February 2, 2012 | 12:47 PM | By

DCentric Picks: Black History Month Edition

Sean Ganann / Flickr

The Carter G. Woodson mural is on 7th Street NW.

What: Black History Month Family Day

When: 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday.

Where: The National Portrait Gallery’s Kogod Courtyard at 800 F St. NW.

Why you should go: Family-friendly and free activities will be held throughout the day to celebrate the start of Black History Month. There will be art workshops, music performances and a photo booth.

Other events to consider: The DC Public Library’s annual Black Film Festival begins Tuesday, with films each week focusing on the role of black women in American history and culture. Films screen weekly at 3 p.m., Tuesdays at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 901 G St. NW.

FILED UNDER: Culture, History, Museums, DCentric Picks
February 2, 2012 | 10:52 AM | By

On Blaming Food Deserts

David McNew / Getty Images

We pondered yesterday whether lack of access to supermarkets is the major reason behind health inequality, in response to a survey showing most urban families were actually satisfied with their grocery options.

We asked readers: are food deserts really to blame, or do other factors loom larger? From the responses, it looks like prices and having time to prepare meals were also big concerns for families.

DCentric commenter molly_w wrote:

One thing I completely failed to appreciate until I became a mom was how hard it is for parents to find time to cook. I get home at 6, and my 4-year-old daughter needs to head upstairs and start her bedtime routine at 7:30. So I have 90 minutes a day to hang out with my child (never mind my husband), and I want to spend as little of it as possible fixing supper. (She doesn’t want me to spend it in the kitchen, either; she interrupts me every couple minutes with all sorts of invented needs — which only makes dinner prep take longer.) These days I’m all about frozen microwavable rice covered in something that came out of a crock pot, because I can get food on the table in about five minutes and have that time to hang out with my family. And I’m lucky in a lot of ways — I only work one job, I have a partner to help, we only have one kid.

In response to our post on the survey, Sylvia C. Brown, an ANC 7C04 commissioner, tweeted that saving money can come at the cost of saving time:

@ it still corroborates food deserts bcs it puts pressure on one--go to corner store save time but food price high +
February 1, 2012 9:37 am via UberSocial for BlackBerryReplyRetweetFavorite
@anc7c04
Sylvia C. Brown

Corner stores also don’t have the same variety of fresh fruits and vegetables as supermarkets do. There’s a local effort underway to address that problem, with nonprofit D.C. Central Kitchen delivering fresh produce to corner stores as part of its “Healthy Corners” initiative.

Also, simply having a supermarket in a community doesn’t translate into healthier eating habits, according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers said healthy food isn’t always visibly displayed in supermarkets and it can be expensive. So you could build it, and they may come, but what will they buy?

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Food Deserts, Health disparities
February 2, 2012 | 8:29 AM | By

Gentrification in a Former Riot-Torn Neighborhood

D.C. has its share of gentrification stories in neighborhoods that never fully recovered from riots long ago, but here’s one from Brooklyn: The New York Times profiles neighborhood changes in Crown Heights, a neighborhood that saw riots between black and Jewish residents in 1991.


The riots erupted when a driver from a Hasidic official’s motorcade struck and killed a 7-year-old black boy, which prompted black residents to take to the streets, some calling for revenge. A 29-year-old Hasidic scholar visiting from Australia was attacked and fatally stabbed.

Richard Green, who founded the Crown Heights Youth Coalition in the mid-1980s, said the racial violence occurred in part because blacks and Jews had kept to themselves. “We were never really formally introduced to each other,” Mr. Green said. “That’s a good lesson as we see new groups coming in.”

Read more at: www.nytimes.com

February 1, 2012 | 3:49 PM | By

Redeveloping Without Displacing: Affordable Housing Opens On Church Land

Elahe Izadi / DCentric

The Payton family tours its new home.

Tyisha and Antonio Payton were looking for a new home, something more spacious to accommodate their family than the two-bedroom, affordable housing apartment in Barry Farm they lived in.

Antonio Payton said he didn’t want to speak disparagingly of Barry Farm since “they housed us,” but said their former apartment was too small for his family. The appliances and apartment were outdated. And it didn’t feel like a safe environment where he could raise his three daughters.

On Tuesday, the family entered its new home at Matthews Memorial Terrace, a new $22 million, 99-unit affordable apartment complex built upon church land.

“This is a nice, secure building. It’s a whole different mindset,” Antonio Payton said. “I feel at peace here.”

It’s a unique project, built on land donated by Matthews Memorial Church at 2626 Martin Luther King Jr Ave, SE.

“This part of the city, and I live east of the river, has historically been ignored. It’s time for that to change, and it’s going to change because of developments like this,” Mayor Vincent Gray said at the Tuesday dedication of the building. “This development has been built with sensitivity to this community.”

The dedication ceremony was quite the celebration. It kicked off with a gospel choir, included some choked-back tears and plenty of praise and thanksgiving.

It’s been 28 years since the congregation first dreamed up the idea to use the land for housing. Bishop C. Matthew Hudson Jr., who took the helm of the church in 2006, said the project was a priority of his. The original intent was to provide seniors with homes near the church. He said “suburban flight” has taken many of his older congregants out of the community over the past few decades. “The church was preparing for that,” he said.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Government, Housing
February 1, 2012 | 10:34 AM | By

The Disappearing Segregated City

Patrick Calder / Flickr

Chinatown D.C. attracts a diversity of people.

Racial segregation in American cities, including in D.C., is on the decline, but it still exists. The D.C. region is the sixth most segregated large metro area, according to a new study by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Racial segregation in the D.C. region has been dropping since 2000, but at a slower pace than eight of the nine other cities on the list.

All-white urban neighborhoods have been nearly eradicated in the past few decades, according to the study’s authors, who examined census data from 1890 through 2010. Very few all-white neighborhoods exist today, and they’re mostly in rural areas or cities with a very small black population. In 1970, one-fifth of urban neighborhoods didn’t have a single black resident.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: The People, Census 2010, Segregation
February 1, 2012 | 8:20 AM | By

Why Food Deserts May Not Be To Blame

Much attention has been given to food deserts, which are low-income communities with limited access to super markets or large grocery stores. But a new survey by nonprofit Share Our Strength shows that most urban families are satisfied with their food options. Having time to cook and the price of groceries were more pressing concerns.

Food reporter Jane Black writes that the survey’s findings challenge the notion that food deserts are the major culprits in the fight against heath inequality. “It may be easier to plunk down a new Walmart in the inner city,” she writes. Interestingly enough, Walmart is one of the sponsors of the program that ran the survey, and the big box retailer’s plans to build six D.C. stores include a campaign emphasizing a lack of access to fresh foods in District neighborhoods.


The data reflects what my husband, Brent Cunningham, and I saw while reporting for six months in Huntington, West Virginia. Among the families we followed, the very poorest was the one most likely to cook healthy meals at home. But it required intense planning and basic cooking skills. The families least likely to eat well were the ones who, frankly, didn’t have to. They had enough money to swing by Burger King for dinner on the way home instead of cooking family meals and eating leftovers… They shopped impulsively, instead of methodically, at the grocery store, which meant their carts were filled with frozen pizzas, chips and snacks.

Read more at: www.janeblack.net

January 31, 2012 | 2:03 PM | By

Newcomers and Old Timers Bond Over Neighborhood History

If you want to see gentrification-in-action, head to H Street NE, where disputes between longtime and newer residents and businesses are well-documented. But a new project by Cultural Tourism DC is helping build some bridges; a heritage trail is planned for the corridor, with people of all stripes involved in helping to document the neighborhood’s past.


Community meetings to determine what goes on the signs bring out new and old residents alike, Levey said, groups who are often at odds over neighborhood issues. Off H Street, for instance, new white residents are annoyed by the overflow of cars at African American churches on Sunday, while older African American residents worry about being priced out of their homes.

“We usually have community meetings over concerns or controversies,” said [Marqui] Lyons, whose family has lived on H Street for five generations. “So it was nice to have a harmony-building project where people who had just moved to the community become enraptured with the history and older residents feel like their stories are being collected and listened to.”

Read more at: www.washingtonpost.com

January 31, 2012 | 12:07 PM | By

Documenting the ‘Browner D.C.’

Joi-Marie McKenzie noticed a different kind of media coverage disparity, namely that few African Americans appeared in the society pages. In 2007, she started DC Fab, a website that covers nightlife, parties and profiles prominent D.C. personalities. TBD’s Jenny Rogers chatted with McKenzie about her motivations for running the site.


“We cover the browner D.C.,” explains McKenzie. Black faces from the worlds of sports, non-profits, music, and occasionally the clergy fill DC Fab’s pages.

“I remember when we started, there was no one like us,” says McKenzie. “You’ll flip through Washington Life, or Washingtonian, and you’d never guess there was this whole world, making hundreds of thousands, I’d say millions of dollars, of these urban professionals.”

“I want to showcase my peers,” she says. “There’s industry here. There’s tastemakers. Who’s going to talk for us? Who’s going to navigate this world?”

Read more at: www.tbd.com

January 31, 2012 | 8:00 AM | By

Five Facts About Race, Class and D.C. Students

Paul J. Richards / Getty Images

Thomson Elementary School students listen during class. D.C.'s school-aged population doesn't exactly mirror its general population.

The D.C. school-aged population doesn’t necessarily reflect the changing demographics of the city. Here are five facts about race, class and D.C. students from a new study commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education and conducted by nonprofit IFF:

The school-aged population is disproportionately black.

Although nearly half of D.C. residents are black, about 70 percent of school-aged children are black.

The Hispanic student population comes close to reflecting the larger Hispanic population.

While a little more than 9 percent of D.C. residents are Hispanic, about 11 percent of school-aged children are Hispanic.

Whites are more likely to opt out of public schools.

The District’s white population has grown in recent decades, but its school-aged population hasn’t kept pace. While about 35 percent of D.C. residents are white, only 14 percent of D.C. school-aged children are white. The study also noted that whites are more likely than their black peers to opt out of public education in favor of private schools; 9 percent of DCPS students are white.

Students are disproportionately poor.

A DCPS or charter student is more likely to be living in poverty than the average District resident. About two-thirds of DCPS and 75 percent of charter school students receive free or reduced lunches; to qualify, a family of four has to make $41,348 or less a year. Only about 30 percent of D.C. households fall into the same income category.

Well-performing schools are found everywhere.

There’s a higher concentration of top performing schools in wealthier parts of town west of Rock Creek Park, but such schools also exist in low-income communities, according to the study.

FILED UNDER: Education, Race and Class
January 30, 2012 | 12:31 PM | By

Where Are D.C.’s ‘Good’ Teachers?

D.C. schools with the fewest “effective” or “highly effective” teachers are concentrated in low-income parts of the city, according to a Washington Examiner analysis. The D.C. Public School System evaluates teacher effectiveness using a number of methods, including classroom evaluations and test scores. Garfield Elementary School, where 83 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunches, has one such teacher per every 50 students.

Although schools with a high ratio of effective teachers to students are concentrated in wealthier parts of town, there are exceptions. For instance, Tubman Elementary School, where 81 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunches, has one effective or highly effective teacher per every 11 students.

D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown, who has introduced legislation to incentivize more top teachers into low-income, underperforming schools, said these extremes in ratios of effective teachers emphasize the gulf between affluent and poor schools.

“If you just think about it, close your eyes, and don’t think about the location, don’t think about the kids at all — but took a stranger to those two schools, or showed them video — they could tell you right away which school had highly effective teachers,” he said.

Read more at: washingtonexaminer.com