How racism leaves a lingering economic ‘glass ceiling’ for Fresno’s Black residents

UPDATED AUGUST 15, 2020 11:04 AM

The economic realities of Fresno's Black residents

Five Fresno residents share their economic circumstances and experiences as members of the Black community. Here’s a glimpse into the stories of Windell Pascascio, Dr. Reshale Thomas, Bob Mitchell, Angie Barfield and Pastor DJ Criner. BY BRITTANY PETERSON | CRAIG KOHLRUSS | JOHN WALKER

This is the first in a series of stories for the Fresno Voices project.

When Booker T. Lewis, pastor of Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church in southwest Fresno, moved from Greenville, Texas, to Fresno in 1977, he was 16 years old and a sophomore in high school.

He remembers his first days at Edison High School and the sea of Black faces.

“I never saw so many Black people in one place,” he said. “Where are the white people?” He sought answers from the principal and was told that more than 98 percent of the school population was Black.

Even the schools in Greenville, Texas — a town that flaunted its residents’ intolerance of Blacks — were integrated. Lewis’ family lived in southwest Fresno in a solidly Black neighborhood; his father pastored a church that had an all-Black congregation. “Most of the Black lives in Fresno were spent west of Highway 99,” he said.

Brian Marshall, former director of transportation for the city of Fresno (2014-2017), said that the physical separation of the African American population in Fresno to “one little corner of the city” tells the “tale of two cities” eloquently.

In their “little corner” of the city, Fresno’s Black residents lag behind other races in economic participation. They are more likely to be unemployed and to live in poverty. Racial disparities in employment rates, wages, wealth, housing, income, and poverty persist. They also have fewer prospects for economic success because of myriad factors, including what Esmeralda Soria, a member of the Fresno City Council for District 1, calls a systemic “disinvestment in the (city’s) African American community.”

According to the U.S. Census, the median Black household earned just 59 cents for every dollar of income the median white household earned in 2018. During the same year in Fresno County, the median income for a Black family was $32,571 compared to $51,261 for a white family.

Nationally, the poverty rate for African Americans was 20.7% during the 2018 economic boom and 8.1% for whites. Twenty eight and half percent of Black children under age 18 lived below the poverty level in 2018, three times as likely as much as white children (8.9%). The poverty rate for Black residents in Fresno County was 30.6% in 2018.

Tania Pacheco-Werner, sociologist at Fresno State, said the disinvestment in areas heavily populated by Blacks results in severe burdens of poverty, making it difficult for residents to maintain positive outcomes in most spheres of life. In Fresno, as in many parts of the country, Blacks and whites live in different and unequal worlds. This inequality is not accidental, but rather a result of Fresno’s distinct culture as well as policy choices by elected officials.

“It is like it is two Fresnos in the same place,” said Pacheco-Werner. “Fresno was developed into north and south with the railroad in mind — providing the physical separation.”

Alan Autry, former mayor of Fresno (2001-2009), used the term “A Tale of Two Cities” to describe the disparity in income, property value, economic investments and quality of life between north (mostly white) and south Fresno (mainly populated by communities of color). The 1977 Edison plan by the Fresno City Council warned that the continued neglect of the southwest part of the city threatened to “transform racial segregation into economic segregation.”

Today, statistics show persistent racial disparity in employment rates, wages, wealth, housing, income, and poverty is par for the course in Fresno.

But the current situation — with African Americans facing major economic and physical catastrophes on two fronts: greater vulnerability to the COVID-19 virus — coupled with the relentless racial justice movement since the murder of George Floyd — has created an urgency and reignited the old conversations about who or what is responsible for the conditions of Fresno’s Black residents and what can be done to address the wrongs.

PANDEMIC BY THE NUMBERS

In Fresno, Blacks make up just 7.5 percent of the population, but account for 40 percent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Additionally, the infection rate for Black residents is 100 per 100,000 cases, which is four times higher than the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) community spread prevention guidelines of 25 per 100,000 residents.

“Black folks in Fresno and across the nation are the most vulnerable across every health, social, economic and well-being spectrum measure,” said Shantay Davies-Balch, president and CEO of the Black Wellness and Prosperity Center, and a representative of the Fresno African-American COVID-19 Coalition. “Their comorbidity — the burden of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. — contribute to infection vulnerability and morbidity trends.”

The pandemic has also aggravated an already fragile economic situation. Black workers were economically insecure before the pandemic, and the rules instituted to contain the spread of COVID-19 magnified the economic damage to these workers and their families. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Black unemployment rate was 16.1% at the end of the second quarter of 2020, compared to 6.1% in 2019.

To underscore the gravity of the pandemic fallout among Fresno’s Black community, the African-American COVID-19 Coalition presented an investment plan proposal to the Fresno City Council on June 15, aiming to rectify the disproportionate impact the pandemic has on the group.

“It’s time to demand that city and county leaders invest in us after generations of discrimination, criminalization, disinvestment, and polluting our community,” Davies-Balch said in an interview.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND ECONOMIC MATTERS

“[In southwest Fresno] If I am on the wrong path and want to quit the street life, I can walk in any direction for half a block, I should find a church or place of worship,” Myrick Wilson, owner and CEO of Mad illustrators, a silk screening company in southwest Fresno, explained. “But if I want to get a job or a training, I have to get in a car or bus or Uber, and drive miles outside of my neighborhood to find a place to give me an opportunity to work or to get training.”

The “Unequal Neighborhoods” project, led by Pacheco-Werner, highlights the stagnation in the lives of Blacks.

Those in southwest Fresno, according to “Unequal Neighborhoods”, are “unable to meet the minimum basic income” while white neighborhoods are “at least three times more likely to meet minimum basic income than Southwest Fresno.”

INTENTIONAL NEGLECT — OR IGNORANCE?

Why the persistent suffering and poverty among Fresno’s Blacks? The answer is as complex as the causes and has its roots in the history of Fresno.

“It is about what the city has done in the past; the Black community has resided in southwest Fresno, which has not seen the kind of investments for economic developments that occurred in the northern part of the city,” Soria said. “We talk about the Tale of Two Cities. I recognize that that (investment) hasn’t been good enough.”

According to Myrick Wilson, west Fresno suffers from a lack of places for career or vocational preparation. “Nothing is here in west Fresno,” he said. “We are in a deficit. The numbers and statistics show we have a lot of needs to fill.”

Tara Lynn Gray, President & CEO of the Fresno Metro Black Chamber of Commerce & Chamber Foundation, photographed in Fresno on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2020. CRAIG KOHLRUSS CKOHLRUSS@FRESNOBEE.COM

Tara Lynn Gray, CEO of the Fresno Metro African American Chamber of Commerce, said that even when unemployment is at its lowest and the country is approaching full employment, Blacks still have double digit unemployment, “because of racism and because of disinvestment in our communities.”

Gray said, “There is not even a neighborhood store for a black man to get a job stocking shelves.”

A CEILING — GLASS OR BLACK?

“California is the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world, we are in the heart of this vast economy,” Wilson said. “Our numbers (economic) are worse than in some countries with troubled history, and to be one of the worst economic places in the world in America? That should not be.”

Why are Fresno’s Black residents not making greater strides toward equality in their workplaces?

Because, although Fresno is a large city, Lewis said, it still operates “very hometown-like” and “people will hire their relatives and only people who look like them” and that sets “a ceiling.” Blacks are not accepted or valued and that feeling of alienation lasts a long time, he said.

Upon graduation from Edison High School in 1980, Lewis enrolled at California State University, Fresno and started working as a janitor at GESCO, part of Guaranteed Trust Savings and Loan. A few years later, he was offered a job in the mail room and then promoted to operations. He started learning about programming and got a job in the field. He was one of a handful of Blacks in the company. He kept getting promoted until 1987.

“I hit a ceiling,” he said.

Lewis found out after he applied for a managerial position but was turned down. He kept applying for supervisory positions, but kept getting rejections. He said he couldn’t understand why because all his reviews were stellar and he had been promoted in the past. What changed?

A white co-worker invited him for a talk outside.

“You will never get a supervisor’s position here,” he said the white man told him. “You are qualified, but they will never make you a supervisor or manager.” Because he is Black. That was the only explanation he needed.

Lewis left Fresno and moved to the Bay Area where he worked in technology, first as a lead operator, then a manager and finally a vice president, supervising many, including “six white men who had Ph.Ds.”

“My experience in the Bay Area is different from Fresno,” he said. “I never would have done that well here (Fresno) because there is just something about Fresno.”

More than three decades later, same problems, same theme, minor variations. Ella Washington just retired from the Internal Revenue Service in Fresno after 35 years. She held several positions in the organization, mostly in customer service and had a stint as a manager. She said the management at the IRS has different standards for evaluating Black and white employees. “We [Blacks] had to walk a straight line,” she said. “They picked on Black employees all the time.”

Washington recalls being reprimanded by the manager because she didn’t want to participate in picture day. Meanwhile her white colleagues who were caught drug dealing were not punished.

When Washington held an interim manager’s position and had to keep attendance, including all tardiness, she realized after several discussions with the management that white employees’ excuses for lateness were always valid, but not so for African Americans. A Black manager who was out with a serious illness was hounded into taking an early retirement.

“I got tired of dealing with their stuff” and retired as soon as she was eligible, she said.

Even Black people with high levels of education and in high paying positions were not immune to workplace racism.

Another Black man, who did not want his name used for fear it would affect his present employment, was recruited three years ago to head a department within the city of Fresno, but left one year later.

“I knew within the first month that I made the wrong decision coming here,” he said, remembering feeling out of place and constantly under scrutiny. “I felt so uncomfortable; people wanted to target me.”

Without any support, he struggled and suffered migraines every night. “Racism played a part in everything here [Fresno].” He says it is extremely hard to describe what it felt like to work and live in Fresno, but he is happy to now be in a city where he knows he is valued.

GOT HOPE?

“The Fresno City government must create policies to uplift the Black communities which have been decimated by poverty,” Soria said. “We, as a city, have a responsibility to figure out how to fulfill our responsibility to uplift every one, especially now when the issue has become national.”

JOB TRAINING WITH A PURPOSE

Former Fresno City Council member Oliver Baines, chair of the Fresno Police Reform Commission and president of the Central Valley New Market Tax Credit Fund, said job training is the path to ending poverty and the desolation in southwest Fresno.

Then-Fresno City Councilmember Oliver Baines delivers a forceful speech during a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally at City Hall, Monday morning, Jan. 15, 2018. JOHN WALKER JWALKER@FRESNOBEE.COM

In the past, job training wasn’t planned with the people that needed it in mind. The centers were often located outside of the area where the needs were, and the programs would create insurmountable road blocks, like requiring that enrollment be tied to a clean background check. “You heavily criminalize the area, and because of racial profiling, people enter the system,” Pacheco-Werner said. “So they create all this ecosystem for Blacks that sets them up to fail.”

“That is why I started mine,” Baines said. “It was frustrating to see young men and women get screened out before they get in. I make a point to not screen people out. I make a point to screen people in.”

Baines said also that most of the other programs did not have a favorable outcome and “people were not being hired” after completing job training programs.

“Going through a job training program should be the same as going to college — to be more attractive to employers and get meaningful employment — the kind that keeps them off social programs,” he said.

So the intense 12-week job training that Baines operates in partnership with the Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission is different. The Valley Apprenticeship Connections is located in downtown Fresno and tied to jobs. In fact, his trainees are often employed before they complete the training program.

“All I want is for students in my program to be able to have a lifestyle similar to mine,” he said. “My goal is a workplace where they can escalate and move into the middle class.”

He said he started by talking to employers to find out what skills they wanted in an employee and then got guarantees that a “young man or woman who possesses the required skill sets would be hired.”

Employers said the hardest thing for them was finding employees with basic social skills — listening, taking directions, punctuality and dressing appropriately. So the Valley Apprenticeship Connections program devotes a lot of time to soft skills while giving trainees a blend of everything the employer wants, including hands-on experience in the construction field. More than 80 percent of the graduates are employed immediately at an average starting wage of $20 or $21 an hour over minimum wage, Baines said.

“I want everyone the way they are,” Baines said, so the program “purposely recruits parolees, probationers, people on welfare,” and those who would never get into traditional job training. “So many of my students come with previous addictions and drug use records and gang backgrounds. I intentionally look for parolees and probationers.”

Job training has to be about getting a job, Baines said, adding that to change the employment situation for Blacks, everyone needs to acknowledge that there is racism in employment. “Racism is systemic — we need to understand that the system in many ways is set up with racism embedded in them.”

Baines said his program changes people’s lives everyday.

“Nothing is impossible,” he remembers the story of a former trainee who was imprisoned for 19 years. Now the man earns more than $40 an hour. Baines said the training program is “The best work I have ever done or will ever do.”

Dympna Ugwu-Oju is the editor of the Fresnoland Lab at The Fresno Bee, a team of journalists focused on reporting stories at the intersection of housing, water, neighborhoods, and inequality.

Booker T. Lewis, pastor at Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church in southwest Fresno, says he’s seen some changes in Fresno since moving here from Texas in the 1970s, but that there is still a long way to go with respect to equality for African-Americans. CRAIG KOHLRUSS CKOHLRUSS@FRESNOBEE.COM

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