Healthy relationships: Why Happy Valley isn’t a healthy place for all to live, and what we can do

The first six months of 2020 have ripped the Band-Aid off our collective assumptions about the health of our community – and what a healthy community looks like. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the clear disparities in a health care system that prioritizes profit over caring for those most marginalized and who are unable to pay. And the horrific reality of George Floyd’s death, the attack and killing of Ahmaud Arbery, as well as the killing of Breonna Taylor while asleep in her own home have inspired millions, many even in central Pennsylvania to take to the streets in protest.

Happy Valley, like the rest of America, is not a healthy place to live if you are poor or a person of color.

I have been in multiple conversations about what to do and where to go from here, and to be honest those conversations have been happening for a long time in lots of places. I know many well-intentioned folks who are calling for widespread training on implicit bias and racism in police departments and social service agencies. And I believe that is a good place to start – but we must be clear, it is only a start. Racism, like poverty, in America and central Pennsylvania is deeply embedded in our culture. All the structures that shape that culture, including our social and educational institutions and our criminal and civil justice systems, provide systemic support for the racism that is pervasive but that most of the white community only sees in its most egregious form.

So, what do we do? If we’ve done the trainings and recognize that a deeper dive is needed, what’s next? I believe we need to look at the institutions we’ve constructed, look at how they function, who gets hired, who is in leadership, what policies and practices are in place that look benign but actually serve to oppress.

For example, it isn’t enough to say our job postings are open to anyone. If we are serious about hiring a racially and ethnically diverse staff in our organizations, we must be intentional about where we post job announcements. Are we reaching out to communities of color through the institutions and programs there? What are the requirements for the position (and here is a hard question I’ve struggled with) – is a degree really necessary for the work we are asking to be done or do we value lived experience equally?

Representation matters in social and human services. It becomes much harder for people of color to trust that they will get the help that they need if no one in the agency looks like them. And as was pointed out to me by the staff of Centre Safe, representation in hiring means little if we aren’t willing to create an environment where employees of color feel that their voices are heard and their expertise is valued. Do we have processes in place to increase the racial and ethnic composition of our organizations’ leadership, its management and board? Are we clear that this is something we value and will work toward? And in the social and human services world, is this something that our funders hold us accountable to do?

We are not all at the same place in asking these questions, in our social service agencies or other cultural institutions, and we all have different work to do. At Centre Safe, we still struggle to be the kind of organization – an anti-racist and anti-oppression organization – that we aspire to be. But if we aren’t willing to begin asking the hard questions and looking straight ahead in the mirror, our community will never be the healthy place we all want to live.