December 2, 2011 | 3:00 PM | By

‘Health Over Wealth’

In D.C., there’s a strong correlation between health and income. The least wealthy wards also have the highest obesity rates and fewest healthy food options. Citywide, 15 percent of all deaths are obesity-related, according to the District’s Overweight and Obesity Action Plan.

So D.C. artist Rosina “Teri” Memolo’s magnets, “Health Over Wealth,” hold special relevance for those of us in the District. She created the image using a stencil, writing on her Tumblr, “I struggle sometimes to communicate an obvious message… Stencils allow me to add text directly into my work and to convey a message.”

December 2, 2011 | 12:25 PM | By

Unemployment Rate Down, But Not For Everyone

There is some good news out today: the national unemployment rate dropped from 9 to 8.6 percent in November. But not all is well, as the unemployment rate remained relatively stable for blacks and Hispanics, while it dropped for whites. Also, the public sector posted government job losses; 5,000 postal workers lost their jobs in November, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Such public sector losses may be disproportionately affecting African Americans, as they’re overrepresented in the government jobs.


American governments at all levels continued to bleed workers, for one. And the decline in the unemployment rate had a down side: It fell partly because more workers got jobs, but also because about 315,000 workers dropped out of the labor force. That left the share of Americans actively participating in the work force at a historically depressed 64 percent, down from 64.2 percent in October.

Read more at: www.nytimes.com

December 2, 2011 | 9:26 AM | By

Occupy Movement: Confronting ‘Racial Tension’

Since the early days of the Occupy movement, there have been questions over race and whether protests have been representative of those Americans struggling the most. We’ve written before about efforts in D.C. to boost protest diversity, and the Huffington Post has this interesting dispatch from Detroit, also a mostly-black city, where many early protestors were white.


In recent years Grand Circus Park, despite the slow gentrification of downtown Detroit, has been most welcoming to hard-luck natives, laid-off blue collar workers and other jobless, the self-medicating and many of the city’s chronic homeless. Many of them, like the majority of the city itself, were black.

So when the Occupy protests sprouted here, and waves of young, mostly white protesters arrived from outside the city with their tents and their cardboard signs and people’s microphones, the park’s invisible demarcation lines of class and race were for a time blurred, eroding in small measure what has been one of the central complaints about the movement, its lack of diversity.

Nationally protesters have occupied cities like Detroit, Oakland, New York City, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and others with sizable African-American and minority communities. But, especially in its early days, the Occupy movement remained overwhelmingly white.

Read more at: www.huffingtonpost.com

December 1, 2011 | 12:42 PM | By

World AIDS Day: Explaining HIV Infection Rate Disparities

Although HIV infection rates have remained relatively stable for most people, they’ve risen dramatically in recent years for one group: young, black gay men.

Today, as people around the country commemorate World AIDS Day, we thought it appropriate to point our readers to a previous DCentric post explaining why this group is still disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. Battling the disease is of particular concern in D.C., where 3 percent of the population has HIV/AIDS.


The HIV infection rate for young black men who have sex with men is growing at an “alarming” rate.

That’s according to a report released this month by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC studied HIV infection rates from 2006 to 2009, and found that the rate increased by 48 percent for 13 to 29 year-old black men who have sex with men. Meanwhile, infection rates have remained relatively stable for all other groups.

Read more at: dcentric.wamu.org

December 1, 2011 | 9:27 AM | By

Three Reasons to Use Phones to Reduce the Digital Divide

By A.C. Valdez

alachia / Flickr

There have been a number of ideas on how to reduce the digital divide, or the disparity in access to technology and the Internet among people of different races and income levels. One strategy: make high-speed Internet cheaper for low-income families, which major cables companies will start doing next summer. But will that tactic actually get more people connected? Maybe not. Here are three reasons why improving mobile broadband access, not cable Internet, might be more effective:

People of color don’t use computers as much as whites do.

But that doesn’t mean, particularly for those who are low-income, they aren’t getting online. African Americans and Hispanics are far outpacing whites in accessing the Internet through mobile devices; nationally, 58 percent of African Americans and 53 percent of Hispanics use mobile broadband, compared to 33 percent of whites, according to the Hispanic Institute.

Those trends hold true locally, too: in a 2010 Public Media Corps survey (which I helped conduct), we found that about 71 percent of blacks and 76 percent of Hispanics in some of D.C.’s poorest wards connect to the Internet using their phones. Meanwhile, about 58 percent of whites in those communities used their phones, while 79 percent used computers.

It’s the money, stupid.

“If you have a low income, you just don’t subscribe,” said John Dunbar, who authored a study examining D.C.’s high-speed adoption rates.

Phones are cheaper than computers, and they’re already in people’s hands. Without government or nonprofit help, pay-as-you-go phone plans may offer convenient payment schemes for people worried about making timely monthly payments on stretched budgets.

Language barriers and dealing with cable companies.

Dealing with a cable company over the phone can be a headache —especially when your first language isn’t English. There are more mobile companies with sales and service locations scattered throughout the city than there are major cable providers.  Dunbar found that, even when adjusted for income, Hispanics in the D.C. region are less likely to use high-speed Internet. That may be due to poor marketing to non-English speakers.

 

FILED UNDER: Digital Divide, Race and Class
November 30, 2011 | 3:26 PM | By

Race, Class and Georgetown’s Suit Shops

Georgetown, home to some of the priciest retailers in town, has community activists clamoring over what they feel is their neighborhood’s losing appeal. One resident and developer even wants the city to commit millions of dollars to help spur more development in the neighborhood, a notion that Washington City Paper reporter Lydia DePillis describes as “ridiculous.” At the center of their gripes, she writes, is “the kind of tacky retail” that doesn’t “fit what they think the high-class image of Georgetown should be.”

This post has been updated to reflect a correction made by the Washington City Paper.


“What’s with all the suit shops?” asked Councilmember Jack Evans. “Who buys a $15 suit? I get asked that every day. That’s the dead zone.”

It’s hard not to notice the class and race implications of all this. Wealthy white Georgetowners don’t shop at those stores—where suits go for $99, not $15—and they think they don’t contribute to the neighborhood. They’re the remnant of an earlier time, when Georgetown actually had a black residential community, and not all the retail was Calvin Klein and H&M. But instead of viewing them as small independent businesses that Georgetowners say they love, the kind of diversity that keeps the place from becoming entirely an outdoor suburban mall, they’re seen as seedy and therefore undesirable.

* Corrected from an earlier version, which identified the suit shops with the African American community that lived in Georgetown in the 50s and 60s. The suit shops came later.

Read more at: www.washingtoncitypaper.com

November 30, 2011 | 12:12 PM | By

Competing For Flat-Screen TVs and Affordable Housing

Hundreds of people anxiously waited in a long line near 14th Street NW in Columbia Heights last week so they could buy heavily discounted flat-screen TVs and tablet computers. Another long line formed in the neighborhood last night, but this time it was full of people waiting to sign up for affordable housing.

Hundreds people waited Tuesday night, through the rain and with some camping overnight, to sign up for newly-renovated Hubbard Place’s waiting list. And according to The Washington Post, competition for the apartments “was intense:”

Security guards and two D.C. police officers tried to keep the line orderly, but shouting matches broke out, and some of those who had waited accused others of cutting in line and not waiting their turn.

“There are a lot of people that need housing, a lot of homeless right now,” said Katherine Felder, a security guard who had been waiting in line since midnight. She lost her apartment this year and has been staying with relatives, along with two granddaughters, ages 3 and 2, who are in her care.

“I don’t have anywhere to stay,” she said from under a black umbrella, shifting her weight to keep warm. “I’m cold, wet and soaked to the bone, soaked from my head to my toes. Cold, cold, cold. Haven’t slept all night.”

As the Post points, out, there’s quite a high demand for affordable housing in the city: about 20,000 people are currently on the city’s waiting list. Although D.C. rents aren’t the highest in the nation, they are out-of-reach for many in the city. A little more than half of District residents don’t make enough money to afford a market rate, two bedroom apartment. Development has caused Columbia Heights in particular to become more expensive, which is one reason behind Latinos increasingly settling in more affordable neighborhoods in the city.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Affordable Housing, Class, Housing, Renters
November 29, 2011 | 2:00 PM | By

New Duke Ellington Mural Connects D.C. to Musical Past

A new Duke Ellington mural has been added to the city’s landscape, joining the other iconic Ellington mural located on U Street, formerly known as “Black Broadway.” The new mural is painted on the side of the Duke Ellington building at 2121 Ward Place NW, near the site where the jazz legend was born. The building now houses a post office, among other services. The mural is painted by local artist Aniekan Udofia (who, full disclosure, is a friend of mine).

November 29, 2011 | 11:27 AM | By

Achievement Gap Wider By Income Than By Race

Tom Woodward / Flickr

The academic achievement gap between low income and wealthy students is nearly double the gap in achievement between white and black students, a new study finds.

Standford University professor Sean Reardon compared average standardized test performances of students at the bottom of the income ladder to those at the top, and found the gap in achievement was nearly double the difference between black and white students.

About 50 years ago, the gap between white and black students’ performances was nearly double the income achievement gap, reports EdSource Extra:
FILED UNDER: Education, Race and Class
November 28, 2011 | 1:48 PM | By

More D.C. Households on Food Stamps

Food stamp usage in D.C. actually went up last year, despite census estimates to the contrary, The District’s Dime reports. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 17 percent more households received food stamps in 2010 than in 2009.

In 2008, the food stamp program was renamed as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Check out DCentric’s primer on food assistance programs which delineates who qualifies for what programs and what they provide.


USDA figures show a 17 percent increase in the number of DC households receiving food stamps from 2009 to 2010, not a decrease. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the number of families in DC seeking help from the food stamp program has risen in the last few years. Both unemployment and poverty have worsened in DC over the last few years, making it harder for families to make ends meet and take care of their basic needs.

Read more at: www.dcfpi.org