Mar 9, 2008

Minority gap detected in 'green' effort

City leaders aim to solve cultural divide in activism

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

At the first meeting of a new joint city-community environmental group in Palo Alto last week, organizers passed out 100 copies of the agenda, then made more.

By 4 p.m. the council chambers was packed and planners of the Community Environment Action Partnership said they were overwhelmed by the large turnout.

Then, when the time came to refine a mission statement, the group was asked to use handheld voting devices to record their age, gender and race.

A graph popped up on a screen, starkly revealing the audience was 95 percent white.

"There was almost a collective gasp," said Walt Hays, the group's chairman.

Even in a city that is predominantly white, the almost total absence of minorities at a meeting about making Palo Alto greener came as a surprise.

According to the 2000 U.S. census, Palo Alto's population is 73 percent white, 17 percent Asian, 5 percent Hispanic, 2 percent black and 3 percent other.

Since then, the city's diversity likely has increased. In the school district, for example, the number of students from Asian or Indian families has risen from 20 percent in the 2000-01 school year to 26.2 percent last year, according to enrollment data.

And school board meetings tend to reflect the community mix, often drawing diverse crowds.

So why was the turnout at the environmental group's meeting overwhelmingly white?

One reason may be that the meetings themselves attract residents with more spare time and specific interests.

Amado Padilla, a Stanford University professor of education who has facilitated public meetings for the Palo Alto school district, said minority groups may simply prioritize subjects such as education over environmental issues.

And, he noted, a meeting at 4 p.m. may exclude working parents.

"People can't drop everything they are doing and head off to a meeting at 4 unless the cause is a very high priority," he wrote in an e-mail to the Daily News.

Marvina White, co-founder of the Parent Network for Students of Color, said her group has been proactive in the schools "because our kids mean a lot to us and because the PTA was a ready vehicle through which to work.

"The ways in which we have connected with the school district have had everything to do with our own efforts to be heard," she said.

But when it comes to environmental matters, cultural factors may also be in play, said several community leaders.

Grace Mah, founder of Palo Alto Chinese Education and a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Education, said recent immigrants are not accustomed to being active in the democratic process.

"There's not a lot of participation in government in China, Taiwan or Hong Kong," she said.

Council Member Yoriko Kishimoto, one of the city's leaders in its environmental efforts, agreed.

"For many new Americans, the 'light bulb' hasn't turned on for them how rewarding civic engagement can be, or that they can have a meaningful role in shaping Palo Alto's future. ... (The) government is a distant entity that somehow makes decisions," Kishimoto said in an e-mail.

By this logic, the latest generations of minority children and students who have lived in Palo Alto and in an American democracy all their lives should be increasingly interested in activist causes, such as the environment. But at Gunn High School, only one of the student Environment Club's dozen members is non-white, said president Caroline Hodge.

"For the most part, it's pretty white," she said. Hodge said she noticed the school's Asian population tends to join community service clubs more often.

Palo Alto, of course, is not the only city to experience a lack of diversity when grappling with eco-friendly issues.

The "Stuff White People Like" blog lists recycling as entry 64 on its national, if ironic, stage.

"Recycling is fantastic!" the blog's author writes. "You can still buy all the stuff you like (bottled water, beer, wine, organic iced tea, and cans of all varieties) and then when you're done you just put it in a different bin ... And boom! Environment saved!"

In Palo Alto, where the city council has made "civic engagement" one of its top four priorities this year, elected officials and community leaders have said they plan to change the demographic makeup of who gets involved.

After last Wednesday's meeting, "the general reaction of those who planned was, we need to do some outreach to get some more diversity," Hays said.

Before residents vote on an $80 million library bond measure in the November election, the city plans to do extensive outreach education. Leaders such as White of the Parent Network for Students of Color's have already said they intend to be involved.

Kishimoto said she and Council Member Yiaway Yeh plan to make presentations on the library bond specifically to Asian groups.

"We need to go to them. This is a topic which we hope will be of interest," she said.

Mah, who said she sees many people reading Chinese newspapers every day at Mitchell Park library, predicted the Asian community would provide "more participation in the library than perhaps in the environment."



E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.