Abstract
A veritable catalog of well-known problems plagues large cities throughout the United States: poverty, a lack of affordable housing, gang violence, racism, and community-police relations. On a daily basis, city newspapers produce reporting about homicides, crimes against property, racial tensions, and other intergroup conflicts. Public issues such as these are thoroughly entrenched and seemingly intractable—so much so that living in large cities means contending with their enduring reality. Given the laundry list of concerns urban residents encounter—especially in communities marginalized by race or socioeconomics—the challenge of creating social environments characterized by civility and mutual respect remains a weighty problem.
In Human Relations Commissions: Relieving Racial Tensions in the American City, Brian Calfano and Valerie Martinez-Ebers shed light on how Human Relations Commissions (hereafter HRCs) mitigate social problems, promote intergroup peace, monitor civil rights issues, and involve community members in developing positive and peaceful relations. HRCs have ambitious objectives. Instituting peace and harmony on the streets of American cities is a monumental undertaking. Nevertheless, HRCs across the nation quietly conduct the pro-social work of bringing together diverse peoples to resolve conflicts and improve intergroup relations.
Given the ubiquity of HRCs in modern city life, one might reasonably expect the scholarly literature about HRCs and their multiple endeavors to be extensive. This is not the case. Consequently, Calfano and Martinez-Ebers are among the first batch of scholars to train their academic gaze on HRCs. Filling this gap in social scientific understandings of HRCs is the principal contribution of Human Relations Commissions and distinguishes the book within the canon of urban and community studies. The book examines HRCs across four major metropolitan areas, and the authors endeavor to demonstrate how HRCs can improve intergroup relations in urban areas frequently fraught with social complications.
Let’s meet the authors. Brian Calfano is associate professor of Political Science and Journalism at the University of Cincinnati. In addition to his scholarly duties, Calfano works as a political analyst and producer for several media groups. His past research has focused on the nexus of media and politics, religion, and social marginalization. Valerie Martinez-Ebers is director of the Latina/o and Mexican American Studies program and University Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas. Martinez-Ebers is former Vice President of the American Political Science Association, and she has published extensively on education policy, Latino/a politics, and women in politics. Together, Calfano and Martinez-Ebers bring their respective interests and abilities to bear in this work on human relations commissions while evaluating how HRCs do (or don’t) fulfill their core missions and what the future holds for human relations work in urban affairs.
Building on policy research and social scientific scholarship about “urban unrest,”Human Relations Commissions pivots on three focal questions. First, how do HRCs react to and manage their expanding mission? Second, what are the structural opportunities and challenges facing HRCs? Finally, what constitute the most promising, evidence-based strategies for assisting HRCs and similar organizations in improving intergroup relations and limiting discrimination? To address these questions, the authors draw on historical documents, governmental memos, policy briefs, interview data, and surveys of area residents in four cities: Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Fort Worth, Texas. The book’s opening chapter provides the reader with relevant background information and conceptual comprehension about HRCs. The interior chapters (2 to 6) provide a useful historical overview of intergroup relations, demonstrate how HRCs first came into existence, consider the capacity of HRCs to implement mandates, assess the likelihood of improving intergroup relations via interventions, and explore how HRCs can profitably use data-driven insights from community-based research to improve efficacy. The book concludes by glimpsing at the future. The authors articulate multiple recommendations aimed at improving HRCs’ collaborative relations with academic and private organizations within municipal contexts. A major theme laced throughout Human Relations Commissions is that HRCs struggle with financial pressures as well as cultivating social capital with local governmental entities (p. 207). HRCs must exercise considerable creativity to get their work done.
The book’s primary strength stems from its in-depth examination of HRCs and the effects of their work in communities throughout the United States. Calfano and Martinez-Ebers have produced a novel contribution to the ever-expanding literatures on public administration bureaucracy, urban and community studies, and intergroup relations. The book is thoroughly researched and filled with interesting information that could appeal to both social scientific scholars and municipal administrators. Moreover, Human Relations Commissions draws on its hard-won findings to generate applicable recommendations for HRCs. These recommendations include being mindful of the history of discriminatory conflict within specific communities, testing and implementing various collective identity messages with constituents, and establishing partnerships with academic institutions.
On this last point, Calfano and Martinez-Ebers encourage HRCs and academics to “think creatively about offering opportunities for faculty and students to work with commissions in fulfilling duties related to enforcement, facilitation, and advisement” (p. 199). Universities are populated with young, eager undergraduates hungry for real-world experiences where they can “do good” on behalf of communities decimated by racial strife, poverty, and other complex social problems. Universities are strategically positioned to provide research expertise and relatively cheap human labor for HRCs. But an ever-present challenge remains for HRCs: how will they successfully negotiate the legal and administrative apparatus of universities and municipalities? Like HRCs, universities and municipalities face many organizational, budgetary, and legal pressures that constrain action.
While Human Relations Commissions gives the reader much food for thought, the book suffers in two important respects. First, the social sciences (particularly Sociology and Anthropology) are fertile fields for harvesting literature about American race relations, neighborhood dynamics, and (in)formal organizational responses to socioeconomic deprivation. The authors could have utilized the vast and deep social scientific literature on urban racial dynamics to enhance their analysis, especially at the book’s outset, where academic readers are anticipating a strong theoretical framework to facilitate their understanding and comprehension of the book’s empirical contents. Second, given the authors’ extensive background and research about HRCs, the book would have benefited from more in situ observations showcasing real human beings doing the difficult work of socially relating to each other. Ironically, this book about HRCs keeps readers at a safe distance from the human beings profiled in its pages. Of course, the conventions that regulate academic writing inspire authors to examine subjects from afar. Still, this reader craved more intimacy with the people in the trenches, who are embodying values of good citizenship and neighborliness and struggling to help people.
In the end, Human Relations Commissions makes important contributions toward better understanding the critical social justice work of HRCs in modern urban communities. This book might find interested readers in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in public policy, municipal governance, urban studies, and race relations in the modern American city. Beyond the academy, people actively engaged with HRCs in their home communities will likely appreciate the lessons and insights offered by this book.