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WASHINGTON — Almost a year after the United States was called upon to address racial inequality in its disaster programs, officials are still trying to decide how to deal with the problem, according to a document released Wednesday by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The agency was responding Recommendations made in November This is the latest evidence of the challenges the Biden administration is facing in its effort to reduce racial disparities in climate policy.
“Language is so much, ‘We’re going to discover it, we’re going to define it, we’re going to evaluate it, we’re going to investigate,” said James R. Elliott, professor of sociology at Rice University, who has studied racial disparities in FEMA programs. . “There seems to be a lot of hemming and hawing.”
A growing body of research is showing that FEMA is the responsible government agency. Helping Americans recover from disastersusually helps white disaster victims more than non-white people, even if the amount of damage is the same. Not only do individual white Americans get more help from FEMA, but the communities in which they live, according to several recent studies based on federal data.
“I don’t think any of their policies are intentionally designed to be unequal,” said Emily Gallagher, a professor of finance at the University of Colorado Boulder who has studied racial disparities in FEMA grants.
Instead, the data said, the agency’s programs favor disaster victims, who are wealthy and property and more likely to be white, over low-income individuals and families who are less likely to be people of color.
Dr. “This is a really difficult problem to solve,” Gallagher said. based on FEMA’s response to the advisory panel, he added, “It really seems to me they’re still working on it.”
Citing data on racial disparities, FEMA’s National Advisory Council, a group of agency-appointed emergency management experts, concluded in November that FEMA had failed to meet its statutory obligation to assist disaster victims without discrimination on racial or other grounds.
“Many FEMA programs do not consider the principle of equality,” the report says.
The council made four specific recommendations to the agency to address racial disparities more effectively.
First, he urged FEMA to establish an “equity standard” — measures to show whether the agency’s grant programs “raise equity over time.”
Second, the council recommended that FEMA decide how to make its grants to state and local governments more equitable and implement a new system by the end of 2021. The data shows that wealthier communities tend to receive more money from FEMA than their home country. poorer counterparts, even if the extent of the disaster is the same.
Third, the council urged FEMA to create a training program to sensitize its employees to issues of racial diversity, equality and inclusion.
Finally, the council told FEMA to create clear guidelines and policies for hiring a workforce that “reflects the population it serves.” The council has asked the agency to establish these training and recruitment practices by mid-2021.
According to its response published Wednesday, FEMA has yet to meet any of these recommendations.
The agency relinquished responsibility for establishing an equity standard to the advisory council itself, adding that the council “looks forward to receiving the resulting recommendations” in its next annual report. FEMA also said it is still evaluating the fairness of state and local government grant programs and will consider changes once that assessment has been made.
On education, FEMA said it will “review” existing programs and develop a new one if necessary. The agency said it was “expanding our outreach, recruiting and recruiting efforts,” but made no mention of specific new hiring directives or policies.
FEMA’s response has so far noted several concrete policy changes to address racial equality. Among their findings was forming a group to look at equality issues, which the agency says has found a definition of what equality means at FEMA: “Consistent and systematic fair, equitable and impartial treatment of all individuals.”
Justin Knighten, FEMA’s director of external affairs and a member of the agency’s working group on equality, said the agency has taken steps not specified in the document.
“The agency is acting across the board on many different fronts to advance equity,” Mr. Knighten said in an interview. He said his response to the agency’s advisory committee “shows this move, but also that we have more work to do.”
pointed to the decision make it easy for disaster victims to get help even if they are unable to provide certain documents showing that they own their property – disproportionately hurting black families Inheriting their home in the south.
Mr Knighten said he would provide more information on FEMA’s plans for racial equality in his latest strategic plan, which he said is expected by the end of this year.
But academics who study racial disparities in FEMA programs said the response shows an agency is trying to figure out how to respond to growing criticism.
According to Junia Howell, a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago, FEMA’s response does not provide enough information to know how seriously it takes racial equality and whether its measures are working.
With research showing that disaster relief increases racial inequality, Dr. “It could have been a lot more obvious,” Howell said. “When we see FEMA’s actions, we will see how far we have collectively come towards a government that serves all its people.”
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