This survey is the work of the Evanston Equity and Empowerment Commissions, a group of volunteer residents helping guide the City's racial equity initiatives. The Evanston Community Equity Survey is a key part of assessing the impact of our collective efforts for racial equity, annually.
For the purposes of this survey, we define racial equity as “the condition that would be achieved if one’s racial identity no longer predicted, in a statistical sense, how one fares. When we use the term, we are thinking about racial equity as one part of racial justice, and thus we also include work to address root causes of inequities, not just their manifestations. This includes elimination of policies, practices, attitudes, and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race or fail to eliminate them.” (www.equitytools.org) Hence, we define a community racial equity issue as a community issue that disproportionately affects BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) communities.
This is the first of what we hope to make an annual survey and it attempts to measure the perspectives of those who live, work, and go to school in Evanston, including satisfaction with City services, neighborhood quality, housing affordability, feelings about the state of racial equity in the city, and the role of government in addressing racial inequities.
While the history of our nation and community demands that we prioritize race in discussions of equity, we do take advantage of this survey to investigate other ways in which the community can be more just for other identities as well.
This survey is likely to take 8-10 minutes to complete. Thank you in advance for your time.