“I believe the polarization in the country now is probably a lot worse than it’s been in the past,” Ralph McCloud, CCHD’s director, told 50 Assembly of Catholic Foundations members at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angeles’ conference center on April 10.

Many complacent and hopeful Americans, he noted, had assumed racism would die, that attitudes such as “Some people are just not supposed to make it in society” or “Why don’t they go back from where they came from?” or “Jesus said the poor will always be with us, so why are you trying to cut the numbers down?” would just fade away.

“But we see [racism and prejudice] raising their ugly heads now,” the Texas native, who’s been on the job about four months, reported. “It’s not Uncle Charlie or Aunt Jill from the ‘50s, but rather it’s emerging on college campuses and high schools. We see the more rampant acts of racism happening at the hands of young people, which suggests to me that probably we didn’t do something right.

“But I don’t think it’s too late,” he added. “I think we have an opportunity to do some things. I would suggest that foundations can help create venues where a conversation can happen. It’s a good time to talk about immigration, and even racism, and how they affect our individual attitudes in all of their manifestations — for us personally, for our society and for us as a church.”

‘We’re really bigger than our worst mistakes’

The kind of racism people harbor, McCloud said, contributes to many issues currently facing U.S. cities and communities: unfair housing, disparities in healthcare, continued segregation and an “unjust” criminal justice system.

Concerning the last, he explained that Christians have to understand “we’re all bigger than our worst mistakes.” He said reaching out to prisoners — large numbers of whom are released every year — can’t be left to priests, religious and deacons involved in prison ministries. If we believe God has blessed every person with human dignity, he said, parishioners must play an active role in helping ex-offenders integrate back into society.

Regarding the mortgage crisis, McCloud said the poor, who are struggling as renters, aren’t even a part of the home-owner discussion, which again renders them voiceless, which increases their feelings of separation from society. The divide between the poor and upper classes plus the nation’s housing and healthcare crises only add to this marginalization.

“I’m concerned about having a permanent underclass in our country that we would create by not educating, by folks not being able to have gainful employment,” McCloud said.

He told foundation workers that it was vital to keep the conversation going about how best to advocate for the poor. “None of us have that secret serum that might be able to cure poverty,” he observed. “But we all have a piece of the truth.”

From charity to justice

The new CCHD director emphasized that foundations must really understand the people they serve. That impressed Loretta O’Donnell, program officer with the SC Ministry Foundation, who also liked what McCloud said about foundations moving from charity to social justice; her foundation, while promoting the mission of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, has been doing so for years.

“Our foundation looks a lot at supporting systemic-change organizations — organizations that are advocating on behalf of systemic change,” she said. “So we support some groups doing policy work in Washington and also some community organizing.”

O’Donnell, however, was most taken by something else.

“I think the issue of racism is not only racism, but also classism,” she told The Tidings. “The whole issue of polarization is important. We have done work in New Orleans, and the haves and have-nots were obviously revealed when the hurricane hit.”

In Cincinnati, O’Donnell said, the two big poverty issues are affordable housing and early childhood development.

Bridget Flood, executive director of the Incarnate Word Foundation in St. Louis, said the number one poverty issue facing Missourians is what’s going to happen to single mothers who max out their five years of lifetime benefits under TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), which replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children welfare program in 1997.

“Some of my agencies [we’re funding] just told me that these families are basically living with no money except food stamps, money from a boyfriend and maybe a handout from grandma, engaging in illegal activity or being part of the underground economy and being paid under the table.”

“How is that going to be sustainable for these women?” she wondered. “And what impact does it have on their children?

But Flood is even more concerned about the Bush Administration’s “compassionate conservative” call for churches and ...