| White Center, WA is home to multiple ethnic groups from across the globe. Public outreach around the neighborhood's annexation process has experienced classic problems faced in neighborhoods and cities across the U.S., a lack of inclusion of residents of low-income, and people of color. Transformative planning theory specifically addresses inequality and power imbalance between social groups. However, the theory provides little direction within a multi-ethnic context, and little understanding of how and why transformative planning actually happens (Clarke 2005; Beard 2003). I propose that empowerment theory, developed within the fields of social work and community psychology, provides a useful conceptual framework and strategies to empower marginalized groups in multi-ethnic communities. In this dissertation I apply empowerment theory to a multi-ethnic coalition called the Trusted Advocates and its work towards community empowerment especially within the neighborhood's annexation process. Empowerment theory holds that people and communities need critical consciousness, or understanding of how their individual and collective problems stem from lack of power in order to act to solve their problems. Through analysis of data from two years of ethnographic research, including participant observation in the neighborhood and 40 semi-structured interviews, I articulate a multicultural empowerment praxis with the aim of helping planning scholarship, education and practice to more effectively facilitate empowerment of groups that lack power particularly where racial or ethnic differences exist. |
