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K. Steven Brown, Kilolo Kijakazi, Charmaine Runes, and Margery Austin Turner

February 2019

Racial and ethnic disparities figure prominently into much of the analysis conducted by

policy research organizations in the US. But too often our organizations give short shrift to

the centuries of subjugation, discrimination, exclusion, and injustice that have produced

these inequities.

If, as researchers, we aim to build knowledge that helps shape and advance solutions to the

challenges of blocked mobility and widening inequality, we must do better at explicitly examining the

structural and systemic forces at work. For many established research organizations, this is more easily

said than done. It requires scholars to learn things about our history and its lasting implications that

they may not already know. It requires changes to familiar ways of working. And it requires fresh

approaches to communicating findings to our intended audiences.

Over the past several years, the Urban Institute has committed itself to making these changes. We

see this goal—to rigorously address the structures and systems of racism in the content and

communication of our research—as an essential part of our broader diversity and inclusion efforts. The

current political climate creates a heightened sensitivity and sense of urgency, but we see this evolution

as essential to our mission over the long term. Urban is by no means alone in this endeavor; many other

policy analysis and research organizations have also embarked on this undertaking and have an interest

in sharing tools, strategies, and lessons learned along the way.

In November 2018, the Urban Institute hosted a roundtable discussion with 23 organizations

representing policy research, academia, and philanthropy to share approaches, insights, and lessons

from our respective efforts to confront structural racism in our research and policy analysis. This brief

discusses the rationale for these efforts at implementing institutional change; the range of challenges

and constraints facing different types of research organizations; and our experience to date with

DI VERSI T Y, EQ UI T Y, AND I NCL USI O N AT T HE URBAN I NST I T UT E

Confronting Structural Racism in Research and Policy Analysis Charting a Course for Policy Research Institutions

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specific tools and strategies. We aim to advance understanding of and attention to structural racism in

the work of our own institution and in the larger field of policy research.

Recognizing the Pervasive Legacy of Racist Policies For nearly its entire history, the United States excluded people of color from its main pathways to

economic opportunity through explicit policy decisions. In Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi

argues that racism does not primarily stem from hate and ignorance, but that “racist policies have driven

the history of racist ideas in America” (Kendi 2017, 9). For generations, people of African descent lived

and died in bondage. Even after the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, black people in the United

States were subjected to legalized forms of discrimination that restricted where they lived, if and where

they could attend school, and the kinds of jobs they could hold. And even with the constitutional right to

vote (granted to men with the 15th Amendment in 1870 and to women with the 19th Amendment in

1920), barriers to exercising those rights largely prevented citizens’ ability to change the oppressive

laws that obstructed their opportunities.

For example, the federal Home Owners Loan Corporation, established in 1933 as part of the New

Deal, created maps that were color-coded to indicate the desirability of neighborhoods. Race was a

significant factor in determining the color-coding of a neighborhood (Hillier 2005), with communities of

color designated as undesirable and color-coded red. This appraisal system, called redlining, was

adopted by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which provided mortgage insurance enabling

many Americans to buy homes. Redlining made it much more difficult and expensive for African

Americans to obtain loans and purchase homes. Between 1930 and 1960, African Americans received

less than 1 percent of the nation’s mortgages (Conley 1999). In addition to redlining, the FHA advocated

using restrictive covenants to maintain the racial segregation of neighborhoods. The FHA’s Underwriting

Manual stated, “if a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be

occupied by the same social and racial classes” (Oliver and Shapiro 2006, 18). Because people were

unable to buy homes in the past, many families today have less wealth, 1 and schools are not much less

segregated than they were 50 years ago (Reardon and Owens 2014).

America’s history of discriminatory policies and institutional practices explains the deep disparities

in access to opportunities and in outcomes that we see today across social and economic domains. Court

cases were decided and laws were passed that outlawed these and other practices, but to paraphrase

Lyndon B. Johnson, who helped found the Urban Institute, these legal rights are the beginning of the

path to freedom, not the end. He goes on to say that “it is not enough just to open the gates of

opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.” 2 Our approach to

understanding current racial disparities is guided by an understanding that centuries of oppression,

legal discrimination, and sanctioned inequality have long tails that continue to shape where people live,

what opportunities they are exposed to, and how people engage with one another. The legacies of those

structures—if not the structures themselves—continue to have impacts today. We use the definition of

structural racism developed by the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change (2004):

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a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other

norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies

dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time.

Two examples highlight how structural racism operates in policy today. First, more than 50 years

after passage of the federal Fair Housing Act, America’s neighborhoods remain starkly segregated along

lines of race and ethnicity, and people of color are dramatically overrepresented in high-poverty census

tracts. By the late 20th century, after decades of discriminatory lending practices and redlining, civil

rights legislation and evolving constitutional jurisprudence prohibited overt forms of discrimination in

housing and lifted many formal barriers to residential integration. But they were quickly replaced by

subtler and ostensibly race-neutral methods to exclude people of color from predominantly white

neighborhoods. For example, exclusionary zoning policies make it difficult for lower-income residents to

live in many suburban communities. And while the incidence of housing discrimination has generally

declined, people of color looking for places to live are still told about fewer homes and apartments than

white people (Greene, Turner, and Gourevitch 2017).

A second example involves law enforcement policies that criminalize behaviors in a way that

disproportionately affects people of color. Federal guidelines impose substantially more severe

penalties for the use of crack than for powder cocaine, two forms of the same drug. Research has found

that crack is more likely to be used by socioeconomically disadvantaged members of society, among

which African Americans are disproportionately represented, and that African Americans are “at higher

risk for arrest and subject to [an] 18:1 sentencing disparity.” 3 This is an example of color-blind structural

racism, where a policy makes no reference to race but still has major disproportionate effects by race.

As Kendi argues, the differences in outcomes in these two examples, not to mention many others,

resulted from policy. Too often, however, public policy researchers ignore or overlook the structures

and systems that created and sustain inequality, focusing exclusively on individual choices and

behaviors as the main drivers of disparate outcomes. Improving public policy research requires

organizations to consider how this history of discriminatory policies affects the context, validity, and

implications of our work, and to make intentional change in how we address these racist legacies.

Navigating Institutional Choices and Constraints Policy research organizations take many institutional forms—from small, single-issue nonprofits to for-

profit firms with thousands of employees to policy centers within universities to policy research

organizations in the nation’s capital. Structural racism is undeniably relevant to the work of all these

organizations, no matter their size or type. But the challenges we face and the paths we take to more

effectively address structural racism vary widely. In particular, an organization’s primary mission, its

funding sources, and its size and internal structure are likely to shape the strategies it pursues to

explicitly address the realities of structural racism in the research and policy analysis it produces.

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Organizational Mission

Every organization must give careful thought to how structural racism issues relate to its core mission

and the audiences it aims to inform and influence. Some may conclude that racial inequity and injustice

are core to their mission and that research on structural racism should take center stage. But even

research organizations with broader or less normative missions can and should find ways to accurately

and effectively analyze structural racism and its consequences.

Some organizations may explicitly focus their mission on advancing racial justice or overcoming

white supremacy. Many of these institutions target audiences that include grassroots organizations,

advocates, and social justice practitioners. These organizations can make their focus on structures and

systems explicit in their research products. They can hire people with expertise and commitment to

their mission and can expect their staff to make this work a top priority—putting them a step ahead of

organizations whose staff might not all have the same knowledge or commitment to advancing racial

justice. These organizations are also more likely to devote institutional resources to developing internal

training for staff members and to building capacity around these crucial issues.

ORGANIZATIONS WITH MISSIONS FOCUSED ON ADVANCING RACIAL JUSTICE

 PolicyLink “is a national research and action institute advancing racial and economic equity by Lifting Up What Works.”

 Kirwan Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity works “to create a just and inclusive society where all people and communities have opportunity to succeed.”

Many other long-established research organizations have broader missions than advancing racial

justice, but they can still decide to give structural racism explicit attention within a larger frame. These

institutions’ target audiences typically include elected officials, government agencies, and business

leaders, as well as on-the-ground practitioners and advocates. They can develop a structural racism–

focused program area or an important cross-cutting initiative within the broader scope of their research

analysis, also providing institutional legitimacy in the process. They can also make it a priority to hire

staff with relevant interests and expertise to lead in this area of study. In addition, staff with this

expertise can be encouraged to contribute to other work, since structural racism is pervasive across

research areas. Organizations with broader missions can also offer training, tools, and incentives to staff

interested in engaging with the conversation around advancing racial justice in their work.

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ORGANIZATIONS WITH MISSIONS BROADER THAN, BUT INCLUSIVE OF, RACIAL JUSTICE

 The Brookings Institution’s mission is “to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.”

 Abt Associates aims to be “an engine for social impact, fueled by caring, curiosity and cutting- edge research that moves people from vulnerability to security.”

 Mathematica “is dedicated to improving public well-being and reimagining the way the world gathers and uses data.”

The Urban Institute, founded in 1968 to “bring power through knowledge to solve the problems

that weigh heavily on the hearts and minds of America,” has chosen to elevate issues of racial injustice

and inequity as central to our broader mission. We seek to inform and support a wide variety of

audiences, including changemakers in government, philanthropy, business, advocacy, and practice. Our

Next50 initiative, which draws on our previous 50 years of work to inform priorities for our next 50,

focuses on advancing mobility and narrowing equity gaps. One of the big questions we want to tackle in

our future work is “What would it take to eliminate the policies, programs, and institutional practices

that impede racial equity?” We are committed to devoting resources to encouraging and supporting

steps to advance racial justice in our work, but we do not mandate this focus across all staff or projects.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) State Fiscal Policy division has been exploring

ways in which structural racism has affected their staff, how they do their work, and the landscape in

which they operate. They examine how race implicitly or explicitly impacts their decisionmaking from

the policy issues they choose to the research they conduct to the partners with whom they choose to

work. They are undertaking efforts to make these systemic barriers more transparent and to develop

strategies that will help staff identify their own assumptions and biases, analyze their decisions, and

choose to use a racial equity approach to the work. An example of such work is their seminal paper

Advancing Racial and Ethnic Equity with State Tax Policy (2018), which examines structural racism in

state tax policy. In addition, CBPP administers a state policy fellowship program with a focus on

candidates who have experience with communities that are underrepresented in state policy debates.

Funding Sources

The funding sources upon which an organization relies may either constrain or accelerate its ability to

make issues of structural racism explicit in its work. Some funders find the language of structural racism

too controversial or political and are unlikely to support work that puts the issue front and center. And

policy research organizations that compete for awards with strictly defined scope and focus face

limitations on their flexibility to explore these issues.

Despite these constraints, researchers have opportunities and responsibilities to identify and

describe the structures and systems that drive disparate outcomes, when these outcomes are

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addressed by their work. As discussed further below, they can avoid data and methods mistakes that

obscure key drivers, avoid language that dehumanizes people, and publish separate products targeted

to audiences other than the original funder. These additional products may leverage supplemental funds

to dive deeper into structural racism in the work and examine its effects without the constraints

imposed by the original scope of work or funding source.

In contrast, some funders, particularly in the philanthropic world, have determined that structural

racism should be a central focus or lens for the organizations and work they support. To capitalize on

these funding sources, research institutions must first prove they have the capacity to delve into this

type of work and go beyond the superficial. Developing a robust evidence base around structural racism

and its effects is critical to attracting these funders, which will in turn allow organizations to dig more

deeply into the disparate effects of structures and systems in their future work. To win support from

these funders, organizations must also actively engage with communities of color to surface questions

and gather evidence. They must have an inclusive staff with expertise in structural barriers to

opportunity. And they must identify policy and practice reforms that stretch conventional thinking.

Many other funding organizations, including those in the philanthropic, government, and corporate

spaces, are exploring how they want to tackle the structural forces that sustain inequity and injustice.

Seeking funding from these sources provides organizations with the opportunity to work together with

a partner and learn how to best address these issues through research. Institutions seeking these

funding sources can expand their research areas to ask challenging, “outside the box” research

questions they want to investigate. They can also experiment with less conventional data sources and

methods and reach out to new audiences that may be unfamiliar with their work.

Size and Structure

Organizations’ size, structure, and internal culture play a central role in how they implement efforts to

better address structural racism. Differences in these characteristics do not excuse institutions from

taking steps to improve. Rather, they offer an opportunity for organizations to take advantage of their

unique strengths and capacities.

Small organizations with a tight-knit team structure may be especially well positioned to establish a

strong shared understanding of and approach to analysis of racial inequity and injustice. In these smaller

organizations, the leader is critical to setting the tone and focus for everyone. A smaller size makes it

easier for the entire staff to take training together to improve their awareness of these issues, and it

encourages close collaboration around how to advance lessons learned and new approaches. These

advantages can also apply to small internal teams within larger, more complex organizations.

Highly centralized organizations with top-down review and approval mechanisms may be able to

mandate that everyone adopt the lens of structural racism, apply appropriate data and analytic

methods, and adhere to language guidelines. They can require all staff to complete training that centers

around the disparate effects of structural racism. These organizations can also implement a centralized

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review of proposals, work plans, research designs, and research products to ensure all work takes into

account, when applicable, a racial equity lens.

Many research organizations, however, are both large and decentralized and place a premium on

researcher independence rather than top-down direction. This poses challenges for adopting and

applying new ideas and approaches. Nonetheless, signals from leadership that they see this work as a

priority can be very powerful. These larger and more decentralized organizations can prioritize racial

equity in their work by celebrating researchers who are working on these issues, making connections

between researchers who might not otherwise know each other, offering voluntary tools and training to

advance awareness and adoption around racial justice, and providing internal financial support and

incentives to researchers who commit to prioritizing racial equity in their work.

Organizations also vary in the composition and diversity of their staffs. Many research

organizations set goals and track progress for diversity in staff and leadership. Having a diverse staff is

an important goal, and research has shown that increasing diversity can bring benefits in

communication, innovation, and productivity (Ellison and Mullin 2014; Gao and Zhang 2017). 4 Just as

important, a diverse staff brings different perspectives and sensitivities, which can improve how

organizations engage with and talk about particular populations, and a diverse staff accurately reflects

and represents the world in which we live and work. However, a staff that is less representative does

not prevent an institution from advancing a structural racism lens in their work. Tools like those listed

in this report can enable organizations to take concrete steps toward a better account of structural

disadvantage in their work. Additionally, developing this lens can provide opportunities for growth for

staff of color already in the organization and may be a draw to increase the diversity of staff through

hiring.

Tools for Moving Forward Progress may look different depending upon institutional choices and constraints, but all policy

research organizations can move forward with efforts to explicitly address the structures and systems

of racism by building understanding and awareness among staff members, reexamining data sources

and analytic methods, and improving communication strategies.

Boost Awareness and Learning Among Staff

Research organizations can build their internal capacity to produce rigorous research on racial

inequities and injustice by seeking external guidance, creating intentional spaces for reflection and

education, and embedding mechanisms that raise staff consciousness at each phase of the research

process—from proposal development to product dissemination. Many organizations have few staff with

the knowledge and expertise to effectively address structural racism in their work. Institutions should

build up their staff so people with this expertise work in each of the institutions’ policy domains. Tools

being tested to boost staff awareness and learning include the following:

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 Structural racism speaker series: The Urban Institute invites outside experts to spark

discussion on structural racism and advance new lines of inquiry among researchers. These

“brown bag” seminars expose researchers to established and emerging frameworks, methods,

and data sources around structural racism while providing examples of how researchers can

contextualize research results. This speaker series also helps researchers broaden their

networks and foster new partnerships for future work.

 Structural racism blog post series: The Urban Institute’s Urban Wire invites staff at all levels,

including research assistants and analysts, to write blog posts that apply a structural racism lens

to research findings and policy developments. This approach has elevated structural racism as a

topic of discussion at Urban, and it encourages collaboration among researchers across

different domains and years of experience.

 Leveraging internal funding: Several policy research organizations dedicate flexible (internal)

resources to work around structural racism, including the staff time needed to organize,

facilitate, and debrief meetings, as well as to develop public-facing products.

 READ groups: The CBPP developed learning modules about racial inequity that are designed to

spark discussion among small groups of staff. These modules include books, articles, and videos

at the intersection of public policy, research, and structural racism. They are helpful resources

for staff committed to building their knowledge and improving their research, and they

encourage engagement and discussion among staff who might not have the opportunity to talk

about these issues otherwise.

 Research project checklist: The CBPP created a checklist of questions that prompt staff to

consider structural racism at each stage of a research project. The checklist encourages

researchers to examine each decision they make throughout the project, from choosing

populations of interest to data sources to background research to participant compensation to

the structure of the analysis. These questions prompt researchers to push themselves and think

deliberately about how structural racism may play a role in their work.

Improve Data Sources and Methods

Research organizations can take concrete steps to include people and perspectives that are left out of

standard research practices by improving the data sources upon which they rely, and to develop

analytic methods for rigorously measuring the structures and systems that sustain racial inequities. As

gatekeepers for what constitutes valid research, our institutions have the obligation to develop and

elevate data sources and methods that more accurately and respectfully represent marginalized

communities and more accurately document the barriers they face. These methods and data sources

also improve the rigor of our research and the relevance of our policy analysis: