The People

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July 6, 2011 | 1:12 PM | By

Black and Jewish Youth Embark On Civil Rights Pilgrimage

Courtesy of Operation Understanding DC

Black and Jewish D.C. youth have gone on summer civil rights pilgrimages for years. Here, Susan Barnett and Elia Emerson, pose on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1997.

The relationship between the African American and Jewish communities is long and complicated, with periods of collaboration and discord. But one group of black and Jewish D.C. youth is looking to bridge the gap that has grown in recent years.

The teenagers, members of non-profit Operation Understanding DC, boarded a bus Wednesday morning and will spend 23 days retracing the path of the Freedom Riders as part of a civil rights pilgrimage.

Highlights include crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala., meeting community organizers and visiting various churches, synagogues and mosques.

There is a history of black and Jewish Americans working together, particularly during the civil rights movement. For instance, Jews were involved in the establishment of the NAACP and participated in non-violent protests. Locally, Jews joined Howard University students in 1960 to push Glen Echo Park, then an amusement park, to desegregate. But the positive relationship between the two communities has declined in recent decades as legal civil rights victories were won but class and racial disparities grew.

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FILED UNDER: History, The People, Civil Rights Movement, Operation Understanding DC, Youth
July 1, 2011 | 1:21 PM | By

Racial Disparity in Care for D.C. Stroke Patients Not Due to Bias

Christopher Furlong / Getty Images

A new study shows that the disparity in care for D.C.’s black and white stroke patients isn’t due to institutional bias, but addressing the problem may involve “culturally tailored” outreach programs.

Georgetown University researchers found that African-American patients in the District were one-third less likely than white patients to receive tPA, the medicine needed to treat the most common type of stroke. Dr. Chelsea Kidwell, medical director of the Georgetown University Stroke Center, authored the study. WAMU reports:

Among the reasons African-Americans are not receiving tPA as often, Kidwell says, “is that the African-American population does not get to the hospital in time. They don’t call 911.”

Also, Kidwell says, African-American patients are more likely to have existing medical conditions, like high blood pressure, that would make tPA unsafe for them.

“[In] patients who do arrive in time and are eligible for treatment, there in fact is no racial disparity,” she says. “So our finding is important in showing that there’s no institutional or medical care bias in treating patients.”

About 75 percent of black stroke patients interviewed in the study called a friend or relative before calling 911. And nearly half of those who received delayed care reported it was because they didn’t think the symptoms were serious.

 

FILED UNDER: The People, Georgetown University, Health disparities
June 30, 2011 | 2:22 PM | By

Feeling Grief Over Displacement

 

karen H. / Flickr

During the 1960s, about 23,000 residents were displaced from Southwest to make room for urban renewal. Old, decaying housing was demolished to make way for new apartments for middle and upper income families, with some public housing units included.

Five years later, researchers asked: what happened to those thousands of poor residents who left? Sociology In My Neighborhood points us to the study, which focused in on 98 families who, unlike the majority of those who were evicted, did receive help relocating. These 98 families reported, five years after they left Southwest, living in housing physically better than where they used to live, but:

For those interviewed, poverty continued… and they then suffered “from another set of problems created by their removal from what was once their homes” because they lost not only their homes but also “a functioning social system.” Some became sick with grief, like that experienced by a death in the family, which was a common reaction to such relocations. Seventy percent of those interviewed had visited SW after redevelopment, and “a significant number..talked about crying and feeling sick” when they visited.

The redevelopment of the 1950s and 1960s was very different than what’s occurring in D.C. today — there is no leveling of entire neighborhoods, which may have contributed to the scale of trauma felt by people displaced by urban renewal decades ago. But D.C. is in flux. Market forces are causing rents and housing prices to increase, and some of those who can’t afford to live here anymore are leaving. Do they feel the same, or differently, as displaced residents felt decades ago?

FILED UNDER: History, The People, Gentrification, Redevelopment, Southwest
June 27, 2011 | 5:26 PM | By

Report: Hispanics Most Likely to Use E-Readers

Flickr: Sean MacEntee

Hispanics are adopting tablet devices, such as the iPad, at faster rates than whites and blacks.

Hispanic adults are more likely to own e-readers and tablets than whites and blacks, according to a new Pew Center report.

The demographic shift in this growing segment of technology consumers happened in the past six months. Back in November 2010, 6 percent of whites and 5 percent of Hispanics owned e-readers. In May 2011, 11 percent of whites and 15 percent of Hispanics owned e-readers. The margin is even larger for tablets.

Those numbers may not be entirely surprising for those monitoring demographic trends in the technology world. Blacks and Latinos are more likely to get involved using social media, and minority groups have been very active at using smartphones and taking advantage of the full range of what they offer. But despite such gains, there is still a digital divide – in nearly all-black large swaths of D.C., for instance, high-speed Internet connectivity is below 40 percent.

FILED UNDER: Media, The People, Digital Divide, e-reader, iPad, Race
June 22, 2011 | 3:16 PM | By

Former Post Reporter Comes Out as Undocumented Immigrant

“Undocumented immigrant” is trending locally and nationally on Twitter after news broke that former Washington Post journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas is an undocumented immigrant.

Vargas came out about his immigration status through a New York Times Magazine story, which was published online today. Vargas, originally from the Philippines, spent years working his way through the Post newsroom ranks in D.C., and chronicles his personal history and what led him to come out:

Last year I read about four students who walked from Miami to Washington to lobby for the Dream Act, a nearly decade-old immigration bill that would provide a path to legal permanent residency for young people who have been educated in this country. At the risk of deportation — the Obama administration has deported almost 800,000 people in the last two years — they are speaking out. Their courage has inspired me.

There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.

Vargas’ story struck me in particular because he spent so much time living and reporting here in D.C. He writes that during his time at the Post, “I began feeling increasingly paranoid, as if I had ‘illegal immigrant’ tattooed on my forehead — and in Washington, of all places, where the debates over immigration seemed never-ending.”

Vargas has now left traditional reporting to start Define American, a campaign meant to raise awareness about immigration. Watch this Define American-produced video to hear Vargas talk about his childhood and meet some of the individuals who have helped him along the way:

FILED UNDER: Media, The People, Immigration
June 22, 2011 | 12:58 PM | By

When Names are ‘Americanized’

Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Last week, I wrote about my decision to drop my “Americanized” name in favor of my Persian birth name, and a number of you chimed in about the perils and pitfalls of having a foreign name in the U.S.

The choice to drop or legally change such a name can be complicated. For some, birth names don’t match the common name structure in the United States. Commenter Curtis Alia writes that U.S. officials documented the wrong last name for his Arab father when he immigrated to the U.S. due to misunderstanding the Arab naming structure:  “When I was born, I was given that same incorrect last name, and only until 1994 did we finally change our names to the actual family names from back home.”

Some immigrants make the decision to legally change their names rather than adopt an informal nickname, and marriage presents a convenient opportunity to do so. But that decision could mean losing a meaningful connection. Commenter island girl in a land w/o sea, who is an immigrant with a Spanish name, writes:

When I got married, I changed my name to my husband’s more “American” family name — a choice that i still struggle with. At the time, I was tired of people mangling my last name and making assumptions based on it. Yet now that my parents are gone, I sometimes wish that I had retained my father’s name, or at the very least, come up with some sort of compound-name compromise.

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FILED UNDER: Culture, The People, Identity, Immigration, Maz Jobrani
June 21, 2011 | 5:16 PM | By

Homicide Rate in D.C. Dropping, but Racial Disparity Still Large

Flickr: Tony Webster

D.C.’s homicide rate is dropping, but blacks are still disproportionately affected, according to Metropolitan Police Department statistics. Greater Greater Washington reports:

D.C.’s black homicide figures are still much higher than comparable rates at the national level. In fact, on a per resident basis, blacks in the District face over double the homicide rate as blacks in the nation as a whole.

There were 1.3 homicides per every 100,000 white D.C. residents in 2010, the same year that saw 37.7 homicides per every 100,000 black D.C. residents.

Homicide Watch D.C. editor Laura Amico, whose mission is to document every homicide in the District, wrote in a GGW comment:

It is so tragic to add victim photo after victim photo to the albums and see young black man after young black man (with some exceptions). Sit through court and you see much the same parade. The one thing that becomes so clear is that in homicides, there are so many more victims than just those that are killed. All the families and so many friends, of both victims and defendants, are impacted and affected by the deaths, too.

Communities are affected by violence in multiple ways. Take health: violence, or even the perception of violence, can prevent young and old alike from being physically active, as we’ve previously noted:

Obesity rates are higher in Wards 6, 7 and 8 than elsewhere in the city. Ward 8, which has the highest homicide rate, also has the lowest physical activity rate. According to D.C.’s Overweight and Obesity Action Plan, 15 percent of all deaths in the District are a result of obesity. But in some parts of the District, the fear of getting shot while walking in your neighborhood can trump the more subtle reality of dying from an obesity-related illness.

FILED UNDER: The People, Crime
June 21, 2011 | 12:26 PM | By

Five ‘Surprising’ Facts About Race

 

Community Foundation

Experts spoke about the state of race at the Community Foundation's annual Putting Race on the Table meeting.

 

Last week, during the Community Foundation‘s annual meeting on race — Putting Race on the Table — moderator Michele Norris of NPR asked members of the expert panel to provide a surprising anecdote, statistic or fact that illustrated the state of race in the U.S. Here are some of their responses:

  1. African Americans and government jobs: Tynesia Boyea Robinson, founder of D.C.-nonprofit Year Up, said cutting government jobs disproportionately impacts African Americans. According to a study by Labor Center at the University of California, 21 percent of working black adults work for the government, compared to 17 percent of white workers and 15 percent of Hispanic workers) . Robinson said “the few gains you had from an economic standpoint for people have color may not survive.”
  2. Racial health disparities in D.C: Margaret K. O’Bryon, head of D.C.-based Consumer Health Foundation, said “if you live in Congress Heights in Ward 8, you get sicker and you die sooner than if you lived in Friendship Heights in Ward 3.” O’Byron’s characterization of health disparities can be backed up by D.C. Department of Health statistics (which can be seen here and here) that show vast disparities between predominately black Ward 8 and predominately white Ward 3.
  3. Explicit racism versus racial anxiety: John a. powell is executive director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and he studies racial attitudes in media and the country.  He has measured a decrease in explicitly racist attitudes, “but a substantial uptick in racial anxiety,” particularly among white Americans. Powell cites the birthers movement and the demand for Barrack Obama to show his birth certificate as examples of such racial anxiety.
  4. Poor and Latino in Montgomery County: Gustavo Torres, executive director of immigrant advocacy nonprofit CASA de Maryland, highlighted a local issue: “the feminization of poverty” and how poverty affects the Latino community. In Montgomery County, Md., women represent 59 percent of the poor [PDF], and according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, nearly 13 percent of Hispanics live below the poverty line — that’s higher than any other racial group in the Maryland suburb [PDF].
  5. The “Bradley Effect:” Sociologist and author Dalton Conley said that the “Bradley Effect” appears to be diminishing. The phenomenon, coined after the defeat of Tom Bradley, who was a black candidate running for California governor in the 1980s, is when opinion polls and election results differ because voters tell pollsters they are going to vote for a black candidate but actually vote for a white candidate. The Pew Center found that there was no systematic evidence showing the Bradley Effect playing a role the election of Barrack Obama as president.
FILED UNDER: The People, Community Foundation, Race
June 20, 2011 | 3:52 PM | By

In D.C., is Green the Color that Transcends All Others?

Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

Which matters more: race or class?

A new Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that D.C. residents see class, not race, as the District’s biggest divider. But read past the headline and you’ll find complex intersections between race and class.

On basic quality of life issues — livability of neighborhoods and paying for food and housing — the wealth gap mattered more than the race gap.  But that makes sense; if you’re earning more than $100,000, whether you’re black or white, you can afford to live and eat quite comfortably.

There are instances in which race cut across class lines. In describing how wealthy blacks and whites differed greatly in their outlooks of the economy, the Post reports:

African Americans who participated in the poll said later in interviews that they feel economic insecurity, even if they are doing well now. They also said they had friends and family members who were unemployed or in the economic doldrums…

In many cases, blacks said they felt as if their financial footing was on precarious ground, largely because they did not have a deep well of savings or because they did not have family members to fall back on.

Those with professional degrees aren’t always guaranteed a good job, but if you’re black, your chances are even worse. And then there’s racial discrimination. Such experiences can affect blacks equally regardless of income level.

Overall, the 1,342 respondents overwhelmingly said that the District is divided (76 percent), and that income (56 percent) rather than race (11 percent), separates people. But despite such sentiments, the city’s whitest ward — Ward 3 — is also its wealthiest. And the ward with the highest concentration of black residents — Ward 7 –  also has the highest unemployment rate. It’s difficult to isolate race and class when faced with such stark realities.

FILED UNDER: The People, Race and Class
June 16, 2011 | 1:42 PM | By

In D.C., Life Expectancy Gap Shrinking Between Blacks and Whites

People in D.C. are expected to live longer these days than a decade ago, and the gap between whites and blacks is shrinking.

This is according to a new study released yesterday by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which examined average life expectancies across 3,148 counties and jurisdictions.

D.C. Life Expectancy (2007)
Men, 1997 Men, 2007 Women, 1997 Women, 2007
White 70.3 years 75.1 years 79.3 years 81.3 years
Black 61.7 years 68.9 years 73.6 years 76.8 years
National Rank 1,984th 1,806th

In 1997, the averages for both whites and blacks were shorter, and the disparity between the races was larger. The gap between black and white men has decreased by 2.4 years; between black and white women, it’s decreased by 1.2 years.

The study didn’t look into the causes for the changes in life expectancy, but a few things stand out to us:

  • The life expectancy for D.C.’s black men jumped from 61.7 years in 1997 to 68.9 in 2007. But there still remains a gap despite such a dramatic gain.
  • Nationally, the gap between whites and blacks is expanding. But the demographics of D.C. are changing, with more white residents moving in and more black residents leaving. The life expectancy for blacks in Prince George’s County, Md., one of the suburbs to where many black D.C. residents have relocated, saw only slim increases in life expectancies for black men and women.
  • As the Washington Post points out, “Life expectancy is an abstract concept that summarizes the health and threats to longevity that exist at a particular moment in history. It is not an actual measure of how long people are living.” So D.C.’s black residents may be expected to live longer now, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their lives are better.
  • People are expected to live longer in some area suburbs than in the District itself. Fairfax County, Va. has the highest life expectancy for men in the country, and Montgomery County, Md. has the third highest nationally. Those rankings stand in stark contrast to the District’s 1,984th ranking for men and 1,806th ranking for women.
FILED UNDER: The People