New York City’s first-ever racial equity plan is out and it is a weighty tome – a 400-plus page treatise from the Mamdani administration on how to tackle racial disparities in a range of activities and endeavors at the center of life in the five boroughs, including housing, education, employment and transportation.
The plan was about four years in the making. In 2022, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis and the so-called racial reckoning that followed, New Yorkers passed a ballot measure that created the Office of Equity & Racial Justice and mandated a citywide plan for identifying and correcting racial disparities.
So, what’s next? Afua Atta-Mensah, the city’s chief equity officer and commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity & Racial Justice, discussed the sprawling initiative with All Things Considered host Sean Carlson.
Here is a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Carlson: Now, the plan touches on a broad spectrum of areas. It ranges from housing, healthcare and employment. It coordinates across 45 city agencies. That’s a lot of stuff. Can you just go over the highlights?
Atta-Mensah: This is a comprehensive, citywide plan. More than 45 agencies came together to put together more than 200 goals to address the scourge of racial discrimination and inequity in our city. We have eight citywide, cross-cutting goals in areas including housing; unemployment; early education; K through 12 education; and transportation. And so, we have these eight areas (also including the criminal justice system, internet access and health) within the citywide goals that demonstrate the full-of-government approach to some of these issues that don’t just sit in one agency neatly but speak across agencies. The plan shows how there has to be the whole government working together to solve serious issues.
How will we know if the plan is working?
Each agency has short-, medium- and long-term goals that list clearly the timeline for delivery, strategies to help support them. Part of the work of this agency, the Office of Equity & Racial Justice, is that we partner with these agencies in the implementation of their plans. We monitor and support them. And so it’s a cycle where we are implementing, learning and addressing any hurdles that come along the way. And part and parcel of this is a strong partnership with New Yorkers, who have to let us know how we’re doing in our advancement of these goals.
What are your main takeaways about the priorities of New Yorkers?
What I think is interesting is a testament to New Yorkers. They said, “Make it plain. Tell us clearly what are the communities that have been impacted and what the plans are.” They wanted us to be impactful and not just talk about activities. They wanted us to talk about the impact we’re going to make. They wanted an understanding of what community engagement will be thereafter. So it was those types of buckets of themes that New Yorkers wanted to see. They wanted to see overarching, cross-cutting goals that can really be a testament to how the city is moving forward. We answered a lot of those pieces that were in the comment period, with the cross-cutting goals, with the clarity of language, with moving from just documenting activity to how we measure impact and ensuring that we have ongoing community engagement throughout our implementation.
Now, we keep talking about how expansive this plan is. It’s more than 400 pages. It has more than 200 agency goals and outcomes. How are we going to make sure that city agencies are staying on track across the span of the next two years before the next report is expected?
We’ll be working across government to make sure that in the interim there are reports published to talk about our progress, and part and parcel of why we want to make sure there’s more community engagement so that we can get an assessment from the public of how agencies are doing in their progress.
The Mayor’s Office of Equity & Racial Justice has made it clear that the plan is just the first step in a citywide effort to combat racial disparities in New York. So what comes next, commissioner?
Implementation. We have to continue to move this forward to ensure that we’re measuring outcomes, to use the data so we’re not hiding disparities by citywide averages, and that we are prioritizing community voice in government decisions.