that you could easily get from just following the politics of this ⁓ or other times. Why should I believe that people are kind of telling the truth?
Andre Perry: We pretty much saw consistency in across political affiliation. And so for me, I just see a solid trend. And then for the skeptics, I do often reply to them, what if we are valuing interracial interaction? What does that mean? Just imagine that we are. Because also think there's a deep ⁓ cynicism. that has infected us all, that we don't look for sort of the bright that are happening all over the So for me, ⁓ I do challenge hey, what if it is right? Now what? I'll be responsible.
Tomás Jiménez: Let me ask you, how would you respond to your own question? Like, what do hope people do with these findings?
Andre Perry: ⁓ the ultimate goal is have people understand that those same values, ⁓ why you appreciate your interactions across race can be converted into policy. We certainly have heirlooms of policy from our segregated past where those values of segregation are right smack dab in the heart of those policies. Now there's always a lag between our policies and values. My goal is to have people see even in these environments where social media feeds and politicos are telling you the exact opposite. My is to have people say, when you when you're at work, do you get along with your colleagues? When you're going to school, do you get along? Forget the headline. Forget what an elected official said or ⁓ forget ⁓ an official said on their social media platform. Do you get along? And by ⁓ large, people are getting just fine. Now we're not perfect and our policies aren't perfect either, but you can't correct policies if the values aren't there. And so for me, it's to share the values that I believe we hold, most people hold. Now I said, some of these numbers are big, 81, 75, the numbers are big in terms of the appreciation for interracial cooperation, but there's still 20 % here, 30 % here that do not. So for me, it's not a sort of...
speaker-2: Yep.
Andre Perry: kumbaya moment, but it is to say when you see literally people getting married across racial lines at a much higher rates, when they are sharing resources, they're going to work, they're building businesses with others, that says something about the transformation of our society. And it is also not to say that we don't have discrimination. We still have discrimination in key areas. But now we have people who, they can see their values in the day to day, they're more likely to change those discriminatory conditions.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, and there's a lot in this report and we'll link to it in our socials when we put out this podcast and versions of it so that people can dive into it for themselves. But one of the things that has driven my career as a social scientist is to try to take away the sort of funhouse mirror that we look into to understand who we are in our society. And that funhouse mirror can be distorted in all kinds of ways. It can be distorted by what we hear on social media, what some of the kind of loudest voices in our political room say, well, they could just be distorted by our own biases. And what I try to do often is hold up a mirror and say, you know, this is a different way of thinking about who we are that tries to, as much as possible, using the scientific method to take away those distortions. And I you doing that in this work as well. And so that's a note of appreciation. I'm ⁓ to end by asking you the same question that we ask every guest on this podcast it starts from a premise and it's the idea that Stanford University and the Brookings Institution are not institutions of higher knowing, they are institutions of higher learning. And ⁓ at an institution of higher learning requires that we are curious and that we ask questions. So I want to ask you this last question, which is what is one question that is occupying your curiosity right now.
Andre Perry: ⁓ right now is really more about how interracial cooperation go viral. was, I was with someone who's affiliated with wrestling worldwide, WWE. ⁓ And I ⁓ was man, if can convince millions of Americans that wrestling real.
Tomás Jiménez: Got it.
Andre Perry: Why can't we convince people? Inter-race co-op race is a great.
Tomás Jiménez: Wait, it's not real, wrestling's not real?
Andre Perry: need to tell you...
Tomás Jiménez: ⁓ no, you're bursting a bubble here.
Andre Perry: head, stay up.
speaker-2: That's not real.
Andre Perry: You know, it's the marketing. And it's not just explicit marketing like see now, branding what we see now, but the decades of narrative that we're just completely seduced by. We can break these narratives though. And so for me, I'm like ⁓ very just in communication because... A new America is upon us.
Tomás Jiménez: Now. Now.
Andre Perry: Like sometimes I'm like, wake up, we're here. move forward. So I've been obsessed with that. I've been reading a lot of communications thread and narrative work. I've been reading like more from business literature ⁓ on actually cigarette companies actually use media to convince people essentially smoking was cool and good. I've been just reading a lot on that just to know how this thing works because it's one thing to have data. It's another thing to socialize it in a way that can create ⁓
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, we have a colleague in sociology, guy named Rob Willer, who's also a fellow the Institute for Advancing Just Societies. And he's done a lot of work on depolarization in America, really on polarization. But he's trying to figure out mechanisms by which you depolarize America. And they tested a bunch of ⁓ kind of public service announcements, videos that depicted cooperation. And one of the ones that got the most Positive reaction had the most depolarizing effect was this ad campaign that Heineken did in Europe I think mostly in the UK actually and they brought people together from very different backgrounds and they had to build a bar together and you know It was sort of an IKEA like project But they had to build the bar and then have a beer together and they filmed them and these were real people was kind of a reality TV like situation So they brought a trans woman together with somebody who had been a very outspoken Against people who are trans and they didn't know each other at all got together and built the beer I saw I built the bar and had a beer together and and they do this under scenarios but the effect that that had in watching people who ⁓ disagreed with the people with each other and maybe were even primed and not like each other Cooperate this is kind of part of the contact hypothesis, right? They have to do something on equal footing a cooperative activity. You might argue that it's under the under the kind of supervision of some authority, maybe that's the director. But they filmed them doing this and as people watched it in Rob's, people who were in Rob's sample of respondents, it had an enormous effect on their kind of depolarizing their attitudes. So check out his work too, Rob Wheeler. Yeah, if you can look at the ads on YouTube, they're quite fascinating. So maybe there's a Partnership between Brookings and Heineken. ⁓
Andre Perry: You never know. sure Brookings would appreciate that partnership.
Tomás Jiménez: Andre, I really appreciate you joining us on the podcast. It's been a real pleasure to spend this time with you.
Andre Perry: at any time.
Tomás Jiménez: One Question is brought to you by the Institute for Advancing Just Societies and produced by Ethography. Producers Georgia Limcaoco Nikolas Liepins with by Caleb Liu.
Andre Perry: Tomás it's a pleasure.
Tomás Jiménez: Likewise, likewise, thanks so much for doing this. I'm gonna start with the one question guiding our conversation today, which is how can we learn from what's working in thriving communities to build replicable models so that we can help everyone flourish? And I know this has been something that you've looked at in great detail, so I wonder if we can start there.
Andre Perry: There's reasons why I look at what's working versus what you see disparity research, particularly when you're talking about examinations between races. What happens when you focus on the disparity, you mask over the very real progress or growth, particularly at a local level. So I'm constantly looking at what's working as a model my research. Most people know me through my research on housing devaluation, where we found that homes in black neighborhoods are underpriced by 23%, about $48,000 per home. Cumulatively, there's about $156 billion in lost equity in black communities. $156 billion would have financed more than 8 million new businesses based upon the average amount black people use to start their firms. It would have paid for more than 8 million four-year degrees based upon the average amount of a four-year public education, replaced the pipes in Flint, Michigan 3,000 times over, covered nearly all of Hurricane Katrina damage. It's double the annual economic burden of the opioid crisis. It's a big number. That's why I say, keeps my teeth white, that nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can't solve. When things go wrong in Black communities, we blame Black people. We talk about their choices. We don't talk about the wealth and opportunities that are extracted every single day, that there are practices and policies that extract wealth from communities. My goal is to always to move away from blaming people while there are certainly bad actors out there. I'm going after policy policy is imbued with our values. and can take those personal values to scale. And so for me, it is to change policy so that you can change the neighborhood conditions, so you can change the outcomes. The reality is that the homes, the assets in black communities are much more valuable than they are priced. And in reality, translates, the issue is black people are much more valuable than they are priced. And so for me, I'm constantly looking at what's working because there is a lot of work and there's a lot work to be done. But if we don't acknowledge the real progress that we're making, we're also devaluing the people who are having an impact on our daily lives. So for me, it's to my work to look at what's working.
Tomás Jiménez: this is a larger framework that you've used in your work, both in your books and then also the recent that you did with Brookings. And I might describe it as kind of a bright spots approach. ⁓ can get a bright spots picture by moving away from the disparities research. I also want to ask you about that in a second. this something that we're not used to doing when we talk about race and ethnicity. narrative or I should say the predominant framework for trying to understand race and ethnicity in the United States or elsewhere is to do the comparison between groups. And I just want to ask you about that framework more generally. What does that do for us when we focus not just on the disparities, but on bright spots, on people thriving and in your work, black people thriving?
Andre Perry: Yeah. And one, you remind people that people are not broken, our policies are. And one of the taglines that I have is that there's nothing wrong with black people that ending racism can't solve. And that comes from my research on housing devaluation, where we see that homes in black neighborhoods are underpriced. Part of the racist work in this society is to convince people that black people, brown people, Native Americans, Asian are broken people, or that we have to catch up to white people in order for there to be justice. ⁓ me, I really move away from that because we see great ideas, valuable assets are worthy of investment. We see people doing great work. You see racial cooperation all over our country. For me, it's not just putting our ⁓ rose-colored glasses on an It's acknowledging there's real progress. And it can be measured. It could be tested. We see ⁓ but we have to acknowledge it and get out of this habit of focusing on what is perceived to be broken. And that's often, Tom, means people that are broken. ⁓ When Brookings that report, on devaluation, there were a lot of people, particularly the appraisal community, said, I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not racist. for me, I was like, well, ⁓ not trying just to point fingers and call people racist. I'm looking at the systems that rob us all of opportunity. not I'm always just making an economic case for diversity, but There is an economic case for diversity. you are robbing communities of wealth, you're robbing counties and municipalities ⁓ revenue, of tax revenue. ⁓ then you're robbing ⁓ ⁓ of highly educated individuals. You ⁓ are ⁓ ⁓ power business have. You're innovation. Everyone loses. And likewise, you look at thriving between groups, whenever the people at the lowest rung ⁓ of wealth quintiles are thriving, it increases the thriving levels for everyone else. So an investment in one group does not necessarily take away from the quality of life of another.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, so what would you say to people who would critique that way of approaching and ethnicity in United States, even just as ⁓ an empirical matter, right? So there's an empirical question about, you focus on disparities ⁓ do you focus on progress over time? Like, how well am I doing relative to my parents or great-grandparents? But there are a bunch of other people out there who are changing relative to their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents. And so why shouldn't I do that comparison? Doesn't that tell me something about the health of a society, ⁓ the health of a multiracial democracy?
Andre Perry: Well, yeah, certainly looking at disparities, particularly between various groups, tell, does tell you a lot about, the conditions of a country, of a state, of a city, but we're just over indexing in that, in ⁓ those for my ⁓ book, Black Scorecard, where we looked at life expectancy. the most important factors on life expectancy. We did not compare black people to white people, black people to brown people. We compare people to black people. And that within analysis says a lot about the differences in regions and place that can shed light on the conditions that are throttling. of thriving or accelerating thriving. And so for me, that's the general lens I take because we have a lot of people just constantly doing disparity work and that's important. But rigorous analysis also requires us to do within group analysis so that we can see the differences regionally, differences within a racial category because of us operate as a monolith population. So there's just a lot to be gained when you do within group analyses. But the main point is we this over index in one form and analysis and it's a and I understand why in this country because has been such a ⁓ part, salient part of structuring of society. So we do want to look at ⁓ how groups are treated relative to one another. But if you're really looking for solutions, oftentimes it's found in looking at within groups where you see how particular group in St. Louis or ⁓ ⁓ Bay Area ⁓ these obstacles while others did not.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, that's a great point. You know, it resonates with some of my research and early on in my career, I was studying the Mexican origin population and that was my focus. And one of the things that sparked my curiosity about the population, and some of this comes from my own family background, my dad's side of the family is from Mexico, was the incredible diversity that showed up at a family reunion. You'd have people who have PhDs from Ivy League universities, people who are middle class through a kind of collar route, people who middle class through white collar route, people who are just getting out of prison. ⁓ it was all over the place. And ⁓ always felt like that was a microcosm for larger population. And that the way that you're describing the kind of comparison research can flatten a population, right? We get to know a population by its average. And I hear you saying is that and a qualitative researcher, but I'll speak in qualitative terms, and there's the distribution. And you really want to understand a group, you have to understand where people fall in ⁓ parts of that distribution. You've looked at the distribution in the black population and life expectancy. So there's lots of ways we could measure inequality, right? We could measure how much people are making, we could measure how education they have, we could measure health, which is not altogether different than life expectancy, but you chose life expectancy. and noted that there are some bright spots there, even just looking at the black population, parts of the black population on that distribution compared to other parts of it. And so I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about what you learned from that analysis.
Andre Perry: Yeah, know, first of all, the life expectancy represents a sum total of our social, political, and economic lives. That you have the resources you need ⁓ you live in the neighborhood environments that are healthy, you live a long life. And so your life expectancy, particularly at a geographic scale, tells a lot. about what supports you have or what supports you do not have. And when you do that geographically, comparing black people to black people, you see that there are places in Virginia where people are living to 85. I live in an area that is around 79. But ⁓ you have ⁓ where life expectancy ⁓ is 65. And so important for ⁓ to learn racism is a given, how did this community overcome those factors and this one is burdened by them? And so, ⁓ when you do that, you see different banks, municipal leaders, schools, hospitals, you see economic sort of movements. taking hold. Every place has its own story. And every place has its mixture of strengths and weaknesses. Again, when you look at things in the aggregate, you'll say, ⁓ everything is bad in Baltimore. No. Actually, ownership high. In ⁓ places, was in Jackson, Mississippi, relative to other places, It has a higher level of home ownership. Now, certainly Jackson has environmental issues there. But the point is you can't just paint city or place with broad ⁓ and say, this is all bad or this place is all good. We can ⁓ look the nuances that mix up to get to that. life expectancy. So for me, again, this, all goes back to do not look at things in the aggregate. While it's important, can't just look at black people in this national aggregate and compare it to white people, compare it to brown people. There are stories to told by looking at within group and also looking at locales and and towns. So It can really bring out those qualitative differences one place, group of to another.
Tomás Jiménez: Well, let's talk a little bit about cities and towns. So I take it that your analysis is less about people in a place and more about what the place does to people. Is that a fair characterization? Go ahead.
Andre Perry: When I started doing this research, was an initiative called Place Matters. And there was a movement on looking at life expectancy. ⁓ So of the factors that influence life expectancy really occur at the neighborhood level. And so ⁓ a population treated at the neighborhood level really ⁓ determines much of their quality of life. And shouldn't we be talking about quality of life, not money? That's why I also look at thriving, not just sort of objective measures wealth, but how are people doing? Because ultimately, we want people to thrive. A lot of my research ⁓ is really at the neighborhoods themselves, the cities. and the towns, because for me, that's where the action happens. You can create all of these federal policies, but if the implementation of them on the ground is lackluster, or if there's ⁓ racism, which oftentimes is the sewage and water board level, then you're going to get a negative result. So for me, neighborhoods is... or where the action happened.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, and we'll get into and neighborhoods ⁓ a little bit and kind of connect it to some work we're doing at IHS. But before we do that, I wonder if you can take us inside some of the places that you feel like have ⁓ it well, that have put place a set of policies, a set of practices, have a set of institutions that Create the kind of longevity that you highlighted a second ago take us inside one of those places and tell us what we can learn from them
Andre Perry: A lot of the places that are doing well, their anchor institutions are committed to their residents, their being a good neighbor. If there is a Wakanda in the United States, it's the DMV, the DC, Maryland, Virginia area, and between business development, home ownership, social networking, that's some secret sauce, mambo sauce here in DC that makes it a special place. In the DMV, there is just a lot of activity on not just starting businesses, because actually black people start at the same rate as other groups. But ⁓ difference is the number of employer firms that exist. DC is high on creating not just businesses, but businesses that hire people. And there's a statement there in that for the descendants of the enslaved to now own businesses and hire people. That's a statement. DC has a lot of programs and initiatives that home ownership. When you have higher levels of home ownership, you generally have more wealth. You can ⁓ that equity in your home to deploy to other things. But there is... Also just a level of civic action here that incomparable. When something's not going ⁓ you have groups of that are mobilizing, and finding solutions. ⁓ It's the organizing here that is exceptional. That people without the fancy degrees. They're getting it done for everybody. is something we just don't talk about enough, that social capital that actually makes money makes policy move.
Tomás Jiménez: That totally resonates. I think one way to think about what you just said, or I should say an additional way to think about what you just said is that when we aren't providing equality of opportunity, when people don't have the opportunity to thrive, we as a region, we as a society, we as a neighborhood are leaving so much talent the table. So possibility on the table. And that's not good for anyone. And then think there's another way that I think about it, and I gather you do too, but I just want to offer this, that if somebody is being treated or a group of people is being treated with less the respect, the honor that they that that is a violation of their humanity, and in many ways racism is violation of somebody's humanity. ⁓ And as a fellow human being, that violates my own sense of humanity. So that there's an essence that lives in all of us. And if somebody else's essence is being violated, that should me feel like my essence is being violated because it is.
Andre Perry: You know, I do make economic cases for diversity, but there are moral, spiritual, social cases to be made. You know, even in my devaluation work, it's really not homes that are being devalued. It's people that are being devalued, who are being devalued. And when you hear these stories in the newspaper of homeowners, unquote, whitewashing their homes. that taking down the black artifacts, the hair products, the clothing, putting up white-facing ones and getting a white stand-in, and then all of a sudden you see the second higher. That is an exercise in dignity, Sterling. And people see that, I don't care who you are, black, white, Latino, Asian American, when you see that,
Tomás Jiménez: No.
Andre Perry: kind of dignity stripping, you ⁓ that's wrong. I don't to take down pictures of my family. should anyone else? ⁓ And so for I do also try build connections groups, particularly across racial lines, because we have a lot ⁓ of politicos ⁓ and of instigators on social media that are leveraging our past fears to ⁓ money, to get votes, because so long we've been told we operate in a zero-sum game. And ⁓ what lean on when things get hard. We lean on We lean on classism. We say, I'm going to protect mine. And all we're doing is cutting our noses by their face. And worse, we're hurting people. We are devaluing people. And it results a loss of life and dignity.
Tomás Jiménez: You know, we just launched a big initiative at our institute called the Flourishing Cities Initiative. And the Flourishing Cities Initiative came about out of a recognition that the movement of people is a factor of human life. ⁓ long as there's been civilization, people have been moving. And people move, it introduces the kinds of differences ⁓ that been talking about. The Flourishing Cities Initiative is trying to generate the kind of research and in partnership with practitioners that shows how we can address the real challenges that come about when people bump into each other, of the kind of diverse conditions that come out of the movement of people, the kinds of challenges that come about, but also harness the opportunities. And you've mentioned a lot of those opportunities. ⁓ I've been thinking about the Flourishing Cities Initiative in the context of the recent report that you published with the Brookings Institution, which is about racial attitudes in America. it starts in many ways with the premise that we live in a diverse society, and it a fact of our lives. And you've set out to try to understand how we're relating to each other, how. closely connected are we? What are our attitudes about each other? What would we actually do if we had to make significant decisions with information about people's racial and ethnic background? Would that factor into kinds of decisions? So I want to ask you about this new report that just came out. a full disclosure to our I know a little bit about this report because I was out of Brookings a few weeks ago having a wonderful discussion with you and some colleagues out there. to try and make sense of the findings, but I wonder if you could just lift up some of the main findings, which I think a lot of people will find surprising.
Andre Perry: Well, first of all, before I go into the findings, I wanted to say my career in policy started in my work with migrant populations. movement is so important. My dissertation was on the DREAM Act. worked on it. Yeah, in the 90s.
speaker-2: Really?
Tomás Jiménez: I did not know that.
Andre Perry: And actually the Dream Act was about to pass in 2001, then happened and it squashed that effort. I brought that up because my career, is anecdotal, came about because I was enriched by a moving people. I learned so many... how we're similar in so many ways. The reason why I started working on the DREAM Act in 94, while I was an undergrad, I befriended a guy by the name of Luis Garcia. I was a freshman, so at the time I was probably 19. He was 18. He came in as ⁓ a student I was his counselor. And we pretty much were the same. being, except he was I was American. I am American. But at the time, we were indistinguishable. We liked the same ballplayers. We hung out in the same places. But when he went to college, he went first semester, came back. And became a counselor and he said he had to hold out a year. I said, why? And he said, because I'm undocumented and I don't get financial aid. And for me, that made no sense because substantively we were the same. And I learned so much from him and others and through my exploration around migrant education, around undocumented.
Tomás Jiménez: Hmm.
Andre Perry: immigrant educational rights. And I a great deal to communities that we're moving for our benefit. And how that relates to this work, because this on interracial cooperation that we, that alongside my colleagues at Gallup, we released two reports on this topic. One's a technical report, the other is a more policy driven report looked at people's ratings of their interracial interactions. And some of it was ⁓ pretty eye 81 % of adults have at least one coworker or client of a different race. 50 % of people have a friend of a different race. one stunning finding is that of the people surveyed, ⁓ % of their parents are of race or multiracial, but of their children, ⁓ 26 of their children are, are So you're seeing a shift generationally, in terms of, of, ⁓ of the multi over ⁓ You mentioned that we did a hiring experiment where we asked candidates for job, ⁓ for software job in a laboring ⁓ position various educational background. What we found is that respondents that had exposure to black people were ⁓ the least likely discriminate. They would actually choose black candidates. a lot of this falls in line with contact theory that shows the more contact you have, the ⁓ less and prejudices you ⁓ will hold. But the big picture ⁓ is that are interacting more and more. And for so many of our policies were particularly in of the height of discrimination, they were built to keep us apart. But more and more, we are progressing towards a pluralistic society. Now, this study was not a study on or affirmative action. But what is true, if you look at our day-to-day interactions, people are very high on their interracial interaction. And it's encouraging.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, and I think this actually echoes some of what we find in recent polling on immigration. know, the attitudes about immigration across groups, ethno-racial groups, even among Republicans and Democrats have gotten more positive. Over the years, there was a dip in the kind of positive attitudes. about two years ago and now they've come back to being overwhelmingly positive, including going back to your point about the DREAM Act and your work on the DREAM Act, including overwhelming support for a legalization of people who are brought here by their parents at a young age. And those are the people that we sometimes call the dreamers. And so the story from, I think, the Brookings report and then some larger polling that has come out and including my own research, is a sort of better angels of our nature story. It's a sort of glass half full story. And I want to get to what we do with that. But before I do that, there's the internal skeptic in me, which says that when people are getting asked about their interactions with members of other ethnic or racial groups, they know the game. They know that there's a certain way that you want to respond to those questions to kind of safe face and even feel good about yourself. know, in social science called social desirability bias. So if I am, and I'm not, I guess ⁓ researcher in me, I assume the researcher in you is an inherent skeptic. But imagining that a lot of people would be skeptical of these findings given ⁓ the that you could easily get from just following the politics of this ⁓ or other times. Why should I believe that people are kind of telling the truth?
Andre Perry: We pretty much saw consistency in across political affiliation. And so for me, I just see a solid trend. And then for the skeptics, I do often reply to them, what if we are valuing interracial interaction? What does that mean? Just imagine that we are. Because also think there's a deep ⁓ cynicism. that has infected us all, that we don't look for sort of the bright that are happening all over the So for me, ⁓ I do challenge hey, what if it is right? Now what? I'll be responsible.
Tomás Jiménez: Let me ask you, how would you respond to your own question? Like, what do hope people do with these findings?
Andre Perry: ⁓ the ultimate goal is have people understand that those same values, ⁓ why you appreciate your interactions across race can be converted into policy. We certainly have heirlooms of policy from our segregated past where those values of segregation are right smack dab in the heart of those policies. Now there's always a lag between our policies and values. My goal is to have people see even in these environments where social media feeds and politicos are telling you the exact opposite. My is to have people say, when you when you're at work, do you get along with your colleagues? When you're going to school, do you get along? Forget the headline. Forget what an elected official said or ⁓ forget ⁓ an official said on their social media platform. Do you get along? And by ⁓ large, people are getting just fine. Now we're not perfect and our policies aren't perfect either, but you can't correct policies if the values aren't there. And so for me, it's to share the values that I believe we hold, most people hold. Now I said, some of these numbers are big, 81, 75, the numbers are big in terms of the appreciation for interracial cooperation, but there's still 20 % here, 30 % here that do not. So for me, it's not a sort of...
speaker-2: Yep.
Andre Perry: kumbaya moment, but it is to say when you see literally people getting married across racial lines at a much higher rates, when they are sharing resources, they're going to work, they're building businesses with others, that says something about the transformation of our society. And it is also not to say that we don't have discrimination. We still have discrimination in key areas. But now we have people who, they can see their values in the day to day, they're more likely to change those discriminatory conditions.
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, and there's a lot in this report and we'll link to it in our socials when we put out this podcast and versions of it so that people can dive into it for themselves. But one of the things that has driven my career as a social scientist is to try to take away the sort of funhouse mirror that we look into to understand who we are in our society. And that funhouse mirror can be distorted in all kinds of ways. It can be distorted by what we hear on social media, what some of the kind of loudest voices in our political room say, well, they could just be distorted by our own biases. And what I try to do often is hold up a mirror and say, you know, this is a different way of thinking about who we are that tries to, as much as possible, using the scientific method to take away those distortions. And I you doing that in this work as well. And so that's a note of appreciation. I'm ⁓ to end by asking you the same question that we ask every guest on this podcast it starts from a premise and it's the idea that Stanford University and the Brookings Institution are not institutions of higher knowing, they are institutions of higher learning. And ⁓ at an institution of higher learning requires that we are curious and that we ask questions. So I want to ask you this last question, which is what is one question that is occupying your curiosity right now.
Andre Perry: ⁓ right now is really more about how interracial cooperation go viral. was, I was with someone who's affiliated with wrestling worldwide, WWE. ⁓ And I ⁓ was man, if can convince millions of Americans that wrestling real.
Tomás Jiménez: Got it.
Andre Perry: Why can't we convince people? Inter-race co-op race is a great.
Tomás Jiménez: Wait, it's not real, wrestling's not real?
Andre Perry: need to tell you...
Tomás Jiménez: ⁓ no, you're bursting a bubble here.
Andre Perry: head, stay up.
speaker-2: That's not real.
Andre Perry: You know, it's the marketing. And it's not just explicit marketing like see now, branding what we see now, but the decades of narrative that we're just completely seduced by. We can break these narratives though. And so for me, I'm like ⁓ very just in communication because... A new America is upon us.
Tomás Jiménez: Now. Now.
Andre Perry: Like sometimes I'm like, wake up, we're here. move forward. So I've been obsessed with that. I've been reading a lot of communications thread and narrative work. I've been reading like more from business literature ⁓ on actually cigarette companies actually use media to convince people essentially smoking was cool and good. I've been just reading a lot on that just to know how this thing works because it's one thing to have data. It's another thing to socialize it in a way that can create ⁓
Tomás Jiménez: Yeah, we have a colleague in sociology, guy named Rob Willer, who's also a fellow the Institute for Advancing Just Societies. And he's done a lot of work on depolarization in America, really on polarization. But he's trying to figure out mechanisms by which you depolarize America. And they tested a bunch of ⁓ kind of public service announcements, videos that depicted cooperation. And one of the ones that got the most Positive reaction had the most depolarizing effect was this ad campaign that Heineken did in Europe I think mostly in the UK actually and they brought people together from very different backgrounds and they had to build a bar together and you know It was sort of an IKEA like project But they had to build the bar and then have a beer together and they filmed them and these were real people was kind of a reality TV like situation So they brought a trans woman together with somebody who had been a very outspoken Against people who are trans and they didn't know each other at all got together and built the beer I saw I built the bar and had a beer together and and they do this under scenarios but the effect that that had in watching people who ⁓ disagreed with the people with each other and maybe were even primed and not like each other Cooperate this is kind of part of the contact hypothesis, right? They have to do something on equal footing a cooperative activity. You might argue that it's under the under the kind of supervision of some authority, maybe that's the director. But they filmed them doing this and as people watched it in Rob's, people who were in Rob's sample of respondents, it had an enormous effect on their kind of depolarizing their attitudes. So check out his work too, Rob Wheeler. Yeah, if you can look at the ads on YouTube, they're quite fascinating. So maybe there's a Partnership between Brookings and Heineken. ⁓
Andre Perry: You never know. sure Brookings would appreciate that partnership.
Tomás Jiménez: Andre, I really appreciate you joining us on the podcast. It's been a real pleasure to spend this time with you.
Andre Perry: at any time.
Tomás Jiménez: One Question is brought to you by the Institute for Advancing Just Societies and produced by Ethography. Producers Georgia Limcaoco Nikolas Liepins with by Caleb Liu.
