The PEW Report: Time for the Whole Philadelphia Story

I just read a recent publication of the PEW Charitable Trust’s Philadelphia Research Initiative, the report that calls itself, quite immodestly: “Philadelphia 2009, State of the City.” Lots of numbers, a bunch of charts and graphs, and, not unpredictably, an embarrassingly limited focus on the City’s largest population segment – African Americans – other than in the sections on “youth murder rates” and “high school drop-out rates.”

Here’s a news flash for busy people: There’s virtually no new information in the Report’s 54 pages, so, whatever you do, don’t "break your neck" going out to download a copy or make any special effort to get a printed version.

It’s not that there aren’t any interesting facts about the City buried in the report, it’s just that those facts are presented in the same, tired way they’ve always been presented by local, mainstream, suburban-oriented analysts. If you have the time to dig deeply into the data and if you don't get distracted by the themes in the press release, it is possible to find some useful bits of information--but, it's hard.

For example, if you didn’t know any better, even after you’ve read the entire contents of the document, you still would have almost no clue as to the true, comprehensive role played by blacks in the City’s overall social and economic infrastructure. You also wouldn't have a full appreciation of just how essential the historic lack of broad, economic access, for blacks and other minority City residents, has been to the creation of Philadelphia’s current, challenging economic, social and healthcare environment.

Yeah, black folks are predictably included in the “crime” and “lack of education” sections of the document, but there are no data on the number of blacks (the greatest percentage of the City’s population, at 43 percent, as compared to 39 percent for whites, 10 percent for Hispanics, and 5 percent for Asians) who have moved into the professions, who have started businesses, who have created arts organizations, who have graduated from colleges, or who have purchased (or built) homes in the City, over the report period.

What screams out at me as I read through the report is that the authors have absolutely failed to "connect the economic dots" in what they hope will be a benchmark document for measuring Philadelphia’s future progress. By inadvertently, or purposely, leaving blacks out of any of the report's positive or “upside” economic data, and by offering virtually no analysis of the lingering, “causal” issues that have brought us to our current, precarious state, the Philadelphia Research Initiative simply continues the stereotype that Philadelphia’s African-American community is no more than an uneducated, criminally inclined monolith, and a “drag” on the City’s progress.

It reminds me, once again, of the quote from the great African-American poet Jon Kasandra, who famously said: “All poor people ain’t black, and all black people ain’t poor.” Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know that by reading the PEW report.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by the report’s perspective on the City’s residents, given that PEW’s Philadelphia Research Initiative could just as easily be named the “Philadelphia Inquirer Alumni Chapter.” After all, the former Inquirer editorial page deputy editor, Don Kimelman, is the managing director of the project. The former Inquirer reporter/columnist, Larry Eichel, is the project director and, now, we find, another former Inquirer columnist, Tom Ferrick Jr., has served as principal author and researcher for this State Report.

Not bad or malicious people, but they are people who, over many years, developed the habit of talking about Philadelphia and its residents in a certain “arms-length-to-the-black community way," and they all seem to be having a tough time breaking that habit, now that they have all moved into the “research business."

Hey, don’t get me wrong, if you like the Inquirer, whose readership, by design, has always been overwhelmingly comprised of people who lived outside the City and who were not predominantly African-American, then you’ll love the work being done by the Philadelphia Research Initiative.

For my taste, I strongly believe that PEW's, new team is capable of doing better. This ain’t it.

But, since the report does deal with crime as an issue, let’s get into it: Just as was the Inquirer’s style when it did cover “city stories,” the State Report, in its scarce mentions of blacks, at all, does it primarily within the context of crime statistics, as compared to data that might reveal an ongoing need for greater economic access, greater job preparedness and contracting opportunities for the City’s largest population segment.

While the researchers were on the subject, however, they did happen to disclose, in the sections of the report that they apparently didn't believe deserved to be "headlined," that the "major crime" rate in Philadelphia actually decreased by 15 percent during the eight years of the Street administration. In fact, when John Street became mayor in January 2000, 98,015 major crimes had been committed in the City, over a twelve-month period. By 2001, that number had dropped to 93,889 and, by 2007, the "major crime" number had dropped to 82,987 (a total reduction of 15,028). By comparison, after its first year of operation, the report's numbers show, the Nutter administration produced a reduction of 1,391 "major crimes."

The Philadelphia major daily newspapers never wrote much about "major crime" rate decreases while Street was mayor and Sylvester Johnson was police chief.

At the same time, the City’s homicide rate actually dropped from an average of 396 per year, during Ed Rendell’s eight years in the Mayor’s Office, to 345 per year over the eight John Street years. In other words, some 408 more homicides occurred under Ed Rendell than under John Street. Curiously, we never seemed to get that impression from the news coverage.

In fact, the City’s policeman-per-10,000 resident ratio was higher under Street (at 45.8) than it is under Nutter. And, Nutter’s police presence numbers are tied for second–highest (at 45.3) with Mayor Frank Rizzo’s in 1975. You wouldn’t know that, either, from a review of the PEW press release.

Here’s another thing that worries me about the report: The PEW press release took great pains to point out that Philadelphia public school test scores have risen, recently, “from miserable to poor.” Not included in the release, but buried back on page 28 of the report, was the fact that Philadelphia’s average expenditure per public school student in, 2006, stood at half the $17,421 per student in Boston public schools and less, also, than the average amount spent on public school students in such places as Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit.

It’s clear that our kids are still getting the "short end of the stick" when it comes to school funding.

It’s also interesting to note that, in the report, itself, predominantly black neighborhoods, where 70 percent of Philadelphia’s public school students live, are dramatically overrepresented among neighborhoods with household incomes less than $30,000. In fact, on the list of ten neighborhoods with the highest percentage of families earning less than $30,000, six were North Philadelphia communities. In those neighborhoods, as many as 76 percent of the households earn less than $30,000.

All in all, it would seem that a complete “State Report” would also have included a treatment of not only which neighborhoods have wealth, but also, how that wealth is acquired, in the first place, and why other City neighborhoods have not enjoyed the same access to opportunity.

Unless we eventually begin to track why businesses owned by African Americans in Philadelphia still only generate less than one percent of the City’s private and public revenues, we will never be able to break the cycle of this kind of depressing data collection that PEW and others have done consistently, with virtually no change, for at least the past 30 years.

I don’t know about you, but I believe we may very well have enough data now. What’s needed next is a plan to finally change the things that cause these horrible conditions.



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