March 25, 2011 | 8:45 AM | By

Tasty Morning Bytes – Remembering Elizabeth Taylor, The Simplicity of Juan Williams and Those Census Results

Good morning, DCentric readers! Enjoy some tasty links before you mentally check out on a Friday.

Remembering Taylor’s D.C. Contributions: More than just money, past and present Whitman-Walker Clinic employees laud Elizabeth Taylor’s HIV/AIDS advocacy Former clinic worker David Chalfant: ”It created a sea change in the way people in Washington, across the country and around the world looked at HIV and AIDS…For her to step out and do that very famous commercial where she holds up a condom and says, ‘This is the one way we know to help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS — before our sitting president [Reagan] even said the words ‘HIV’ and ‘AIDS’ in public was quite a statement.” (Metro Weekly )

Juan Williams: Making It Too Simple? “To say, as Williams does, that one gets “nervous” around young black men or Muslims is really not to say anything at all. We don’t interact with categories but with people, in specific places and contexts…The real question we should ask ourselves is not whether what he says is true — or rational — but how can we transcend such simple truths in order to better navigate more complicated realities? That’s the conversation we should be having but are not.” (The Root)

Next meal elusive for hundreds of thousands of needy in D.C. area 16.6 percent of Americans do not know where their next meal will come from or when it will be. Compare that to these local numbers: “Nationally, the study showed that 16.6 percent of Americans experienced “food insecurity” — the feeling of not knowing where one’s next meal is coming from — during 2009…Regionally, the percentage was lower overall — about 10 percent — except in the District, where 15.8 percent — or 93,000 residents — experienced food insecurity. Affluent Fairfax and Montgomery counties each had about 70,000 residents experiencing hunger at a rate of 7 to 8 percent.” (The Washington Post)

Student Who Shared Cocaine with Classmates Back Home Child was released to his parents on Tuesday, but is still not in school. Thomson is a “nicer” school than many of us probably realize: “Thomson Elementary School in northwest Washington, D.C. is known for being the first school in the District to offer Chinese as a second language, and for being the closest elementary school to the White House. Now the school is making national headlines for a student bringing something other than lunch and books to school – cocaine.” (afro.com)

Soccer Teammate: Lululemon Suspect Brittany Norwood Had History of Alleged Theft Brittany Norwood’s former friend and soccer teammate Leanna Yust on how Norwood stole from her while both were at Stony Brook University: “I wanted to turn her into the police. Even though I was scared, I wanted to. And my dad decided not to. He was like who knows what this girl is capable of. She could come back and kill you,” said Yust. (myfoxdc.com)

Black DC residents plummet, barely a majority Please report to the conference room to brainstorm new dessert-centric nicknames for our city. Everyone who was sick of “Chocolate City” is required to attend. Seriously, though: “The census statistics showed a steeper change for both blacks and whites than had been estimated. With the city ‘s black population dropping by about 1 percent a year, African Americans might already be below the 50 percent mark in the city.” (The Washington Post)

About the author

DCentric was created to examine the ways race and class interact in Washington, D.C., a city with a vibrant mix of cultures and neighborhoods. Your guides to the changing district are reporters Anna John and Elahe Izadi. View all posts by Anna →

  • Anonymous

    Careful with your statistics. Saying “16.6 percent of Americans do not know where their next meal will come from or when it will be,” reflects two faulty logical jumps .

    First, the WP article says “16.6 percent of Americans experienced “food insecurity” — the feeling of not knowing where one’s next meal is coming from — during 2009.” Note the “during 2009,” that means that these 16.6 percent were food insecure at any time during the year. To figure out how many people were food insecure at any ONE time, you need to know how long people were food insecure. In the survey itself, it says “Per the USDA, households experiencing food insecurity experience this condition in, on average, in seven months of the year.” ( http://feedingamerica.org/our-network/the-studies/map-the-gap/map-methodology.aspx ) So, the closest you can come to a point-in-time estimate with this data is to multiply 16.6 by 7/12ths yielding, 9.68 . Now, I’m sure there are seasonal factors that would make this vary within the year, but the study doesn’t go in to them.

    So we now have that 9.68% of America is experiencing food insecurity. You should know that this study wasn’t a survey, it didn’t go out and interview people, it just used updated poverty, unemployment, and racial statistics to generate estimates of the USDA’s existing food-insecurity data by state and county. So to find out what this means, you have to look at the USDA’s definition: “Food Insecurity: USDA’s measure of lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members; limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods.” ( http://feedingamerica.org/our-network/the-studies/map-the-gap/~/media/Files/research/ExecutiveSummary_Final.ashx?.pdf ). I have no idea where the Post got its description of “food insecure,” that isn’t even close to what the measure means.

    Food insecurity is not a politically-correct synonym for hunger, it’s trying to be a broader measure of those who aren’t getting ADEQUATE food over some length of time. You are counted as food insecure now if, for example, you don’t have enough to buy groceries before your next paycheck; that doesn’t mean that your cupboard is empty this instant. To make say how many Americans “don’t know where their next meal will come from” you’d need data on how often food insecurity coincides with hunger. It could be 25% of the time (which would suggest 2.4% “don’t know where their next meal will come from”), it could be 10% of the time (which would suggest 1%), but by the very definition, we know it’s not 100%. The study doesn’t touch this. Read the article, one of the examples is an unemployed IT administrator who went to the food bank. Is he food-insecure? You bet. Does he know where his next meal is coming from? Yes, he has steaks in the freezer that his friend gave him.

    Look, it should go without saying that food insecurity is bad, and that 9.68% of Americans is a lot. It’s an important story, one that someone should report. Blowing the numbers hugely out of proportion doesn’t help the case, it makes people (including myself) think “that can’t possibly be true,” and dismiss it. They’d be right to do so; those inflated figures aren’t true. The best way to win the argument is to use figures that are correct.

  • Anonymous

    If you’re interested in this, you should take a look at the USDA’s report ( http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR83/ERR83.pdf ). These are the figures the study revised upward with the new unemployment and poverty figures. The report include measures of “very low food security,” which more closely track the Post’s “don’t know where their next meal will come from” hyperbole.

    Page 7:
    “When interpreting food security statistics in this report (except for appendix
    D), it is important to keep in mind that households were classified as having
    low or very low food security if they experienced the condition at any time
    during the previous 12 months. The prevalence of these conditions on any
    given day is far below the corresponding annual prevalence. For example,
    the prevalence of very low food security on an average day during the 30-day
    period prior to the December 2008 survey is estimated to have been between
    0.9 and 1.2 percent of households.”

  • http://DCentric.org Anna John

    Thank you for the correction– I amended the post. And thanks for reading and caring enough to comment!