Have you drawn attention to "Black History Month"?

This map shows segregation in the Chicago region and is part of an extensive article titled: "Segregation Map: America is more diverse than ever, but still segregated", in the May 2, 2018 Washington Post. I show the map and share a link to the article in this post on the MappingforJustice blog. 

February is Black History Month and millions are doing something to draw attention and to encourage study of Slavery and Black history in America.

If you've liked, reTweeted, or done anything to draw attention to Black History Month, I urge you to take time to read this article in The Atlantic, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It's titled "The Case for Reparations" and reviews the long history of slavery, Jim Crow, separate but not equal, housing discrimination, etc. in America.  

Maps are a valuable tool for showing where people were most affected and where they need the most help.  You can find many map-based articles on this blog.   

In addition, I've been highlighting some of the stories and websites hosting them in articles on the MappingforJustice blog. As I've done this I've added updates to some articles as I find new information.  Here's an example, where I've added updates to this article on Redlining, which is a formal practice that forced Black Americans to live in highly segregated cities. 

I've been building a library of information, freely available to anyone, since 1993.  One section focuses on Black History and another on Poverty, Race and Inequality.   

As I've found new articles I began adding updates to the bottom of blog articles a few years ago.  I created this concept map to aggregate links to some of those and to help readers find the articles I'm hoping many will read.  

In a busy world full of social media too many people don't spend much time reading and thinking deeply about issues that affect them, their children and grandchildren, and their communities.  

I created the graphics below in the 1990s to visualize how a site-based tutor/mentor program can attract volunteers from diverse backgrounds, workplaces, colleges, etc.  As they connect with kids they become a form of bridging social capital, expanding the network of "who you know" that helps people find opportunities and overcome challenges.

However, these graphics also communicate another idea. Those people who become involved can share what they are learning and what they are reading with people in their family, work, college, religious and social networks, educating more people and getting more people involved in helping kids to careers by direct involvement in organized tutor/mentor programs or in working to remove the structural barriers that have built up over hundreds of years.

I've posted nearly 300 articles focused on "learning" on this blog. Most are not aimed at the type of learning students do in school. They focus on learning adults need to do to create a better world for themselves, their kids and grand kids, and for all others at the same time.  You can't read all these in a day, but you could visit many if it were part of an on-going process.  

Think of my blogs as "Sunday School for Future Leaders" where groups of people gather weekly, read some text, discuss it, then go live their lives, hopefully applying what they read.

If you're reading this. Make an effort to share it.  

I depend on contributions to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC. Click here if you'd like to help. 

Connecting Global Sustainability Development Goals to Local Problems

I created this graphic in an effort to show how the United Nations' Global Sustainability Goals (SDGs) are also local challenges.   If you open the SDG web site you can click on each of the 17 boxes and find information related to that goal.

I think that many of the issues we face in Chicago and America are the same, but that some may be on a different scale. For instance the income level of really poor people in Chicago may still be quite a bit higher than really poor people in India and Africa.  However, the gaps between rich and poor in other countries may not be as wide as it is in America. All of this deserves greater study, so I point you to the research section of the web library I've been building since the late 1990s.

I've been using Thinglink (free version) to highlight sections of complex visualizations. So invite you to look at this.



I've put nodes on my Race-Poverty map to the SDG Goals that have a direct correlation.  On the left, with a black dot, I list goals that are not directly related to poverty, but affect the well-being of all of us who share this planet.

There is a world-wide effort to bring the SDG's into classroom study. At the right is a learning path infographic from this site.

I encourage classrooms to look at my Race-Poverty map, and other concept maps and visualizations.  Think of ways students and adults can use their time, talent and dollars to help overcome these problems in different places throughout America and the world, over many years of consistent attention.

11-14-2017 update - Here's a pdf showing 17 SDGs, in comic book format.

6-9-2018 update - "How the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals undermine democracy". The writer of this article claims that "basic freedoms that underpin and advance human development are missing from the SDG equation.' Read the article.

3-12-2019 update - Canadian Index of Child and Youth Well-Being - this report ties into the SDGs and is model that might be used elsewhere. click here

2-27-2020 update - Catalytic Communities is committed to the United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Rio de Janeiro’s favela communities -

The text next to the tree says "Sustainable communities and cities are impossible to achieve without social justice and accountable institutions. If CatComm were a tree, SDG 16 would be our trunk and SDG 11 our canopy."  Read more

9-15-2021 update - Global SDGs action map shows who's involved in each goal, in every country.  click here

What is Segregation Costing Chicago?

I started building a library of ideas in 1973 as I began my first year as a volunteer tutor. I used the ideas to figure out what to do each week.  Then, in 1975 when I began to lead the volunteer program at Montgomery Ward, I shared the ideas with volunteers and other leaders, so more people would help build a great program.

In 1993 when we launched the Tutor/Mentor Connection, the library was a core part of our strategy. I shared ideas to help other programs grow, and to help leaders from business, religion, universities, etc. develop proactive strategies that help programs grow in every poverty neighborhood.

I've have several cost of poverty articles in this section of my web library.  This week a new cost of segregation in Chicago study was released, and I've added it to the library. Here's a link to the story as it appeared in The Chicago Reporter.

I hope you'll read the story, then I hope you'll share it with others, in an effort to build a growing network of people who are concerned, and who take actions that help bring mentor-rich non-school programs to youth in highly segregated neighborhoods, while connecting those youth and their families with the resources of the greater Chicago region.

I'd be happy to act as your guide.

5-15-2020  update - This NY Times editorial is titled "The Cities we Need" and is loaded with links to additional reading. The focus is the negative impact of segregation by race and class. Click here to read.

Cost of Segregation in Chicago - research by MPC

I attended a Chicago City Data User Group gathering at Microsoft last night where the featured speaker was from the Metropolitan Planning Council.  As he introduced the work of MPC I browsed through the web site and found this section showing research they are doing related to Segregation in Chicago. The map below was featured on the site.

If you've browsed through this blog, and my MappingforJustice blog, you'll see many uses of maps to focus attention and resources to those areas with high segregation and high concentrations of poverty.  I added the link to the MPC page to this section of my web library and Tweeted the link through my @tutormentorteam account.

As I listened to the speaker and browsed the web site, I wondered: "Have they had a conversation about how they will get thousands of people living beyond poverty, who lead businesses, run philanthropies, do media, etc., to look at the research, then be involved in the planning that generates solution strategies, then actually offer time, talent and dollars for many years to reduce poverty, or the negative impacts of segregation, in all of the areas shown on the map to be highly segregated?"

Below are two graphics that I'd love to be discussing with MPC and many others.  

This concept map shows a planning cycle, intended to fill high poverty neighborhoods with a wide range of needed support services and programs and keep them in place, and constantly improving (by learning from each other and being supported with consistent funding) for many years.

Below is another concept map version of this planning process. This emphasizes the need to engage people who live in high poverty areas, as well as people from the broader Chicago region who share the negative costs and consequences of poverty and segregation, and who need to use their influence, wealth, power, talent, time and dollars to build and sustain needed solutions in every area of the map that shows indicators of need.

I did not see process maps like this on the MPC site, nor do I see them on many other sites of leaders, donors, business and/or non profit organizations.  Yet, without focusing on the process, the infrastructure, and how we build and sustain public will, what good will more research showing the problem actually accomplish?

By posting articles like this and sharing them on social media I'm issuing an invitation for others to add me, or the ideas I share, to their own thinking, research and planning process.  I'm also inviting a few who understand the value of what I offer to reach out and provide financial support, talent and shared responsibility for continuing this work.

What if all Black kids were succeeding in school, and careers?

Social media, telephone cameras, instant videos, etc. have combined over the past few years to bring much greater, and horrifying attention to issues of race in America. In many articles, like this one titled,The Sugarcoated Language of White Fragility", from the Huffington Post, “white privilege,” “inclusion” and “unconscious bias” as part of a deeply rooted system of racist oppression", is the focus.

I want to share three images from my library that illustrate what I've been focusing on for the past 20-30 years.

This one focuses on the 12-20 years it takes to help a youth move through school and into a job and career. It emphasizes the work needed on the ground floor, and the sequence of supports that need to be sustained. In education terms, this means "pre school through post high school".

This one asks a question: What are all the things that need to happen for this type of system of support to be available to youth in every high poverty neighborhood of Chicago and other cities?

Now here's the big question.  If this system were in place, and succeeding, and, let's say, in 2030, every Black child born in America in 2005 had finished high school, post HS education (college, vocational, etc.) and was starting a job with prospects of further growth in income and opportunities, what would the conversation about "race in America" look like then?

In many articles I've pointed to systems thinking, concept mapping, MOOCs, etc. to share ideas about building conversations and mapping complex problems and solutions. If you looked at the blueprint books for the building shown above, they would probably be several feet thick, showing many pages of detailed work.

In the concept map below I show a birth to work blueprint, but it needs much more detail at each age level.  As I talk to others, such as in the Connected Learning MOOC, #CLMOOC,  I'm trying to encourage some of them, and their students, to flesh out concept maps like this, with those needed details. And I'm encouraging them to share their map with leaders in their communities, so the strategies are adopted in many cities, not just Chicago.

I've not found a map like this serving as the blueprint a community was using to build and sustain needed supports in every poverty neighborhood, but if you know of one, please share it.

Such a map can only be created, and useful, if part of an on-going strategy, which I describe here.

Until then, my question is just a rhetorical question. We won't know what the conversation about race in America will look like under these circumstances, until we have built a system where all Black kids are moving successfully through school and into jobs.

Such a system would be helping all kids, not just Black kids....or kids living in poverty.  I hope.

However, if in 2030 and beyond all Black young people were in jobs, able to afford to live and raise their own kids where ever they want, with many in upper and top management positions in many sectors, what would the conversation about race look like?

If you're thinking about this, I encourage you to write up your thinking on a blog post, then share the web address in the comment section below.