On one side are black elders who remember when school choice meant no choice at all because of state-mandated segregation. Many also remember how vouchers were given to white children to attend private academies during “massive resistance” in the late 1950s and early ’60s, when Virginia closed some public schools rather than desegregate as ordered under the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. the Board of Education. Opponents argue that school choice might resegregate the schools, this time by class and ability.

On the other side is a younger generation of single parents and working-class black families looking for any way out of the state’s most troubled schools in places such as Norfolk, Petersburg and the capital. Even if it’s difficult to rescue all schoolchildren, an effort should be made to save some, they say.

Read to the very bottom of the story for a fascinating tidbit in the conclusion.

Meanwhile, a recent Urban Institute paper aimed to determine the effect of school choice on educational outcomes here in DC. Their study found that “students who attend alternative public schools, on average, outperform similar students who attend their in-boundary public schools in reading and math tests by about a tenth of a standard deviation.”

They found even greater gains when they tried to account for factors such as parental involvement and student motivation: ”On average, students who attend out-of-boundary public schools outperform socio-economically ‘similar’ students who stay behind by 19 and 14 percent of the standard deviation, whereas those who attend charter schools score 15 and 16 percent of the standard deviation better in reading and math respectively.”

An image of O.S.B. Wall, from Joseph Thomas Wilson's 1890 book "The Black Phalanx."

In Slate, Daniel Sharfstein recounts the history of Orindatus Simon Bolivar Wall, a freed slave and DC resident whose children decided to pass for white:

By any measure, O.S.B. Wall soon became a hero of African-American history, the kind of man Black History Month was created to celebrate. But today he is forgotten. The story of his rise to prominence and fall into obscurity reveals one of the great hidden narratives of the American experience. While O.S.B. Wall spent a lifetime fighting for civil rights, his children grew up to become white people. [...]

Wall had no family to claim and remember him. He and his wife had five children who survived to adulthood. They attended Oberlin, took government positions, and became active in black Republican circles in Washington. Within a few years of their father’s death, however, they began to cut their ties to the black community and identify as white. By 1910, no one was left who wanted to keep the memory of O.S.B. Wall alive.

While Wall’s life tracks some of the central themes of black history, his children’s lives reveal one of its great hidden stories. From the colonial era onward, African-Americans were continually crossing the color line and establishing themselves as white people. It was a mass migration aided by American traditions of mobility, a national acceptance of self-fashioning, and the flux of life on the frontier. It is easy to forget how significant this mass migration was, because it was purposely kept a secret. But it touched millions of lives, simultaneously undermining and reinforcing the meaning of black and white.

Thought this was a fitting link for the last day of Black History Month. The burial site of O.S.B. Wall can be found in Arlington National Cemetery, where his gravestone proudly notes his service as a member of the first black regiment of Civil War volunteers.

Metro weekend shutdowns to affect Blue, Orange lines: “From the rail system’s 10 p.m. Friday closing through midnight Sunday, there will be no Orange Line service between Stadium-Armory and New Carrollton. Five stations will be closed: Minnesota Avenue, Deanwood, Cheverly, Landover and New Carrollton. The Blue Line will not operate between Stadium-Armory and Benning Road. The Benning Road Station will remain open.” (Washington Post)

Alexandria has highest AIDS rate in Northern Virginia: “Most people living with HIV and AIDS in Alexandria are African-American men, a group that the commission has been trying to target by reaching out to the faith community.” (WAMU)

DC high school closures “absolutely an option”: “D.C. Public Schools Interim Chancellor Kaya Henderson says the District is looking at closing some high schools before the 2012-2013 academic year.” (WAMU)

Local restaurants for local kids fundraiser: “On Thursday March, 3rd, 2011, portions of proceeds from some of the best farm-to-table restaurants in Washington, DC will go to the D.C. Farm to School Network.” (dcfarmtoschool.org)

A Mayor-for-Life flashback: “On Feb. 26, 1986, then-Mayor Marion Barry held a special meeting of more than 100 D.C. government employees, to announce a new list of ’10 or 15 words’ that would be in every press release issued by the D.C. government.” (Washington City Paper)

Twistiti / Flickr

You’ve heard of the DREAM Act, the bill that would offer a path to legal residency to great students that arrived in the US illegally when they were children. You’ve probably heard of SB 1070, Arizona’s law making it a state crime for non-citizens to be without their registration documents. But you might not have heard about Secure Communities, even though it’s a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s immigration policy, and it’s igniting plenty of controversy here in DC. And now more details are leaking out about how DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier has tried to work with the program.

Our colleague Rina Palta has an excellent rundown of what Secure Communities is:

Secure Communities is a fingerprint sharing program between local law enforcement and federal immigration control. When a person is arrested in say, San Francisco or Oakland, and they’re booked in the county jail, local deputies take their fingerprints. Instantly, those fingerprints travel to the California Department of Justice and to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. That’s so if someone is booked on something like drunk driving, or is arrested by mistake, or the charges against them are dropped, the system can check and see if the person is wanted for any crime before the Sheriff releases him or her. Now, because of Secure Communities, these fingerprints also go to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

As Rina goes on to explain, the program has had a cool reception in many cities. Critics charge that non-criminals who happen to be arrested under the program can get deported without ever being convicted of a crime. And they worry that the law ruins the relationship between local police and immigrant communities, that people will stop reporting crimes and cooperating with officers to solve them.

For these reasons and others, DC has led the fight against Secure Communities. Last year, the City Council voted unanimously to ban the program in the District:

“This is like something out of George Orwell. This is really ‘insecure communities,’” argues District Council member Jim Graham, who represents an area that is home to many of the District’s immigrants. Several Council members said the program could lead to more laws like the one passed in Arizona, which they described as “horrific.”

Washington, D.C., has a long history of resisting collaboration with federal immigration officials. A 1984 memorandum from Mayor Marion Barry Jr. forbids city agencies, officers, and employees from asking about citizenship or residency. So when the District’s police chief quietly signed on to the program last November without consulting the City Council, Graham was outraged. “This is the type of thing that there are so many questions about, so many suspicions about, that it’s best that we just not do it,” he said during a committee meeting in March.

But there’s one big problem with Graham’s conclusion that we “not do” Secure Communities: It turns out cities and states aren’t being allowed to opt out of the program. A release of thousands of pages of correspondence between federal, state and local officials about the program show the Obama administration as taking an increasingly hard line on the position that Secure Communities is mandatory.

Shankar Vedantam sifted through the documents to shed more light on Cathy Lanier’s role in the discussions over Secure Communities in the Washington Post this weekend. She “worked behind the scenes last year with federal officials to redesign the program in potentially far-reaching ways,” reports Vedantam. “In an interview, Lanier said that she had hoped to find a middle ground that targeted violent and dangerous offenders for immigration checks while withholding the fingerprints of suspects whom police picked up for minor offenses. ‘In the case of domestic violence, or if it is a minor misdemeanor case, there is a concern people will not come forward and report it,’ she said, explaining why she thought suspects picked up in minor crimes should not be referred for an immigration status check.”

After the Council voted to ban the program, Vedantam reports, “Lanier said she broke off the discussion with federal officials and pulled out of the program.”

For more on this issue, check out the stellar reporting that’s been happening at The Informant, tracking San Francisco’s efforts to opt out of Secure Communities. And you can also read through some of the documents depicting the internal struggles over the program.

GrayTransition2010.org

Recognize this image from Vince Gray's mayoral campaign? Prepare to see something like it on improvement projects all over DC.

DCist flags a notable executive order in this week’s DC Register:

According to Executive Order 2011-45, [...] you’ll be seeing a lot more of “One City” around these parts — like everywhere the D.C. government maintains a presence.

The branding has already begun: the city’s annual Summer Youth Employment Program is now officially called the “2011 Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s One City Summer Youth Employment Program.”

The commenters at DCist are already bringing the snark, as they do. “Aside from the race baiting connotations, and campaign use, it’s not a slogan for a city,” posts Stmove. “It’s embarassing, as if the best thing we can say about the District is that it’s one city. It sort of makes Baltimore’s ‘Charm City’ look totally non ironic in comparison.” Best comment: “Yet another example of the “Novus Ordo Secretum” as prophecied in The Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accept Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, the Book of Revelations, the Last Words of Dutch Schultz, and the Fun 4 Kidz placemat at the Expressway 83 Shoney’s near McAllen, TX.”

How about it, DCentrists? Any thoughts on the logo, soon to be on DC business cards, letterheads and signs near you?

A third of the 2,012 arrests in 2010 involved youths.

I’m not sure whether I expected this figure to be higher or lower, but it was definitely interesting. Many of our discussions of Metro crime over the past several months have been about youth on the Metro, such as today’s story embedded at right from MyFoxDC. Last summer’s brawl at Gallery Place sparked several comment threads about race and crime on various sites online, such as DCist. What do you think? Did you find this figure surprising?

4 of 7 sexual offenses “allegedly involved assaults on disabled customers by MetroAccess drivers.”

This statistic, from the WaPo story about the report, paints a very disturbing picture. An account from a WaPo story last April provides some more context:

Both contract drivers [charged with sexual assaults against customers] were hired after passing a background check, said Nikki Frenney, vice president of public affairs for MV Transportation, which oversees the 1,500 drivers in the MetroAccess system for Metro. MetroAccess provides about 7,700 trips a day for people with disabilities who are unable to use regular bus and rail service.

A homicide appears to be missing from the data.

MyFoxDC noted this in their story on the report. Indeed, the WMATA report claims no homicides occurred in the Metro system in 2010, but what happened to the homicide at the Congress Heights Metro Station in May? MyFoxDC asked Councilmember Tommy Wells, who didn’t have an answer for why the homicide might be omitted. The station wasn’t able to get a comment from Metro officials.

Nathan Rott shares the story of Eric Sheptock, a self-described “homeless homeless advocate”:

Being homeless has become Sheptock’s full-time occupation. It’s work that has provided him with purpose and a sense of community. But it’s also work that has perpetuated his homelessness and, in a way, glorified it.

Sheptock, 41, wouldn’t take a 9-to-5 job that compromised his advocacy efforts or the long hours he spends tending to his digital empire, he says. He wouldn’t move out of the downtown D.C. shelter where he has slept for the past two years if it would make him a less effective voice for change.

“Too many homeless people have come to look up to me, and I can’t just walk away from them,” he says in a recent blog posttitled “Tough Choices.” “My conscience won’t allow it.”

Having 5,000 friends on Facebook is more important to Sheptock than having $5,000 in the bank. And he lives with the consequences of that every day.

NPR’s Pam Fessler also profiled Sheptock for All Things Considered back in June:

Sheptock became a homeless activist a couple of years ago during a big fight with the city over the closure of one of D.C.’s largest shelters. He started writing for Street Sense, a D.C. newspaper devoted to the homeless.

And he’s working with a production group called Streats TV, which does advocacy for the homeless. [...]

But some advocates in the city think he’s on the wrong track. They say the city’s plan to move the chronically homeless out of shelters and into permanent housing is working and that Sheptock is hurting the cause by fighting to keep the shelters open.

Sheptock is undeterred.

This might be why DC, with its mix of classes and cultures, loomed large in 2010 as a reality TV destination. Yet the contrast between DC and the city portrayed in the reality shows couldn’t be sharper, as Mike Riggs aptly pointed out in a recent City Paper essay. Reality television celebrates luxury lifestyle products, conspicuous consumption, haute cuisine. DC has all of these things, to be sure, but they don’t define life here for most of us. So we’re curious, what do the culture clashes of DC reality shows reveal?

Here are our picks for the best culture clashes of the year in DC reality television. Add your picks (and your thoughts) in the comments.

5. Top Chefs encounter exotic food

Top Chef usually resists the pull of “weird food” challenges, but when they came to DC, they apparently couldn’t help themselves. In episode 6, the judges have to make meals out of ingredients such as yak meat, duck testicles and foie gras. Food, of course, is a common touchstone for awkward cultural moments, and this could have easily been played as an occasion to gawk at unfamiliar cuisines. But to the chefs’ collective credit, they mostly took this in stride. Emu egg? No problem. Let me just get my saw.

4. The Real Worlders talk religion

Given that we’re in something like the 300th season of The Real World, the cast members now arrive with enough self-awareness to know that they’re supposed to occupy neat demographic slots, chosen for optimum conflict potential. From the moment the DC housemates get to their lavishly appointed pad, they start pegging each other’s demographic traits, ticking off the arrival of the “hot black guy,” speculating over who the virgin might be, and trying out all the usual cultural flints – race, sex, politics.

Somewhat surprisingly, they settle on religion. In the clip starting at about 25:30, the housemates go out for what the producers suggest is their inaugural dinner together, and after a brief flip-out over Mike’s announced bisexuality, “hot black guy” Ty outs himself as an evangelical atheist. Needless to say, this get the conflict flowing.

3. The Real Worlders meet actual people from DC

And then there’s the moment four episodes in where The Real World housemates stop being polite and start meeting genuine DC residents. The cast members find themselves at a bar we’re led to believe is The Big Hunt. The drama begins when a bar patron starts yelling for Carson Daly, and Texas Ashley and Colorado Mike differ on how to respond to the locals. As Reality Check guestblogger Lindsay Diokno points out, this is the first time the show’s really acknowledged the presence of actual DC residents. (Fast-forward to 5:45 or so.)

(Bonus points for the moment later in the episode when the show’s three heterosexual guys go to Nellie’s Sports Bar, not realizing it’s a popular gay hangout.)

2. A Real Housewife goes to a soul food banquet

The Real Housewives franchise couldn’t exist without class/culture disparities and the conflicts they ignite. The show even uses the class-laden term “housewives” ironically; many of its stars are highly-compensated professionals who leave nitty-gritty domestic matters to others. In this episode, DC lifer Stacie delegates the cooking to her aunt Francis, inviting the other Housewives to her aunt’s place for a down-home soul food meal.

From her first moment on screen, Stacie’s been gleefully baiting some sort of conflict between the Housewives and “real DC,” and British newcomer Cat doesn’t disappoint. At Aunt Francis’ dinner, Cat gets her first exposure to Southern staples such as collard greens, and she’s apparently not a fan.

This episode prompts the inevitable “Are you uncomfortable around black people” conversation in a Real Housewives roundtable.

1. Marion Barry – Mayor for Life

Even though the video’s no longer available on the YouTubez, the first episode of Marion Barry’s reality show has to top our list – the show might have already cost someone his job, according to Washington City Paper’s Alan Suderman:

The first casualty of Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry’s “reality” show (besides the D.C. Council’s collective dignity) appears to be Andre Johnson, a former communications aide for Barry who is currently, but not for long, the communications director for Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander.

Alexander called LL this morning to say that Johnson will soon be out of a job, because she says he lied to her about his involvement in the show.

The culture clash in this instance? Between reality TV and political reality. A good reminder that behavior on-camera has consequences in the real real world.

Have any nominations for more DC reality TV culture collisions? Share them in the comments!