The NAACP’s been getting creative lately. It’s issued an advisory for black people traveling through Missouri, and now it’s issued the mayor of Boston a report card.
And according to the Boston Globe, Mayor Martin Walsh might be in for summer school — his best grade was a B, and he received multiple Cs, Ds and Fs.
The mayor has been in office for four years, and is facing a reelection he is expected to win; he recently received the endorsement of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). He has, however, faced criticism for not doing enough for the communities of color that helped him get elected back in 2013.
Back then, Walsh called the disparity between black and white unemployment rates “unacceptable” and promised to work to close that gap.
“Relative to white people, economic differences are stark and manifestly unfair,” the NAACP said in the report, “The city has the power and the opportunity to greatly improve the economic situation in its communities of color.”
High unemployment numbers have plagued the city’s black and Latinx communities. The NAACP found that the city’s white population face an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent. The unemployment rate for black Bostonians is 10.7 percent; for Lantix Bostonians, 10.9 percent.
The NAACP feels that Walsh hasn’t made good on his campaign promise to help minorities find work; the mayor’s office says that the NAACP is using old numbers.
The NAACP countered that it had to use numbers from 2014 because the mayor’s office refused to cooperate with its multiple requests for more recent data.
The mayor received a C for his education efforts. The NAACP found that his office had implemented slight improvements, but slammed him for not doing enough to close the achievement gap, for not fully funding city public schools and for the way the city rolled out its pre-K expansion program.
And while the NAACP praised efforts to increase diversity on the police force, it gave Walsh an overall D for public safety, criticizing both his approach to reducing crime in black communities and for allowing police oversight to remain weak.
As far as his staff was concerned, the NAACP felt Walsh didn’t do enough to add diversity to city positions, writing that Walsh had not made any real “progress toward achieving reflective representation in its workforce.” Walsh got a C on that front.
Reflective representation would mean that at least half the city’s workforce be made up of minorities; more than half of Bostonians are people of color.
Walsh received three Fs: one for not diversifying the city’s fire department; one for a lack of effort given to recruiting and retaining teachers of color and one for slothful adoption of body cameras for police officers.
Averaging all of his grades, the NAACP gave Walsh an overall D, writing that Walsh had ushered in “no real change” for the city’s black and Latinx populations.
For his part, Walsh “respectfully disagree[s] with the grades given.”
“While there is always room for improvement, we are very proud of what we have been able to accomplish over the past four years,” he said, citing affordable housing figures different from the ones the NAACP found, and noting 42 percent of new police hires have been either black or Latinx under his watch.
The NAACP hasn’t responded to Walsh’s comments, but did say that it plans to release more of these report cards for leaders around the country.