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Two perspectives, two teens.

One, doing nothing wrong, is viciously beaten by a cop, and the clip of the beating is shared on social media and the news. The other tries to pretend he didn't see it, tries to ignore it -- the beaten teen might be a friend, but the cop is like family.

Rashad is Black, Quinn is White.

The young adult novel "All American Boys" is fiction, but very realistic when it was published in 2015, and much more so today.

Co-authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely worked to include two perspectives of the police beating of a Black teen because they'd found themselves feeling two similar, but different forms of anger at the different ways U.S. justice seems to treat Black and White citizens.

"All American Boys" is the Portage Communiteen Read, a collaboration by Portage Public Schools, the Portage District Library, and This is a bookstore/Bookbug. Reynolds and Kiely will be holding an online conversation on the novel and "Antiracism and You," March 16.

We spoke with Reynolds last year, when he and his novel "Long Way Down" was the 2020 Communiteen focus. His appearance was canceled due to the pandemic.

This year we spoke with Kiely. Speaking from his home in New York City, Kiely says that "All American Boys" came out of an uncomfortable moment between the two writers, back when they were two strangers on a promotional tour of a group of young adult authors.

It was 2013, and George Zimmerman had been acquitted in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

When the news broke, "I'm angry and I'm frustrated and I'm sort of wrought with emotion -- and I'm traveling and living with a stranger," Reynolds told NPR in 2015.

Asked about that time, Kiely tells us the moment between the authors was like Dr. Martin Luther King's speech on "two Americas living side-by-side."

"Jason's mother, a black woman in South Carolina, called him to say, 'I'm nervous, I'm scared as you're traveling around the country, because what if there's a George Zimmerman out there for you?'" Kiely says.

"My mother, who I know loves me, and I love her, did not call me. She has absolutely no reason to have that fear. And I think that throws it into real stark contrast, those two Americas."

While on the authors' tour, it seemed there was "one high profile case of police brutality after another," he says. "We're sitting there in airport terminals looking up at the TV and watching the news, and Jason is leaning over to me, saying, 'You know what? Something like this happened to me, something like this happened to my cousin, something like this happened to other people I know.'"

Then Reynolds asked Kiely, "How about you, Brendan? What was your experience like with the law, growing up?"

"And I had to look him in the eye and tell him how many times I'd gotten away with crimes, essentially. Pulled over for speeding and not getting a ticket, and when the keg party in the little stand of trees between a couple of buildings gets busted up and none of us gets arrested, let alone get beaten up."

"The real difference in our realities was so stark, and to have to say those truths to each other and then begin to form trust and a friendship, is what enabled us to really try to write 'All American Boys.' We had to build a friendship first, and every friendship needs honesty at its base."

We spoke further with Kiely about perspectives on police, his hometown of Boston, racial healing, and radical honesty. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Second Wave: We hate to bring this up, but this subject of children's books is in the news, and feel free to say you don't want to talk about it -- Dr. Seuss.

Brendan Kiely: "I just want to be a tad thoughtful as I respond to this... I grew up (with Dr. Seuss books), have a 20-month-old child now, and my instinct is to go for the same books... But I learned that books that I may have loved are offensive and caused harm to other people in our community, so I have absolutely no problem setting them aside for any one of the thousands and thousands and thousands of children's books out there...."

There is greatness in the Dr. Seuss collection, but there are also ethnic stereotypes. "I think we can both revere people for some of their greatness, and we can also critique them when they make mistakes. And I'd say that's true of myself, too."

When a high school teacher in New York City, "I wanted to do the best that I could do for my students -- it meant that sometimes I'd have to listen to criticism from my students, from other teachers, from the families of students I taught. And if they ask me to rethink the way I did something because it was offensive, then if I care about people, wouldn't I want to review that and accept the mistake was made, and go from there? I think that's what we're talking about with Dr. Seuss."

Kiely also loved books of Tintin comics, which he eventually realized were full of ethnic stereotypes. "It kind of feels a little queasy, now. Yet at the time I loved it."

When he discovered "Lord of the Rings" as a teen, he began devouring fantasy and science fiction novels.

"I loved being transported to those other worlds. That's what kept me reading for most of my younger years. My mother was feeding me all the fantasy, and my father was feeding me all the sci-fi."

SW: You grew up just outside of Boston, a city with a reputation for racial conflict. What were you seeing?

Kiely: I just happen to be working on a new book that's part memoir, part research about White privilege and Whiteness... stories about growing up in a nearly-exclusive White community. So my introduction to race and racism was often an introduction that spoke about it as if it was happening far away."

While growing up in a White neighborhood, "there was never a conversation about 'race' because the assumption always was that if you're talking about race you're talking about People of Color, Black people, Indigenous people, that again nearly none of them were in the community in which I grew up, it was so predominately White.... I was kind of trying to find my own footing in looking for language, finding language, needing to find language about my own racial identity."

Kiely remembers the riot that broke out at a Boston Green Day concert in the mid-'90s, and seeing that the Boston Globe went with a front-page photo "of an Irish man with a tattoo on his bicep throwing a punch on a Black man. The racism is so deep and steeped in Boston. The segregation is so deep and steep in Boston.

"While I was growing up, a lot of what I thought was racism was a story of bad guys hurting innocent people, and it only was until later in life, some teachers in high school, some other adults and friends -- and certainly when I was in college -- that people began to open that story up (for me). It's not about bad actors and innocent victims, but it's a complicated story of all of us and how race plays a role in our country from its founding moments to this day."

SW: The White teen in "All American Boys," Quinn, wants to ignore the fact his friend Rashad was beaten by a policeman he knew and trusted. What's the role for White people in these situations, in the BLM movement, in the response to videos of police brutality against people of color?

Kiely: "I'm going to try to set this in Quinn's narrative, but I mean this in a broader sense -- the first thing that Quinn has to grapple with is that he has to believe what he saw.

"I think as White people in the United States, we have to believe what we see. We've seen it so many times, we've seen the kind of violence that White people in positions of power get away with, whether that's Emmett Till in 1955 or Rodney King in 1991, and all the cases in between there, up to George Floyd in 2020. Not to mention all the women who we don't speak of enough. '#sayhername.' Rekia Boyd, Sandra Bland, and the list goes on.

"We have to believe what we see, that's the first step. And not denying it -- denying it protects us and makes us feel better that we're not somehow guilty, or denying it helps us feel like being White doesn't in some way make it incumbent upon us to have some accountability for this violence, when in fact I think it does.

"I think the second step is to look more closely at the truth of our history, and see just how deeply racism affects everything in our country's history, because by looking at our history more honestly we can look at our present more honestly.

"Those first two steps are about doing the work within ourselves -- (the third step) is to actively listen to the stories and truths coming from communities of color. In the news, and also in other media, meaning, as a White person I think it's incumbent on me to read more books written by authors of color, see more movies directed by and starring people of color. To follow more journalists on social media who are journalists of color. Because, by reframing my narrative, not in a way that reflects my preconceived biases and instincts for denial, but instead consuming narrative that challenges some of that, I think ultimately I, as a White person, grow and become a fuller human being."

SW: How is it, co-writing a novel with not only another author but another author who has his own perspective as a Black man on race and police?

Kiely: Co-writing with anyone is hard, "but we made it work. He's one of my closest friends, now. It was a long road of becoming friends first that made that possible.

"As we were watching once case after another, one that really hit home for me was the case of Eric Garner (who died in a police chokehold after being accused of selling loose cigarettes in 2014) in New York City. I was angry. I was angry that I kept seeing this happen over and over again. And I was angry at the disparity between Black communities and White communities like mine, and our relationship with law enforcement. And Jason was angry, too, but our angers were different. Different angers.

"That's what made our book special. We shared a kind of common motivation, we shared a common goal, to lay bare the truth of police brutality and racial disparity with regards to law enforcement. But our different racial experiences fueled two different narratives. I can't claim to know what it's like to be Jason growing up, and likewise very honestly neither can he claim to know my experience.

"And I think by being honest about that with each other we were able to create a kind of novel in dialog, in a way that won't always happen when two people sit down to write because we began with acknowledging that our racial experiences create two different narratives."

SW: So, as a White person, you were taught that the police are there to serve and protect citizens, but you became angry when seeing that's not the case when it comes to police dealings with African American citizens? And Jason's anger is from knowing this directly?

Kiely: "Absolutely. He knows it from first-hand experience.... Also, while Jason and I are writing about Black and White experiences in just the way you're describing it, part of that anger is how I was taught a trust, and it was a trust I could believe in.

"I still trust law enforcement to this day. How can I not? Most often, my interactions are beneficial. And we need law enforcement in our community to some extent."

"But I would be remiss to not also mention that the group of people most likely to die in their interactions with law enforcement are Indigenous folks in the U.S.

Kiely says that in encounters with police, "the rate at which (Indigenous people) are killed in their interactions with police officers is more than three times as likely as White people, whereas with Black folks it's more than two times as likely.... The sheer number difference is just outrageous.

"I might just add that, I think neither of us could have expected the depth of friendship that emerged from what began as a few moments of pretty radical honesty. And I think I sometimes hope that in a broader sense our country could have more racial healing if as a country we took the time to have more of those moments of radical honesty."

SW: What have been the reactions from young readers to "All American Boys?"

Kiely: "It's been read all across the country and in many different kinds of communities.... The startling thing is, that despite the differences in community, some of the responses are the same.

"Young people are, first of all, thrilled to read books in which the characters sound like them. 'Hey, they sound like the way we talk!' And they're also thrilled to see on the page the emotional reality that they themselves are experiencing in real life.

"Their own world is reflected back to them, whether it's the kids who can say, 'I know how Rashad is feeling right now, because I've experienced that, too.' Or, the kids who're saying, 'I've never been around anything like that in my life, and I trust the law because that's what I've been taught, and they've been there to help me my whole life... And yet I keep seeing this stuff on social media or the news or wherever, that I don't understand. I'm confused, and want to know more.'

"That kind of confusion that young people are experiencing, regardless of their community, is reflected in the book, and it's why we wanted to write the book. We wanted to give young people a chance to air out their feelings, a chance to air out their confusion, a chance to look for moments of empowerment that's something they don't often see in books.

"I'm just so proud and grateful that young people are responding to the book in the way we hoped they would because as Jason will often say, we wrote the book for them."

Join the conversation"Antiracism and You: Online Conversation with Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely," Tuesday, March 16, 6 p.m. Registration link.

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'Radical honesty' leads to friendship that makes writing 'All American Boys' together possible - Concentrate

This spring and summer will mark the anniversary of the racial reckoning that rocked the United States, leading to protests across the country during the global coronavirus pandemic that disproportionately affected Black people in the U.S.

One year later, the stories of Black people whose deaths sparked the protests are still unfolding in the courtroom.

On Monday, a Kentucky judge signed an order permanently closing a criminal case against Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, who shot a police officer during the deadly raid that killed Taylor.

Last month, the mother of Ahmaud Arbery filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the three white Georgia men charged with murder in the death of her son were acting as surrogate police when they chased him down and shot him.

This week, fortified fencing, barbed wire and concrete barricades were put up around the courthouse and police stations in Minneapolis in preparation for the murder trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, charged in connection with the death of Floyd.

Amid the court battles, this moment in history marks a turning point for Black Lives Matter activists like Janaya Future Khan, International Ambassador for Black Lives Matter and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Canada.

"This time that we're in, it's when so much is at stake and everything is still possible," Khan told "Good Morning America." "It's still possible for us to change things so that we are not in a climate disaster in the way that we're headed. It's possible for us to change things so that we're not living in this awful, bigoted reality."

"We have time to change it, and that's really what I want folks to know more than I want them to know how dangerous things are. Everything is still possible," they said.

Activist Janaya Future Khan attends the We Vote Next Summit event presented by Eighteen X 18 at TOMS Corporate Office on Sept. 29, 2018, in Los Angeles.

Khan, who is now based in Los Angeles, describes movements like Black Lives Matter as "rewriting the script" for what has been known and accepted in society.

"Black Lives Matter, for example, is rewriting the script of what it means to be Black in America, so I want people to see it as an invitation," they said. "Something that I say often is the decisions we make today are really going to shape what it is that we become."

For more conversation with Khan, tune into "Soul of a Nation" on Tuesday, March 9, at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT, on ABC.

In 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement started as a hashtag and then transformed into protests across the country in response to the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old who was shot dead in Sanford, Florida, in 2012, while visiting his father.

George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon as he walked home from a convenience store with candy, was acquitted by a Florida jury under the state's self-defense law in July 2013.

Seven years later, during the national protests in 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement grew in diversity and size, attracting people of different ages, races and backgrounds, many of whom were protesting for the first time.

A protester waves a Black Lives Matter flag during racial justice protests, Nov. 3, 2020, in Seattle.

In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election however, Black Lives Matter organizers said they endured a smear campaign with lawmakers, including former President Donald Trump, branding protesters as "terrorists," "Marxists" and "left-wing radicals" bent on destroying the country.

A key to keeping the Black Lives Matter movement going and growing is for people to realize they can be activists in their daily lives -- not just on the protest lines, according to Khan.

"One of the most important things to me is that people understand that the work of activism is actually, very simply, just being truly alive," said Khan. "It's not just this thing where you go out on a protest line, that's part of it, but it's really just the work of being alive. It's about being curious. It's about being compassionate. It's about being courageous. And any of us are capable of it."

That type of activism can start by understanding and figuring out other people's experiences in the world the way you would want someone to figure out your experience, according to Khan. It can also be in the form of art, of creation of acts of service and donation.

"It's really about doing what you know to do but with purpose," said Khan. "It's not this thing where you sort of throw away your whole life. No. The point is to do what you love but have that committed to a service that is greater than yourself."

Janaya Future Khan speaks onstage at The Dove Self-Esteem Project and Shonda Rhimes Team Up In the Fight Against Hair Discrimination on Oct. 02, 2019, in Downey, Calif.

For Khan -- who will appear on Tuesday night's episode of "Soul of a Nation," ABC News' prime-time series on the Black experience in the U.S. -- the ability to stay committed to activism comes from turning pain into purpose.

"I, like millions of people in America and around the world, I felt that I was dealt a hard hand," said Khan, who grew up in Canada as one of three children raised by a single, immigrant mom who struggled with mental illness. "And when you're dealt a hard hand, a tough set of conditions, that for a long time is all that you can see."

"I've learned that if you aren't using your pain, your pain is using you," they said. "For me, even though I was dealt a bad hand, what gets me up in the morning and what keeps me going is that I owe a great debt to the world. I owe a great debt to the world because I am here and I am here because enough people loved me along the way and enough people believed in me along the way, and somewhere along the line, I joined the fray. I started to believe in me too."

"That's how it goes," Khan continued. "If you do the work of activism, which is just for being someone else who you needed most in your most vulnerable moment, you will start to build those people around you."

Khan has helped build a community around them through social media, using Instagram to host a weekly "Sunday Sermon" to discuss issues that Black people face today and to build connections across cultures.

The future of the Black Lives Matter movement, according to Khan, lies in activists making "ourselves so much bigger and so much more" and "irresistible" in calls for change.

"I believe that change is possible and I believe that on the other side of courage and compassion is a life," Khan said. "The fight that I'm fighting for is really people to have that right to just a kind of life. A kind of quality in life. A kind of security in life. A kind of joy in life. That's it."

For more conversation with Khan, tune into "Soul of a Nation" on Tuesday, March 9, at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT, on ABC.

ABC News' Bill Hutchinson and Gentrix Shanga contributed to this report.

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Black Lives Matter activist Janaya Future Khan on the future of the movement - ABC News

Diehard fans know that Vanessa Bryant was involved in a lawsuit that had to do with some Kobe Bryant crash pics. Check out the latest reports coming from The Shade Room.

A judge rules that the names of the deputies who shared photos from the crash site of #KobeBryant, his daughter #Gigi and 7 others will be revealed and not shielded from the public. Vanessa shared a post of this news thanking the judge. We continue to send love towards all the families affected by this tragedy TSR wrote.

RELATED:Vanessa Bryant Slams Meek Mill For Rapping About Kobes Death In Leaked Song!

Someone said: I understand shes hurt but whats the purpose of naming those deputies? Does she want revenge for the leak? and one other follower posted this: As she tf should. People need to learn that there are consequences for their actions.

RELATED:Vanessa Bryant Speaks On Ugly Family Drama With Her Mother Who Claims She Was Kicked Out And Had Her Car Taken Away

One other follower said: Serious question What is this going to do? Are they going to be charged or something for doing this?

Someone else posted this: Their lives will be a living hell once them names drop and one other follower posted this: Yall so pressed bout who leaked some damn pics but George Zimmerman still alive and well. What does yall gon do with the name? The address? Oh okay.

Someone else said: I dont mean to be insensitive. I know shes still mourning.. but what is she gonna do with this? Im confused. Why does this matter?

Vanessa Bryant could not be any more proud of her firstborn daughter since shes following her dream and pursuing a modelling career. That being said, the mom is also certain that Kobe would be just as proud if he were still here!

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Vanessa took to her account on Instagram to share a pic of her stunning 18-year-old daughter rocking a perfect makeup look and in the caption, raving about her pursuing a modelling career!

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Vanessa Bryant Wins Lawsuit That Involves Kobe Bryants Crash Photos - Celebrity Insider

MyPillow founder and staunch Trump ally Mike Lindell plans to launch a social network of his own in the next few weeks, creating a haven for the kind of pro-Trump conspiracy theories that have been banned on more prominent social-media sites. On Lindells Vocl social media platform, users will be free to claim that a supercomputer stole the election from Donald Trump, or that vaccines are a tool of the devil.

Any new social media network faces serious challenges. But Vocl must grapple with a daunting problem before it even launches: a website called Vocal, spelled with an A, already exists.

On Thursday, lawyers for Vocals publicly traded parent company, Creatd, Inc., warned Lindell, in a letter reviewed by The Daily Beast, to change his social media networks name and surrender ownership of the Vocl.com domain name. If Lindell refuses to change the name, he could face a lawsuit.

Lindell claims Vocl is also an acronym. Ours stands for the Victory of Christ's Love, Lindell added.

While Lindell has promised to turn Vocl into a cross between Twitter and YouTube, Vocal is a publishing platform similar to Medium where writers can post and monetize articles.

It is clear that you are acting with bad faith and with intent to profit from Creatds mark, the letter reads, claiming Lindells Vocl would tarnish the Vocal brand.

Its not like anything youve ever seen, Lindell previously told Insider, describing his similarly named social network. Its all about being able to be vocal again and not to be walking on eggshells.

Creatd owns the trademark for using Vocal in a number of ways related to social networking, including creating virtual communities and online networking services. Along with surrendering ownership of the Vocl.com domain name, Creatd wants Lindell to destroy any products with Vocl branding and never use the name again.

Creatd is prepared to take all steps necessary to protect Creatds valuable intellectual property rights, without further notice to you, the letter reads.

When asked on Friday morning about the new legal warning, the embattled MyPillow CEO and Trump friend replied, It has nothing to do with their trademark. I haven't even launched yet. But it has nothing to do with us.

Lindell claims Vocl is also an acronym.

Ours stands for the Victory of Christ's Love, Lindell added.

Early Friday afternoon, he called back to say, We looked into it, and we believe it would be confusing, so we are going to announce a different name and URL by Monday.

Lindell is already facing one major lawsuit. In February, voting-tech company Voting Systems sued Lindell and MyPillow over his baseless allegations that Dominion was involved in a scandalous election theft. Concurrently, Lindell, with the help of Trump attorney and Gawker-slayer Charles Harder, has also recently sued the Daily Mail tabloid, over the publications January article that the Trump pal had a secret romance with 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Jane Krakowski, a story that both parties have flatly denied.

For years, the pillow mogul has been a personal friend of former President Donald Trump, and a diehard MAGA supporter and campaigner. During the 2020 presidential election, Lindell served as Trump 2020s Minnesota co-chair, and following Trumps loss in the Electoral College and general election to Democrat Joe Biden, the MyPillow CEO became one of the loudest voices in the country supporting the broader Trump effort to nullify the outcome of the presidential race. (Trumps anti-democratic crusade on this, of course, climaxed with his instigation of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., an event that led to the ex-presidents second impeachment in the House.)

During the tumultuous presidential transition period, Lindell was a major behind-the-scenes funder of several efforts to challenge the 2020 results, and near the very end of Trumps term even visited the then-president at the White House to brief him on discredited documents alleging that China and other foreign nations helped hack the election and throw it to Biden. Ever since the start of the Biden era, Lindell has not given up aggressively promoting the fiction that Trump actually won, even as it has resulted in his banishment from certain social media platforms, his business getting shunned by other companies, and ballooning legal risk.

Alternative social media networks aimed at conservatives have been challenged by hacks and other technical issues, but Lindell claims Vocl wont face those problems. Hackers recently hit far-right social network Gab, while social media platform Parler went offline for a month after the U.S. Capitol riot when Amazon Web Services pulled support for its hosting. In contrast, Lindell told Insider that Vocl will have its own servers, with space-age stuff to prevent hacking.

Lindell told Insider that Vocl has a staff of roughly 10 people, but declined to describe them or where theyre working for their safety.

Vocl users will be free to promote conspiracy theories about election fraud and vaccines, according to a speech Lindell gave Wednesday at a rally in Arizona.

Every word out of their mouths is going to say Dominion, Smartmatic fraud, vaccine fraud, Lindell told the cheering crowd, describing the content on Vocl.

Read more from the original source:
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Is Trying To Launch a Social Media Site, and It's Already Resulted in a Legal Threat - The Daily Beast

In 2020, the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative completed two research projects on the role of social networks in economic mobility, one project based in Charlotte, NC and the other based in three cities (Racine, WI; San Francisco, CA; and Washington, DC). The purpose of this research was to better understand how the social networks of groups of diverse individuals are related to economic outcomes and opportunities such as jobs, stable housing, and education.

In this research, social networks refers to the set of personal relationships which individuals rely on for resources, information, advice, and help. These four locations were selected due to their diverse economic mobility profiles. We hypothesized that social networks of individuals vary in terms of their size, composition, function, and formation based on an individuals own characteristics, including their race, gender, and income. We also hypothesized that social networks are linked to outcomes in employment, housing, and education by providing social capital in the form of resources, advice, information, or help that may tie to economic mobility.

We were motivated by previous research which showed that local dynamics appear to drive economic mobility. While we now understand more about the dynamics of economic mobility, we were not able to identify data that could explain how social networks function for low SES populations or for communities of color in the domains important to economic mobility. We also did not have data on the conditions under which these social networks might confer opportunities for economic mobility.Our projects were focused on filling this vacuum. Over the course of 6 months, which coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, we analyzed over 30,000 interpersonal network connections drawing on data from 431 interview participants across all four cities to understand how social networks are linked with economic outcomes. Our main findings were:

1. Race is the most important and consistent differentiator of social networks. For example, In Washington DC, 97% of people in white mens job networks were also white. The graphic below depicts the racial homogeneity of social networks in Charlotte, NC.

2. Across all four cities, Black males tended to have the least robust networks for jobs, education, and housing. In Charlotte, Black men typically relied on just one person on average for support. Similarly, Latinos had relatively thin and small networks mostly reliant on family members with Latinas (Hispanic women) being the least networked within this racial group.

3. Outside of family, jobs, education, and housing, networks were primarily formed through work and education settings (college or K-12 schooling). Community activities were also mentioned as a means through which social networks are formed, specifically in San Francisco.

4. Low-income participants in Charlotte and San Francisco had small social networks. Higher-income groups also had fewer people in their networks, but those contracts were very reliable for information, advice, networking, and providing references.

Policy Opportunities

One of our principal goals in conducting the research was to ensure that local communities contributed to and were aware of the findings of the projects. We intentionally partnered with local leaders and local non-profits to share the intentions of the study, to solicit suggestions about what to include in the interview questions and to share the final results as broadly as possible. We did this in the hope that the local communities would attain a sense of ownership of the results and be empowered to lead on solutions.

From a policy perspective, the results suggest that there are numerous ways of addressing racialized and economic status-based social networks. What can be done? While we do not offer a blueprint for building social capital, we do suggest some potential paths forward to achieve equitable social networks in these cities.

1. De-segregate communities

On a national scale, residential segregation has declined in the past few decades, but patterns of residential segregation are still prevalent in the cities we studied. The most common measure of segregation, the dissimilarity index (with 0 indicating the lowest level of segregation and 100 being the highest) shows what share of one racial group would have to move to another neighborhood in order to achieve a uniform distribution of races across a city. The table below shows the white-Black dissimilarity index across our cities of study.

White-Black Segregation in Select Cities (Census 2000)

Source: Diversity and Disparities Project, Brown University

The strong racial homogeneity in social networks in the four cities reflects a range of public policy choices made over the last few decades that have essentially maintained spatial segregation. These public policy choices are most evident in housing and educational policies. Since racially homogenous social networks reflect racial segregation, city governments can make a commitment to creating more inclusive communities by undoing racist housing policies, changing restrictive zoning rules, desegregating public housing units, addressing transport inequality, and focusing on transformative placemaking.

2. Focusing on Black boys and men

One of our key findings was that Black men had the least robust social networks. Our results also suggest that most social networks for jobs and education were formed at school or at work. The thin social networks we observed for Black men reflect policy choices that have had the effect of removing Black males from the domains and moments that are critical for forming robust and reliable social networks.

In all our cities of study, Black students were more likely to be suspended compared to their white counterparts as shown in the figure below. Additionally, male students were more likely to be suspended in all four cities.

City governments must set an explicit goal to support the development of Black boys. This should start with an effort to drive down school suspension rates among Black boys. Keeping Black boys in school and building a culture of care in place of a dismissive suspension and punishment culture can go a long way in ensuring that public schools are adequately serving the needs of Black boys. Additionally, some localities are exploring mentorship programs for Black boys to help them navigate academic and non-academic environments. Local governments can also partner with local community organizations and businesses to further support the needs of Black boys. This effort needs to be coordinated across government entities, co-owned by communities who are most negatively affected by the current aggressive disinvestment in Black boys and must be pursued with a sense of urgency.

3. Enhancing paths into the workplace

Our research showed that the workplace is a place where crucial social connections for jobs and education opportunities are formed. A white female interview participant in Racine summarized how social networks formed at work can be helpful for finding other job opportunities:

[My old boss] warned me beforehand [that the company was closing]. Then I told her I was going to look for [another job]. She wrote me recommendation letters. She gave me time off of work for interviews when I didnt actually have time off. So thats how she helped me white female, Racine, WI

The U.S. unemployment rate was 6.2% in February 2021. This is lower than the 14.8% unemployment rate witnessed in April 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it remains higher than the pre-pandemic unemployment rate. Research by our colleague, Stephanie Aaronson, suggests that the unemployment rate significantly understates labor market deterioration. Thus, identifying and executing policies that will improve the chances of getting back to stable and well-paying jobs for minority and low-income workers is important. Robust social connections formed at the workplace can provide resources, advice, information, or help that is linked to chances of economic mobility for these workers and their families in a post-pandemic world. Such policies include improvements in higher education, federal worker training programs, and supporting labor unions.

Policymakers and civic leaders have the opportunity to create what we call a horizon community in their cities, where the possibility of economic mobility is equitably distributed and where the flow of resources and social capital allow all residents to experience expanded horizons and well-being.

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Social networks and economic mobilitywhat the findings reveal - Brookings Institution