In Worcester, Discussing Race Relations Amid Shifting Demographics

“We’re more like a big town, rather than the second-largest city in New England,” said Jayna L. Turchek, director of the Office of Human Rights for the city of Worcester, Massachusetts.

“Worcester is not pretentious, we don’t pretend to be anything other than who we are,” she added in an interview on Tuesday.

But, in some ways, who the city is has changed significantly during the last 35 years.

The proportion of white residents went from 94 percent in 1980, to 71 percent in 2013, according to a Worcester Regional Research Bureau brief published last November. U.S. Census Bureau figures from 2010 show that about 11 percent of the city’s population is black or African American and that close to 21 percent identifies as Hispanic or Latino.

Worcester’s foreign-born population has also increased in recent years, from 25,097 to 35,304 between 2000 and 2010. And among the roughly 182,000 people living in the city, Turchek estimates that there are now about 80 or 90 dialects and languages spoken.

But the racial and ethnic makeup of the city’s government institutions has not stayed in line over the years with the shifting demographics in Worcester’s neighborhoods.

“The city is not adequately reflecting the population at large,” Turchek said.

In the last 90 years, she noted, Worcester has had one black city councilmember. And according to the research bureau, about 87 percent of Worcester Public Schools staff were white during the 2013-2014 school year. But, in the 2014-2015 school year, roughly 66 percent of students were not. Nearly 15 percent were black and just over 39 percent were Hispanic.

To help address concerns arising over racial disparity, disconnects between communities of color and Worcester government, and other issues, Mayor Joseph Petty, along with City Manager Edward Augustus, Jr. announced in April that the city would hold a series of community discussions on race. They invited the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service—dubbed a “Peacemaker” for conflicts involving race—to help guide the talks.

An initial discussion, which provided an overview of the dialogue process, was held on May 18.

Sessions on representative government and public safety happened in early June. And one covering youth and education took place Monday at Worcester Technical High School.

About 280 people turned out for the youth and education meeting, according to Turchek.

Additional sessions about media and social networks, and economic development, are scheduled for later in the month, along with a final meeting on July 13 focused on “next steps.”

Patricia Yancey, president of the city’s chapter of the NAACP, is a big proponent of the talks.

“These dialogues are fabulous,” she said during an interview last week. “It’s a way for people to talk about race relations in reference to all of these topics.”

The city stresses that the mayor and city manager did not convene the discussions to address any single incident.

But Yancey said that new tensions did seem to emerge between residents in Worcester after Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer last summer in Ferguson, Missouri.

“A lot of hostility was happening and a lot of negativity was happening, especially on social media, that the city of Worcester has never seen before, and it started spilling over into people’s interactions with each other,” she said. “Worcester is really not like that.”

Turchek said conversations at the meetings had, for the most part, been “very civil, very respectful.”

“People raise their voices, they get upset,” she said. “But they’re doing it in a way that’s within the process.”

The core part of each meeting is when attendees break up into small groups and talk about the topic that is on that night’s agenda.

One curveball has been the presence of reporters and bloggers. “There was a real concern about, ‘hey, these are really hard conversations, and if I’m going to share some personal information or experiences, I don’t necessarily want to be videotaped,’” Turchek said.

At the same time, journalists wanted access to the events and the freedom to talk to attendees.

Turchek said attempts to accommodate reporters and bloggers have been a “balancing act.”

While she noted that news outlets have helped publicize information about the discussions, she also thinks “there are some people that are staying away because of the media.”

Since the first meetings took place, the city has outlined a set of “expectations” for members of the press who attend, asking them to display badges, and “maintain a respectful distance from participants.”

The discussions on race have not been without skeptics.

Clive McFarlane, a columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, who is black, attended the June 8 meeting on public safety.

“The group I happened to observe talked about everything but race, and when it was mentioned in passing, such as when one participant dropped the phrase ‘white privilege,’ the concept did not generate a follow-up conversation,” he wrote in the Telegram & Gazette on June 10. “I can’t shake the feeling that the conversation we are having as a community is too neutered.”

In a June 14 letter to the editor which the paper published, Worcester resident David Lewis Schaefer said the meetings seemed “unlikely to facilitate ‘positive change,’ as the organizers maintain, so much as give participants an opportunity to feel good about themselves.”

But, in Turchek’s view, critical feedback is a good thing.

“One of the great indicators of having a successful community dialogue is that it’s not just happening during those two hours on Monday night,” she said. “It’s happening on people’s Facebook pages, they’re critiquing it, they’re saying what’s not right about it.”

She also emphasized that the discussions were meant to be a starting point in what would likely be a much longer and more involved effort by the city to combat racism.

“This is a precursor toward real, effective change,” Turchek said. “I think there are a lot unknowns, but we’re in the process of getting all this raw data into one place.” She believes that, going forward, it will be important for Worcester to come up with ways to measure whether it is making progress on resolving issues raised in the current round of dialogues.

Yancey, of the NAACP, acknowledged that some of the conversations happening at the meetings are not easy for people to have. But also noted that they’re important, and that they’re taking place between city residents who might not otherwise sit down together to talk.

“It can be painful, it can be frustrating for people who have been working on these types of issues for a long time, it can be eye opening for someone who has never heard these things before,” she said. “All of these things are coming out.”

(Photo of downtown Worcester by Doug Kerr / Flickr via CC BY SA-2.0)