LA City Council initiative to embrace conversations about race to promote equity

This post was updated Oct. 2 at 11:08 a.m.

A city-wide initiative is promoting racial equality by proposing a new office and encouraging community discussions.

The Los Angeles City Council founded embRACE LA, an initiative to empower city residents through conversations about race, in late 2016. In the past two years, over 150 conversations have taken place around the city in the form of potlucks and intimate gatherings.

The initiative’s goal for this year is to create an Office of Racial Equity, with these discussions acting as focus groups for community members to gauge racial inequity issues in LA. Conversations usually consist of 10-12 participants from the LA area and last 2-3 hours, according to a press release from the council.

“We are using this round of conversations to not just talk about pressing issues facing our city, but really try to achieve change,” said Council President Herb J. Wesson Jr. in an email to the Daily Bruin.

UCLA plans on hosting three internal embRACE LA discussions in the coming weeks for students and faculty, said Isaac Bryan, public policy advisor at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.

Bryan said the embRACE LA website contains a comprehensive toolkit for anyone interested in hosting one for their community that guides individuals through the conversation.

“A lot of the questions have to deal with your personal experience as a person of color or a white person,” Bryan said. “(These are) things that we talk about to ourselves all the time, but to really do it with strangers, particularly a diverse group of strangers, that coming to light is also important.”

This year, the council is working in conjunction with community partners such as Revolve Impact, Advancement Project California, Department of the Future, and Community Coalition, with the latter spearheading the effort. These organizations push for social change by empowering marginalized communities.

Founded in 1990, Community Coalition helps transform LA neighborhoods through programs that improve schools, promote civic engagement and address the causes of homelessness.

EmbRACE LA project manager and UCLA alumna Tiffany Caldas said the organization’s role in embRACE LA is laying the foundation for the Office of Racial Equity.

Current plans for the Office of Racial Equity include the creation of an institutional body that has the power to enforce training, analyze policy, monitor data, disperse grants and reallocate manpower based on citizen concerns.

The conversations help policymakers engage with community members and community-based organizations from the forefront, Caldas said.

The goal of these discussions is for citizens to provide input about what racial equity looks like based off personal experience. Participants are encouraged to voice their concerns with council members who have hosted their own discussions in the past year.

“There’s sometimes this notion of ‘Oh, other folks need to have (this conversation) more than I do,’” Caldas said. “Don’t put it on other folks, and if you feel like you might want to get involved, then go ahead and do so.”

First-year financial actuarial mathematics student Emilia Benitez said she would attend an embRACE LA discussion and would like to see more events that promote racial equity at UCLA.

“When I’m down in Westwood, it’s pretty diverse,” Benitez said. “But yeah, it could be targeted to implement more change.”

Bryan said he fears the Office of Racial Equity may not be as effective as intended because of his previous experience working for the City of Los Angeles.

“Part of the reason for the embRACE initiative is to really consolidate and solidify community involvement in this process,” he said. “I think time will tell if it’s a serious endeavor or not.”