Knowing About Memphis Part 8- Coalition for a Better Memphis & Bias

I have been reading Chris Hayes' Twilight of the Elites. It is a very good book and articulates many things I have thought. I got an idea while reading it to see if the 'meritocracy' put forward by local elites carries bias which may devolve into a defense of system that made those elites. Coalition for a Better Memphis seemed like the obvious choice for this exercise. They evaluate candidates and score them on 'merit'. They have various categories like Vision, Qualifications, Structure, Quality of Life, Economic Development, and Overall. Sometimes there were categories like Ability to Implement Initiatives or Growth Policy. I decided to go with the category of Economic Development. It seems most serious category in relation government policies and was in the most evaluations aside from subjective things like Vision, Qualifications, and Overall. Here's how CFBM say they scored Economic Development- "The candidates were asked if they were satisfied with the current rate of job and income growth in Shleby County and, if not, what they thought county government could do to improve economic development." This was from the 2006 County Primary evaluation. The 2007 City Election Evaluation described it this way- "Candidates were asked about the role the city should play in economic development; barriers to progress; specific actions they would support and how to strengthen our neighborhoods." you can check out archived evaluations here. Here are the election evaluations I used- 2006 County Commission Primary 2007 Mayor and City Council 2011 City Council There were a couple other evaluations and school board evaluations but these were the ones that had the Economic Development variable. These 4 evaluations gave me 101 candidates I could map. Some candidates got re-elected and some ran a couple times. But still 101 is a pretty good sampling size. Here's what the scoring looks like.

Red dots got a score of 70 or less, Orange 71 to 78, Yellow 79 to 85, and Green 86 to 94. CFBM liked what you were saying if you got over 85 and thought you were a commie or smelly hippie if you got less than 70 (Just joking). CFBM likes the candidates from the Poplar Corridor (alot), Cordova (love or hate, no in between), one in South Memphis and Raleigh, and two folks by Graceland. I always like to put census data on maps to see larger trends and give meaning to the dots. So lets start with education. This map shows the percentage of people over 25 years old that have a bachelors degree in 2010.

That makes the map more interesting. But "so what" a person looking at the map says. CFBM is judging candidates on merit and there is a higher likelihood someone from an area with higher rates of educational attainment are more qualified to be elected. Next map is of Occupation. This is the percentage of employed people who have jobs in management, business, science, and the arts.

A person may again say "so what". A white collar, higher skilled, creative person is more qualified to be elected and most likely better understand economic development issues. The next map may make some readers clutch their pearls. It is a map of race.

The interesting level of these maps has just shot up. Would the rational person making choices on merit ask "Aren't candidates from predominantly black areas just less likely to understand economic development issues because of socio-economic factors. Isn't it still better for everyone if candidates of the most merit are elected even if it means they mostly come from the same socio-economic background?" (Hint-This seems to be the consensus thinking in the local non-profit sector and why so many Executive Directors of many non-profits get paid so well and are so white.) Chris Hayes gets further down the thought train tracks when he looked at the link between merit and elites by asking perhaps the economic system caused the disparities in Education and Occupations seen in the black community. That system may cause many people in the black community to view economic development issues differently? Few people who achieve merit and are rewarded for it turn around and question that merit based system. So you can see how merit can have a circular logic. Lets look at the most elite people in the city. They have reached the peaks of their organizations and been handsomely rewarded for it. I'm talking about the members of Memphis Tomorrow. Memphis Tomorrow is part of the Coalition for a Better Memphis. A few weeks ago I did a post about them.

Funny how those Memphis Tomorrow stars align on the Poplar Corridor. Probably a lot of socio-economic commonality with all those green dots and a lot of overlapping of friends/colleagues. Finally, I want to talk about who a lot of those green dots are and "getting with the program". Turns out a lot of those green dots are incumbent City Council members.

I don't mean to imply that council members sold out. It may be more complex than that. Years of interactions between council members and the social class that do the evaluation may take the wariness and edge off. People are complex, not caricatures. Yet that humanization can cloud 'merit'. May be council members' positions evolve and may be the CFBM evaluators don't judge as harshly. Whatever it is, there has been changes in evaluations. Council Member & 2007 Economic Development score FLINN 83, CONRAD 91, MORRISON 87, LOWERY 81, STRICKLAND 91, COLLINS 86, FORD 78, BOYD 81, HALBERT 81, FULLILOVE 80, Here are the same council members and their scores 4 years later. Council Member 2011 Economic Development score FLINN 94, CONRAD 93, MORRISON 92, LOWERY 91, STRICKLAND 91, COLLINS 90, FORD 89, BOYD 88, HALBERT 85, FULLILOVE 83, Did you see any scores decline because I didn't. In theory, we could get rid of terms limits and on a long enough timeline our whole council could reach a state of pure enlightenment on issues of economic development. The point of this post, besides illustrating educational, occupational, and class bias, is to make you question what 'merit' and 'consensus' means in a local context. May be 'merit' is a justification for a system that fucks a lot of people. But that may be just conjecture on my part.