Putting injustice in our face

You've probably heard that King County is launching an attack on unfairness.

It's called the Equity and Social Justice Initiative, and County Executive Ron Sims has been talking it up at meetings around the county.

In the same way the county now asks whether its actions will help or harm the environment, managers will begin asking whether what the government does sustains or combats inequality.

A report accompanying the initiative listed problems that can be tied to inequities:

A South King County child is more than twice as likely to drop out of school as one on the Eastside.

A Southeast Seattle resident is more than four times more likely to die of diabetes than a person on Mercer Island.

A Native American baby is more than four times more likely to die by his or her first birthday than a white baby. (You can see the full report at www.kingcounty.gov/equity.)

None of that is shocking news — and that's part of the problem.

We take some of these situations for granted. They've been with us so long they seem natural. And we don't really want to put ourselves out to fix them.

Sims is doing some agitating, putting this in everyone's face. We won't know whether it will work until the county has to make a hard choice that tests its commitment, and ours.

But I appreciate his at least escalating the conversation.

At a meeting on the plan last week at the downtown Seattle Public Library, a man in the audience said we should all ask what impact all the goodies in our lives have on other people as a first step toward reducing inequity.

That's just the kind of question most of us don't want to ask, for fear the answer might cost us something.

It's hard for poor kids to get a good education. Kids who don't get a good education are more likely to wind up in jail. Jail costs us money, and crime makes life worse for all of us.

But what if fixing things for that kid affected my neighborhood school?

Four blocks down the street, at the same time the meeting was going on, homeless people were setting up tents in front of City Hall. They were trying to make a point. One of their signs declared, "Housing is a human right."

At the library, Sims was saying everyone should have a fair chance at a good education and high aspirations. If that happens, social costs would go down for the rest of us.

The morning after that meeting I listened to Tommie Smith talk to an assembly of students at Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, a private school. Smith is famous for his raised-fist salute on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

He and fellow sprinter John Carlos were protesting racism that kept so many black Americans in poverty.

Smith told the students that when you encounter a problem caused by social injustice, you can pretend you didn't see it, or you can acknowledge seeing it and choose to do nothing about it. Either way you are part of the problem.

If Sims can nudge more people to see their role in all of this, it would be a good start.

Do the systems that allow me to win cause someone else to lose?

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.