DCentric

Good morning, DCentric readers! Here are your Monday links:

D.C. councilmen don’t send kids to neighborhood schools “D.C. Council members are sending their kids to pricey private schools instead of putting them in the city’s troubled public system that they urge other parents to invest in.” (Washington Examiner )

Proposed Redistricting Creates Predominantly White Ward “Councilman Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) defended the proposal claiming that the committee adopted what it thought was more logical. “There is no doubt that Ward 6 will have less African Americans. However, we took the outline with the best connections across the river. Somehow we thought that was more important,” said Mendelson.” (afro.com)

The persistence of hate “This gets us back to what’s become of North-South racism in the United States since the 1950s. America is a country of immigrants, and more important, a country with high mobility within its borders, particularly over the last century. This doesn’t mean that racism has disappeared, though perhaps we can expect it to be distributed more evenly. There’s some evidence that America’s melting pot is having exactly this effect. For example, in response to the 2005-07 World Values Survey, whites living in South Atlantic states were no more likely than New Englanders to say that they wouldn’t want a black neighbor.” (Slate)

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Recaptured D.C. teen has history of escape “One of the D.C. youths who escaped from a secure residential facility in Northwest last week walked away less than a month earlier from a South Carolina facility and a “low risk” group home in the District prior to jumping from a third-floor window of the locked facility last week, according to sources within the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS).” (Washington Times)

Is racism on the way out? “When veteran journalist Ellis Cose wrote “The Rage of a Privileged Class” in 1993, his editor was so shocked by his thesis — that black middle-class professionals were deeply frustrated by enduring discrimination in the workplace and remained unable to achieve the same level of success as their white colleagues — that he pulled him aside to ask if it was really true…Now, nearly two decades later, Cose is revisiting the black middle class in his new book, “The End of Anger,” and finds that much has changed.” (Salon)

ICYMI: District Veterans Recall Army’s Only All-Black Ranger Unit “Paul Lyles, who’s now 83, is one of the several District residents who belonged to 2nd Ranger Company in the early 1950′s. ‘It was just beginning to be desegregated. Because Truman had signed the law,” he says. “But we had a lot of generals who were bigots and didn’t want any blacks in the unit.’ Thrust into action during the Korean War, Lyles says 2nd Ranger Company eventually proved those generals wrong. ‘We never lost a hill. Once you got on a hill, you never lost a hill,” he says. “Nobody ever beat us. We always held our ground.’” (wamu.org)

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Greetings, DCentric readers. Here are the five things we’re reading:

Redistricting Roils Wards 6, 7 and 8 "Frances Campbell is a firm believer in elected officials heeding the concerns and interests of those they serve, but during this redistricting process, he said, Ward 6 residents have been ignored. The District’s plan to move a section of Ward 6 into Ward 7 has left the 60-year-old incensed. 'We have done a remarkable amount of work so far, things turned around and the quality of life has improved,' said Campbell, a five term ANC commissioner. 'There was a time when we had assaults and murders and now that we have turned all this around, they want to come and take a piece of the ward.'" (Washington Informer)

Congress Mulls Cuts to Food Stamps Program Amid Record Number of Recipients "Congress is under pressure to cut the rapidly rising costs of the federal government’s food stamps program at a time when a record number of Americans are relying on it….More than 44.5 million Americans received SNAP benefits in March, an 11 percent increase from one year ago and nearly 61 percent higher than the same time four years ago." (ABC News)

One-fifth of Metro's escalators out of service "The outages aren't just wearing on the riders. Two escalator repairmen, who asked their names not be published for fear of retribution, said they showed up to shifts recently to be told they needed to work mandatory overtime that night and every night that week. Such orders usually are reserved for emergencies, such as snowstorms, one said. And it didn't matter if they had other plans — or had parked their cars in places where they would get towed. They said they were told they would be written up if they didn't work the extra hours." (Washington Examiner )

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Good morning, DCentric readers! Ready for some links?

Why an Apology from Obama on Geronimo is Unlikely “It soon became clear that Obama would not apologize, nor did he seem to understand that there was even a controversy boiling in Indian country. In an appearance on May 8 on 60 Minutes, none of this seemed to trouble him. ‘There was a point before folks had left before we had gotten everybody back on the helicopter and were flying back to base, where they said ‘Geronimo’ has been killed,’ Obama told journalist Steve Kroft with a look of pride in his eyes. ‘And Geronimo was the code name for bin Laden.’ The look, meanwhile, in the eyes of many Indians was quite different.” (Indian Country Today)

New crack-cocaine law could impact hundreds of old cases in D.C. region “Since the 1990s, advocates have complained that crack offenders are treated more harshly than those arrested with powdered cocaine. Many critics view the disparity as racial discrimination because black drug offenders are more likely to be charged with federal crack offenses and to serve longer prison terms than other offenders. The Fair Sentencing Act, signed by Obama in August, attempts to remedy that disparity by changing the amount of crack cocaine required to trigger five and 10-year mandatory sentences.” (The Washington Post)

Cheating Investigation Casts Shadow on Testing“‘This is a very pro-test period in American education,’ said Washington Teacher Union President Nathan Saunders. ‘As a result of teacher performance and school closures being directly related to tests, unfortunately some educators have used alternative schemes, including cheating to meet the mandates.’ Some critics disdain the tests themselves and the commercial motives of the companies supplying them. The Washington Post Co.’s Kaplan division has attracted scrutiny. Kaplan Inc.’s testing and “university” is the Post’s primary revenue generator, yet in reporting about the testing dust-up, Post reporters have apparently not bothered to note this, which some observers consider a possible conflict of interest.” (afro.com)
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