Fort Worth killed DEI programs. What becomes of efforts to address disparities?
On a Wednesday afternoon in January 2017, Jacqueline Craig called the Fort Worth Police Department about a neighbor who allegedly assaulted her son for littering near his home. When Officer William Martin arrived, he asked Craig why she didn’t teach her son not to litter.
Video of the incident shows Craig getting upset at Martin’s focus on her parenting, rather than her neighbor putting his hands on her son. When her 15-year-old daughter stepped in to try and calm her down, Martin threw Craig and the girl to the ground to arrest them. Craig’s other daughter was arrested while filming the altercation.
They were charged with assaulting an officer, but those charges were dropped after the body camera footage was leaked. The incident sparked a public outcry and led to community conversations that revealed deep-seated racial and cultural inequalities in the city. The Fort Worth City Council appointed a Task Force on Race and Culture in 2017, which recommended addressing racial equity gaps in policing, education, housing, business and other areas.
This month the city suspended its DEI programs and initiatives, which include updates on the task force goals and elimination of the city’s Business Equity Ordinance, to protect as much as $277 million in active and future federal grants. Many still believe the work of the task force was monumental for the city’s view on racial equity, and others see the city moving backward in its mission of creating an inclusive Fort Worth.
Some city officials and members of the task force, which ended in 2018, say the community should not lose sight of the goals set by the task force.
What was the role of the Race & Culture Task Force?
Comprised of four co-chairs and 18 community leaders, the Task Force on Race and Culture advised the city council about issues relating to racial and cultural disparities.
After 18 months in which over 2,100 residents participated in 89 events, including town hall meetings, community conversations, and leadership training for city officials and community leaders, the task force presented 22 recommendations to the city council in December 2018.
These included suggestions regarding education, economic development, criminal justice, housing, health and transportation. One of the most salient recommendations was a citizen review board for the police force. While the civilian board never materialized, the city did create an Office of Police Oversight Monitor in February 2020, which works to increase accountability, community engagement and other issues related to the police department.
A 2023 progress report on goals set by the task force showed how much the city had accomplished, what was still in progress, or what was not achieved.
Current, former city councilmembers want to continue work
In a recent phone interview, Fort Worth City Councilmember Chris Nettles, who opposed ending the city’s DEI programs, called on the city to continue work to achieve the goals set by the task force.
“It’s important that we know what’s outstanding and what we can do to implement things,” he said. “You’re going to take certain things away. Well, we still can implement these things to support our communities.”
The city is “doing our community a disservice” by failing to serve its majority-minority population through initiatives that target racial disparities, Nettles said.
Former city councilman Jared Willliams said that by eliminating DEI programs, the city stripped away the accountability the task force report provided and its reflections of the experiences of people in Fort Worth.
“The votes they took, in effect, set a precedent that the city will no longer acknowledge racial disparities,” Williams said. “And that’s essentially what this racist executive order [from President Donald Trump] was attempting to do, is to put a blindfold over the American eye acting like racism doesn’t exist in our community, which we have decades, centuries, worth of data that disprove that.”
The Star-Telegram reached out to Mayor Mattie Parker for comment, but she declined the interview request.
Task force report ‘a mirror for the city’
In October 2019, Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean, who is white, shot and killed Atatiana Jefferson, who was Black, through a window in her south Fort Worth home after a neighbor called the non-emergency line to report her front door was open. Jefferson had been playing video games with her nephew before Dean shot her.
For many, the killing reiterated the need to address racial disparities in policing, and served as a reminder of how such issues are ongoing.
Despite what he sees as the need for such initiatives, task force member Cory Session said he was not surprised by the city’s elimination of DEI programs, as he saw Dallas also suspend its programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion to save $305 million in federal grants. Session questioned who would make sure the city is accountable in ensuring the city is fair and equitable since the task force reflected peoples’ concerns and the steps the city needed to make.
“It’s simply a mirror for the city to look at itself,” Session said. “It is not just there to reflect what you see. It is to correct what you see, and the city should always be looking in the race and culture … mirror to help correct what they see.”
Pastor Michael Bell, who acted as an intermediary between Craig and the city, said the task force told the truth that “racism in Fort Worth is systemic, institutional, and structural.” Jacqueline Craig, who settled a lawsuit with the city in 2022 for $150,000, died in 2023 from pancreatic cancer.
Fort Worth will mirror the growing racial gap of America today where the legitimate concerns of communities of color are overlooked, neglected, and pushed down, Bell said.
“I don’t see us moving forward in a way that distinguishes us as this real progressive city,” Bell said. “I don’t even know if the city is concerned about being progressive.”
Bob Ray Sanders, a co-chair of the task force and a former columnist for the Star-Telegram, said the group made Fort Worth affirm its history, acknowledge its issues and face them head on.
Despite pressure from the Trump administration to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the task force goals were meant to help shape the future of Fort Worth, he said. It’s up to the city council and the community to continue that progress, he said.
“The struggle will never be over for us. We will die in the struggle,” Sanders said. “You may think you’ve arrived, you may think you’ve accomplished some very important milestones, and you do, but there are always forces trying to take that away, trying to take you back.”
Goals included police diversity, minority-owned business contracts
Among the outcomes of the Race and Culture Task Force was the use of a cadet program to increase diversity in the Fort Worth Police Department. The task force’s 2023 progress report showed the department had an increase in its percentage of Hispanic and women officers but lost ground regarding the percentage of its officers who were African American.
The task force’s recommendations also included a restructuring of the city’s Human Relations Unit, which became the Diversity and Inclusion Department. The department was suspended with the city council vote this month, though many of its functions are expected to continue, according to the city.
The task force also addressed challenges for minority-owned businesses in Fort worth, such as building capacity and growing the amount and availability of loans. The city established its Business Equity Ordinance to close racial and gender gaps in city contracting and procurement and to help businesses gain access to prime contracting and sub-contracting opportunities.
An informal report presented in November 2023 showed that from 2018 to 2022 city contracts to African American-owned businesses went from below 1.0 percent to 5.9 percent, contracts to Hispanic-owned businesses went from 6.7 percent to 8.9 percent, and contracts to businesses owned by white women went from below 1.0 percent to 3.78 percent.
The city also established CDFI Friendly Fort Worth, an organization that matches borrowers with financial institutions in communities that have been historically underserved. Since its inception in 2022, CDFI Friendly Fort Worth has helped over 200 applicants receive over $25 million in lending. It is now a private, nonprofit organization which does not receive funds from the city.
The task force recommended civic engagement programs as part of school curriculums and during out-of-school time to increase the percentage of Hispanic and African American students classified as “college and career ready” upon high school graduation. A Texas law passed in 2021 ended this goal, as it prohibited schools from requiring or giving class credit for “direct communication” between federal, state or local officials for “political activism, lobbying, or efforts to persuade members of the legislative or executive branch.”
Goals such as improving the quality of childcare centers in Hispanic and African American neighborhoods, tracking student success based on number of students applying for college, and implementing a robust transit system in Tarrant County, among other recommendations, were not given timelines for completion.
Eliminating racial disparities is a communitywide task
Former assistant city manager Fernando Costa, who served as principal staff support for the task force, said now is the right time to revisit the task force’s recommendations, examine what worked and what didn’t, and consider whether new objectives and strategies are necessary.
In a recent phone interview, he noted that the task force’s recommendations were meant as goals for the community as a whole to work to achieve, not merely the city government.
The outcomes were a “mixed bag,” he said. Some of those goals saw “appreciable progress,” while advancement elsewhere was not “statistically significant.”
But he said he never envisioned a quick turnaround on such “long-standing and deeply rooted” disparities.
“We didn’t realistically expect to be able to eliminate them overnight, but we did expect that we would be able to make some meaningful progress,” he said. “And so it does require conscious, coordinated effort to make this kind of progress. It’s not going to happen by chance.”
