November 11, 2010 | 10:22 AM | By

DCist Does the Right Thing

FILED UNDER: Media, Race and Class, Racial Divide, Social Media

JamesCalder

Yesterday, we wrote about DCist’s cheeky response to the stupid Travel + Leisure assertion that Chocolate City is filled with unattractive people; DCist quoted a new study which mentioned that we are a very educated city and that the life expectancy for white residents is very high! The problem was, that same study by the American Human Development Project initiative indicated that life expectancy for black D.C. residents is the lowest, of any state. I was part of a Twitter conversation about the glaring omission, with two bloggers from PostBourgie. A DCist commenter expressed their displeasure as well:

I wasn’t going to mention it, but since you brought it up…. the lede reminded me of Sommer’s post about how she thought a study saying DC was tops in cocaine use was unfair because 1) she didn’t see it nearly as much as she did in LA; and 2) they included crack, which for some reason she thought should not count as cocaine use.

DCist editors look and sound exactly as you would expect.

Except in this case, they don’t. Hours after he published “Who Needs Attractiveness When You’re Living This Well?“, Editor-in-Chief Aaron Morrissey amended his original post:

[Ed. Note: A few people have expressed that this post -- in its haste to grab a quick laugh on the back of yesterday's "attractiveness" rankings -- failed to note some pertinent statistics revealed in the report, like the fact that black D.C. residents have the lowest life expectancy of blacks in any state. I certainly didn't mean to trivialize these aspects of the study by not mentioning them, and apologize to anyone offended by their omission.]

Such a willingness to apologize and do the right thing is proof that D.C. residents are attractive where it matters– within.

About the author

DCentric was created to examine the ways race and class interact in Washington, D.C., a city with a vibrant mix of cultures and neighborhoods. Your guides to the changing district are reporters Anna John and Elahe Izadi. View all posts by Anna →