The People

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August 22, 2011 | 3:33 PM | By

D.C.’s Central American Population Increases

Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images

A protestor with a t-shirt bearing the name of the country "El Salvador" drapes a US flag over his shoulders during an immigration rally on the National Mall.

An increase in the number of Central Americans accounts for much of the rise of Hispanics in D.C., according to newly released Census data.

There were 7,557 more Central Americans in D.C. in 2010 than in 2000. Hispanics of all races constituted 9.1 percent of the District’s population in 2010, a jump from 7.9 percent in 2000. Meanwhile, the District’s non-Hispanic black population has been slowly declining over the past decade, with most estimates putting it at below 50 percent, the first time D.C. has been without a black majority in more than 51 years.

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FILED UNDER: The People, Census, Hispanics
August 18, 2011 | 12:52 PM | By

D.C. Home Ownership By Race

Alan Cleaver / Flickr

Whites make up the largest percentage of D.C.’s home owners, and they are followed closely by African Americans. That’s according to new U.S. Census Bureau data detailing the race of people who are on deeds and leases of the District’s 266,707 occupied housing units.

Despite the seeming parity between whites and blacks in home ownership, there are far more black than white people in the District — 70,702 more in 2010 — and a disproportionately low number of blacks own homes when compared to whites. Whites over-represent home owners.

As for renters, African Americans are on most of the leases in the District, followed by whites, Latinos and Asians. And all of this data excludes D.C.’s 17,316 multiracial residents, which constitute 2.9 percent of the city’s population.

Owner-occupied units
 Renter-occupied units
 Percentage of total population
Black: 48,887 77,012 50.7%
White: 51,838 55,144 38.5%
Latino: 5,676 12,342 9.1%
Asian: 3,311 6,246 3.5%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Why is home ownership so important? It’s long been viewed as one of the keystones in building wealth and climbing out of poverty. And although the black middle class was particularly hit hard when the housing bubble burst because so much of their wealth was tied up in home equity, District home owners have fared better than elsewhere. D.C. is the only city where housing prices increased over the past year. The District’s home ownership rate has risen by 45 percent over the past decade, but it appears the rate isn’t increasing fast enough for everyone.

FILED UNDER: The People, Housing, Race, Wealth
August 11, 2011 | 11:55 AM | By

“Lazy Policing” and a Hate Crime in Columbia Heights: Your Take

Flickr: aliciagriffin

Columbia Heights Metro, as seen from 14th Street NW.

There are some lessons that can be learned from an incident late last month when five women were assaulted by two men near the Columbia Heights Metro, according to observers. Originally, the men were flirtatious, but when one of the women identified another as her partner, the men shouted homophobic slurs, then physically attacked them.

Chai Shenoy of Holla Back DC noted that it was a bystander who called police. “Kudos,” Shenoy said. “Community engagement is key to creating safe spaces in DC.”

She said Police Chief Cathy Lanier was smart to send a strong signal by investigating the police officers who were involved.

Shenoy said that’s key “with the increase of gender-based crimes happening in the LGBTQ community.”

D.C. residents used social media to air their concerns about the case:

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FILED UNDER: The People, Columbia Heights, Crime, Hate Crimes, LGBT, Social Media
August 10, 2011 | 9:00 AM | By

Job Seekers Flock to Annual Fair

An annual D.C. employment fair drew one of its biggest crowds Tuesday as the District faces an unemployment rate that is higher than the national average.

“This turnout breaks my heart,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who hosted the 14th annual fair. “This is a record I wasn’t out to break.”

Last year, about 3,500 people attended Norton’s fair. This year, nearly 4,100 District residents came. About 500 people waited for doors to open at 11 a.m. By noon, a large line of job seekers weaved throughout the Convention Center, from the entrance, down escalators and wrapped around long hallways.

Unemployment in the District is uneven; jobless rates are higher than 20 percent in predominately black and low-income Ward 8, while it’s slight above 3 percent in affluent Ward 3 [PDF].

“The disparity has to be gotten rid of in the District,” Norton said. “The only good jobs available in the government or private sector are upscale jobs. If you don’t have at least a year or two of college, you’re doomed.”

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FILED UNDER: The People, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Unemployment
August 9, 2011 | 10:45 AM | By

How to Ask Someone ‘Where are you from?’

Where am I from? I was born in Southern California, to immigrants from India, thanks for asking.

Last week, while in an elevator, a well-dressed, slightly-older woman looked at me intently and said, “You have interesting skin,” before asking its origin.

I have dark skin, black hair and large brown eyes.

Despite the fact that this issue has been written about over and over and over again, people still don’t get that asking “Where are you from?” is problematic on many levels. The question may come from a good place, but it often puts the recipient in a bad one. It’s also worth considering who gets asked about their origins and who doesn’t. If you don’t ask everyone where they are “from”, why not? Why is the question frequently aimed at people who have darker skin, immigrant parents and yes, interesting backgrounds, if not to emphasize difference?

Here are some ways to ask someone about their heritage without sounding boorish or entitled:

Use a compliment. Sports Illustrated model Chrissie Teigen is asked about her Norwegian-Thai ancestry daily and doesn’t mind, but she had this advice for the curious: “I usually go with ‘What’s your background, you are beautiful”.

Be direct about what you are asking. On DCentric’s Facebook page, reader Laurie Peverill volunteered that she asks strangers about their “family history”, instead of the nebulous “Where are you from?” She adds, “Assuming that very few of us are actually from here originally, everyone has a great answer.”

Ask other questions first. DCentric reader Jasmin Thana also used Facebook to convey how she is dismayed that “Where are you from?” is often the first question strangers ask her. “Know my name first. Have a conversation with me, then you can ask where my ancestors are from. The question annoys me because they’re trying to put me in a box and if people just guess correctly, the look on their face is like they just won a prize.”

In a DCentric post from April, my colleague Elahe wrote, “All of this isn’t to say that I, or other second-generation Americans, aren’t also proud of our heritage and roots.” But the hope is that one day, people will be content to see the children of immigrants as peers, and not ethnic riddles to be solved.

FILED UNDER: The People, Immigrants, Race and Class
August 2, 2011 | 12:18 PM | By

Affluent Minorities Live in Poorer Neighborhoods than White Counterparts

Cynthia Closkey / Flickr

A class divide doesn’t fully explain racial neighborhood segregation, a new Brown University study finds.

Nationally, affluent blacks and Hispanics live in poorer neighborhoods than where the average low-income white person lives.

The D.C. region bucks the trend somewhat; here, wealthy minorities live in areas with the same, not higher, poverty rates as where poor whites live. The proximity of Prince George’s County may skew the results for the region, the Washington Post reports. The county, which is 65 percent black, is home to high concentration of affluent African Americans:

Blacks and Hispanics… who earned more than $75,000 lived in neighborhoods that were virtually the same as neighborhoods populated by whites earning under $40,000, as measured by average income, poverty rates, education levels, home values and housing vacancies.

“Income, and being successful in class terms, does not necessarily put you in a different kind of neighborhood,” said John Logan, a Brown University sociologist who analyzed census data in his study released Tuesday.

Many in D.C. proper view class, not race, as the District’s biggest divider, but racial segregation is more prevelant in the city than in the region as a whole. And the wealthiest areas in D.C. also have the fewest numbers of African American residents. For example, the black population accounts for only 5 percent of Ward 3, the city’s wealthiest area, where the median income is about $97,000.

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FILED UNDER: The People, Housing, Neighborhoods, Race and Class, Segregation
July 29, 2011 | 1:01 PM | By

Is Anacostia Being Gentrified?

The word “gentrification” elicits certain images, particularly in D.C: dog parks, coffee shops and bike lanes. But the mere presence of such things doesn’t mean residents are being displaced.

The Washington Post tried to also dispel another stereotypical marker of gentrification –  white people — by profiling a group of middle and upper income African Americans who have moved into (or back) to Anacostia:

“I used to think it was about race — when white people moved into a black neighborhood,” said lawyer Charles Wilson, 35, president of the Historic Anacostia Block Association. (Wilson ran against Marion S. Barry Jr. in the 2008 Ward 8 City Council race.) “Then, I looked up the word. It’s when a middle-class person moves into a poor neighborhood, and I realized, I am a gentrifier. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t like that word. It makes so many people uncomfortable. The g-word.”

“Actually, I thought it was if you see a white guy in Anacostia, listening to an iPod, jogging or walking a dog!” joked Sariane Leigh, putting her hand on her hip and waving a sweet potato fry for emphasis. Leigh, 33, works by day helping low-income communities access education. In her free time, she writes a blog called “Anacostia Yogi,” and teaches “Soul Flow Yoga” at the Hillcrest Recreation Center on Denver Avenue in Southeast.

 

Elvert Barnes / Flickr

These residents chose Anacostia over other neighborhoods because they like living east of the river, and many longtime residents say they are happy to see professional blacks moving into black neighborhoods, the Post reports. Those profiled are active in the community, such as Courtney Davis who published a children’s books meant to bolster the image of kids in Ward 8. “I’m fighting for this neighborhood,” Davis told the Post. “It still has some work to do. But I’m not here to make a quick buck and run off.”

But are these new, wealthier residents making it too expensive for low-income residents to remain in the neighborhood? Typically, gentrification is thought of not just when people with more money move into a working class neighborhood; it’s also when that movement raises housing prices and prices out low-income residents. And by-and-large, displacement isn’t occurring in communities east of the Anacostia River, according to Roderick Harrison, a Howard University professor and senior fellow at the Joint Center.

“Probably the more appropriate term is ‘succession,’” he said. “People have been moving out of wards 7 and 8 because once you can afford to do so, you do. People feel they’re improving their lives with moves to Prince George’s County.”

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FILED UNDER: The People, Anacostia, Gentrification, Housing
July 28, 2011 | 1:40 PM | By

How to Close the Wealth Gap

David Steltz / Flickr

The gap in wealth between whites, blacks and Hispanics has grown to historic levels, as discussed on today’s Diane Rehm Show.

“These people draw upon their assets… to finance their children’s education, or to help with children’s tuition or to use as a down payment on their first home,” Roderick Harrison, senior research fellow at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said on the show. “This will play out not only until we see the net worth of these families rising back to the levels that they rose to in 2005, but it will play out in the lives of their children.”

We caught up with Harrison after the show to ask if D.C., with its rising home prices, stands in contrast to the growing wealth gap seen on a national level. He said, “D.C. is an exaggeration. It’s more polarized by income and by race [than elsewhere].”

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FILED UNDER: The People, Economy, Employment, Wealth
July 26, 2011 | 11:13 AM | By

Racial Wealth Gap Reaches Historic Levels

MoneyBlogNewz / Flickr

The wealth gap between whites and minorities has always been wide, but the recession has deepened the division to a record level.

The racial difference in wealth — how much a person owns minus any debt — is the most severe its been since the government began publishing the data in the 1970s, according to a new Pew Research Center report.

Members of the black middle class have seen many of the economic gains they’ve achieved over the past few decades erased or reversed during the recession, and black households have much less wealth than other groups. But Hispanic households experienced the biggest drop in household wealth during the recession:

Median Net Worth of Households
2005 2009 Percentage Change
White $134,992 $113,149 -6 percent
Black $12,124 $5,677 -53 percent
Hispanic $18,359 $6,325 -66 percent
(Source: Pew Research Center)

The housing crisis is one of the principal causes of the gap widening, according to the report. Hispanics and blacks had more of their wealth tied up in home equity, so when home values dropped or homes went into foreclosure, they saw much of their wealth disappear.

The study examined wealth between 2005 and 2009. Since then, housing prices have risen, particularly in D.C. But an increased home value may not be enough to offset lasting effects of the recession on minorities, as NPR reports:

Tom Shapiro of Brandeis University, who has studied the racial wealth gap for years, says he’s concerned about the long-term impact. He thinks the wealth gap will likely grow even more, unless the economy turns around soon.

“If a family doesn’t have enough for a safety net for itself, it can’t think about moving forward or moving ahead,” he says.

That means fewer resources for things like education or buying a house or starting a business. Shapiro says that only puts the average minority family further behind, and less able to weather the next economic storm.

FILED UNDER: The People, Economy, Recession, Wealth
July 22, 2011 | 2:18 PM | By

Unemployment Up In D.C.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

The latest job numbers are out today, and it’s not looking good for the District: the June unemployment rate rose by 0.6 percent.

Unemployment citywide was 10.4 percent in June, higher than nearby states. Maryland’s June rate was 8 percent, while Virginia’s was 6 percent. Nationally, unemployment is 9.2 percent.

Even as the citywide rate increases, the rate remains quite low in some neighborhoods. In Ward 3, the May unadjusted unemployment rate was almost 3 percent. But it was as high as nearly 25 percent in wards east of the Anacostia River, according to the D.C. Office of Labor Market Research and Information.

 

FILED UNDER: The People, Unemployment