Advocates for equality hammered home the argument that the Pittsburgh area is the least livable place for African Americans in the nation, asking Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato yesterday to do more about it.

Comparing the region to a ship that is falling behind the rest of the nation, Dr. John Wallace of the University of Pittsburgh's Center on Race and Social Problems said there's "a hole in the back. The boat is capsizing." He urged attendees at the Racial Equality and Empowerment Summit to "build a brand new, bigger, better, faster, unsinkable ship."

That ship, speakers at the summit argued, needs to feature more quality jobs, safer communities, better education, health care and affordable housing. After three hours of presentations on all of those topics at the Regional Enterprise Tower Downtown, Mr. Ravenstahl said that if the region doesn't address all of those areas, "we're not going to succeed at all."

He and Mr. Onorato were sent off with homework assignments -- a series of questions on their plans to address the issues -- that are due Oct. 11. Then the sponsors, including the Black Political Empowerment Project and other groups, can hold an Oct. 15 post-summit assessment.

Organizers also asked both elected leaders to agree to produce quarterly, public reports on progress toward reducing racial disparity. The reports would address appointments to boards and commissions, hiring of minorities to jobs at all levels of government and distribution of contracts to minority-owned firms.

Mr. Wallace and researcher Ralph Bangs, also of the Center on Race and Social Problems, outlined many ways the city and county African-American populations lag behind not just local whites, but blacks from nearly every other city.

In terms of employment, salaries, poverty, single-parent families, home ownership, enrollment in schools and many other measures, local African-Americans are "among the most disadvantaged people in America," Dr. Bangs said. "We have one of the biggest problems to deal with in urban America."

School Superintendent Mark Roosevelt, who was present, said he was surprised to hear that the percentage of young black children enrolled in nursery schools and preschools is much lower than the national average. He said that if that's true, he'll "figure out what to do about it. ... More outreach, I would guess."

Mr. Onorato argued that things may be better than the data suggests, since it was based on the 2000 Census. His administration has boosted the number of minority appointees to boards, he said.

"That trickles down into public policies, into employment, into contracts," he said.

A black-owned firm is the county's prime engineering contractor on brownfield redevelopment, he said, and 20 percent of the county workforce is African-American. The county population is around 12 percent African-American, the city's 27 percent.

Mr. Ravenstahl said more than half of his board and commission appointees have been women, and one-third have been African-Americans. He has hired an equal employment opportunity officer to improve the diversity of the city work force, including public safety bureaus, which have become steadily whiter in recent years.