November 11, 2010 | 12:36 PM | By Anna
What are you reading, right now? I’m immersed in “South Lakes’ Ja’Juan Jones finds his place after a homeless odyssey“, from the Washington Post.
His homeless odyssey has given his play on the football field an angry edge, one that he hopes will land him a college scholarship. A senior running back and free safety at South Lakes High School, Jones has grown up sleeping on floors, couches and, at one point, spent a year living in a shelter…”I’ve always seen Ja’Juan as pretty strong…He’s always had his mind set, this is what I want to do and this is how I’m going to do it. The day he realized he could get a scholarship to go to college, it was like fireworks on the Fourth of July. That boy was running around the house screaming, ‘I’m going to college! I’m going to college!‘ “
“We’ve lost a lot of stuff in storage,” Jones said. “That’s one thing about moving a lot. You put your stuff in storage and then you go back and it’s always gone. I’ve lost trophies. My dad’s American flag that we got when he died is gone too.“
“I started off wanting to just play football in college,” Jones said. “Now, I’m starting to realize that even if I can’t play football, I want to go to college, but, football is my ticket. I want an upper-class job. I want to be in an office. I want to be able to provide for my family, like they deserve to be provided for.“
November 11, 2010 | 10:22 AM | By Anna
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: Continue reading →
November 11, 2010 | 8:16 AM | By Anna
Good morning, DCentric readers! While you were cheering on John Wall, we were out searching for links!
Fenty’s Freudian slip “When introducing Gray to the crowd of several hundred, Fenty said, “I couldn’t be happier to turn the government over to…,” then he cut himself short. The crowd laughed and he started over. “I couldn’t be happier to turn the podium over to Mayor-elect Vince Gray.” The slip was one of several lighter moments for Fenty, who was better known for being stiff at public appearances. Since losing the Democratic Primary in September, however, the outgoing mayor has been more relaxed in his public appearances. Almost as if he “couldn’t be happier to turn the government over.” (Washington Examiner )
An accident foretold “The fact that no agency officials saw fit to mention the report’s main conclusions to the Metro Board – even after two dangerous accidents – is an appalling violation of public trust. Officials could have done so either at a Metro board meeting on Oct. 14 or at one last Thursday, after the mishaps occurred. Instead, officials referred to the report but danced around the fact that it warned specifically about the escalators’ braking and maintenance problems.” (The Washington Post)
Beyond Bread: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back “…I often hear the old saying, “One step forward and two steps back.” There are a lot of reasons why using the safety net can feel that way. One is that people spend time in transit between different service providers, only to wait in long lines for assistance, as you saw in our post last week about utility assistance. Another comes from eligibility requirements that suddenly remove people from programs as their income increases. Imagine making another 50 cents an hour and suddenly losing your health insurance and having to pay out of pocket.” (breadforthecity.blogspot.com)
November 10, 2010 | 9:22 PM | By Anna
On my way home from WAMU, I passed the new, soon-to-be-open IHOP in Columbia Heights. Much to my surprise, it was brightly lit, filled with tables and it looked as if they were training employees, inside. It was shocking to see new furniture and activity where there had previously just been dust, but then I remembered that they hope to start serving diners, this month. Finally, a late-night dining option in Columbia Heights. Some of my neighbors are vocal about their fears; they worry that IHOP will attract drunks, rowdy teenagers, gang members (?) and the like. I’ll wait until it’s actually functioning to worry about any of that. I’m a pragmatist (who loves pancakes).
November 10, 2010 | 3:01 PM | By Anna
antoinedodson24
A still from Antoine Dodson's YouTube Q + A
I love what Cord Jefferson has written about Antoine Dodson and other viral videos starring people of color:
…15 million is how many times just one of the many YouTube videos of Dodson has been viewed. In other words, Internet users around the world have tuned in 15 million times to stare and laugh at a black man angry because his sister was nearly raped.
…What is interesting, however, is how common and accepted such biases have become on the Web. In the comfort and solitude of one’s bedroom, laughing at a troubled, poverty-stricken person of color is far more socially acceptable than doing the same on a busy street corner. What’s more, the disposable immediacy of the Internet means it isn’t always conducive to critical thought. Users take in hundreds of images and videos per day — and thousands of lines of text — and rarely pause to analyze what they’ve seen or why they click…
What we’re left with is an Internet community that feeds us, in the isolation of our homes or desks, distasteful videos by the truckload while rarely asking us to stop and absorb what we’re seeing. The Antoine Dodson video isn’t just insidious because we’re laughing at a low-income black man’s frustrations. It’s insidious because the Internet allows us to ignore why we’re laughing.
November 10, 2010 | 1:16 PM | By Anna
Rubenstein
Tyler Perry
Because on to every blog about race, a little Tyler Perry must fall. According to Racialicious, everyone has an interest in Perry:
“I’m the smartest person in the room” movie snobs (like my parents and I) discuss the utter unwatchability of all things Tyler Perry while ignoring the blatant irony in discussing the unwatchability of something you’ve obviously watched. “I’m the realist, most down to earth person you’d ever meet”…Anti-Tyler Perry Pro-Blacks (read: liberals) discuss how he’s appealing to the lowest common denominator and wasting his considerable influence and opportunity, while Pro-Tyler Perry Pro-Blacks (read: moderates and conservatives) discuss how he’s employing hundreds of black people while touching on issues unique to our community and providing (somewhat) wholesome family entertainment.
Conspiracy theorists discuss how Tyler Perry has been thrust to the forefront of black culture by the powers-that-be, ensuring the ongoing demasculinization of black males…The “Real Issues Fun Police”—people whose sole goal in life seems to be to try to make people feel bad for discussing For Colored Girls when there’s widespread cholera in Haiti—discuss how our obsession with Tyler Perry is a damning indictment on American culture. Bloggers and other arbiters of pop culture discuss Tyler Perry, because, well, everyone else is doing it, and their, well, our identity is partially defined by staying relevant.
November 10, 2010 | 10:45 AM | By Anna
Rafakoy
There were no statistics available on the life expectancy of blue people.
UPDATE: DCist has apologized.
I was skimming Twitter when I noticed several people had linked to this DCist post, “Who Needs Attractiveness When You’re Living This Well?“. There was a stark difference in how the links were annotated; the white people I follow on Twitter had reactions like, “this is great!”. The black people I follow on Twitter wrote things like, “There really are two D.C.s”. Here is the DCist post, in its entirety (emphasis mine):
Okay, so maybe we’re not the best looking people around. But according to a report by the Social Science Research Council’s American Human Development Project initiative, the Washington region is doing pretty well for itself when it comes to life expectancy, education and income, topping a ranking of the ten largest American metro areas in those statistics. The long life expectancy of white D.C. residents (the longest among any group in the survey at 83.1 years), large numbers of people with college educations (about 47 percent of the D.C. region have at least a bachelor’s degree) and the employment and income boost that the federal government provides to the District and her surrounding suburbs were the driving forces that landed the Washington metro area the top spot. Take that, you shallow Travel+Leisure readers!
I understand why they didn’t include the statistics about D.C.’s chocolate residents; the average life expectancy for black people is the lowest, of any state. That’s not the greatest statistic to use when trying to address linkbait, and refute the baseless claim of an irrelevant magazine which no one reads.
November 10, 2010 | 8:14 AM | By Anna
Good morning, DCentric readers! Ready for some links?
DC Cabbies Don’t Like Competition “Basically if you think it’s too easy and convenient to hail a cab in Washington, you’ll love an artificial regulatory restriction on the supply of taxis. In particular, if you think the city’s peripheral neighborhoods are too well-served by cab drivers and that we need to shift to a dynamic where you can only hail a cab in the downtown core, you’ll love this plan…If Gray is smart, he’ll recognize that this is change we don’t need. But I worry that Gray will think the lesson of his victory is that city government should always bow to interest-group pressure.” (Matthew Yglesias)
After Perry’s ‘Colored Girls,’ there’s plenty of bashing to go around “Jeepers creepers. For decades, Hollywood has been waving the same dirty drawers in the black man’s face, one black-man-bashing movie after another – including last year’s “Precious” and now Perry’s “For Colored Girls.” So where is the movie “For White Girls,” bashing white men? Stories of white men kidnapping and abusing white girls are in the news. And maybe the Lifetime channel will make one of them into a TV crime drama. But be assured that if it does, the show will feature more than enough good white men to make that one evildoer come off as an aberration.” (The Washington Post)
Encourage better conditions for restaurant workers in D.C. As restaurant goers, there are a couple simple things we can do to help support restaurant workers. First, leave your tip in cash. Since credit card tips must be processed, it can take longer for waiters to actually receive their wages, while some never receive their credit card tips at all. Restaurant employees and advocates are working to change tip processing, but for the time being the best way to ensure that your tips reach workers is to leave cash. (Greater Greater Washington)
November 9, 2010 | 9:35 PM | By Anna
thisisbossi
Memorial for Mohammed, outside DC9
This seems significant, since that photograph of blood on white crosswalk paint is what I think about, as soon as someone mentions “DC9″:
Images published on TBD.com and on the Washington Post’s website that purported to show a bloody crosswalk in the vicinity of the DC9 nightclub do not depict the blood of Ali Ahmed Mohammed, according to authorities with knowledge of the case.
The photographs first surfaced on Oct. 15, when reporters descended on the scene near 9th and U streets NW. Mohammed died early that morning following an altercation with five men who worked at the bar. The men were accused of chasing, tackling and beating Mohammed after he allegedly threw one or two bricks through the front window of the bar. Charges of aggravated assault in the case have since been dropped, though the investigation is ongoing, and charges could be re-filed at a later date.
The incident…took place on a sidewalk on 9th Street NW, north of U Street, while the images depict a bloody crosswalk on the south side of U Street, authorities say. In other words, the bloody scene was not the same location where Mohammed was allegedly tackled and restrained by the DC9 employees. [TBD]
November 9, 2010 | 5:06 PM | By Anna
One of you kindly sent me a link to “Behind The Research”, a series from The Atlanta Post that “explores the dynamic work of African-American professors around the country”. The first profile for Behind The Research is of Dr. Sabiyah Prince; coincidentally, she’s part of the Anthropology department here at American University. I thought her name sounded familiar and then I realized that she had been on my favorite NPR program ever, Morning Edition, to discuss the Real Housewives of D.C. with Neda Ulaby, back in August.
Back to The Atlanta Post. Reading this piece made me want to talk to Dr. Prince, myself:
What are you working on now?
I’ve done research over the last five years and right now I’m writing for my book which is about how Washington DC is changing demographically and how African-Americans are affected by the changes, how they are interpreting the changes and how they are responding to the changes. The African-American population in DC has been gradually decreasing since the 1970s.
What an amazing potential resource for DCentric (seriously, thank you to NG for this link).
More:
How do you integrate your personal insight into your research?
Continue reading →
