Race and Class

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February 22, 2011 | 5:31 PM | By

Tomorrow on Kojo: African American Success Stories

Flickr: National Organization for Women

Julianne Malveaux

Friends and readers of DCentric may want to tune into The Kojo Nnamdi show tomorrow at 12:30 pm:

Whether the American economic system discriminates against minorities is a matter for debate in some circles. What is clear is that one-in-four African Americans currently lives in poverty, compared to only one-in-ten white Americans. We explore how learning about African American economic successes may help non-white Americans more successfully navigate today’s economic landscape.

Kojo’s guest will be Julianne Malveaux, whom Dr. Cornel West once called “the most iconoclastic public intellectual in the country.”

FILED UNDER: Media, Kojo, Race and Class, WAMU
February 22, 2011 | 10:14 AM | By

Our Place: Helping Forgotten Women Find Their Place in D.C.

DCentric

Our Place D.C.

When a man is sentenced to serve time in prison, he often has a support system; if visits are allowed, his partner dutifully shows up, dressed to impress, exclaiming to children about how they’re “going to see Daddy!” When a woman is sentenced, whatever support she has is usually marshaled in service to her kids, to keep them out of the foster care system; there are few visitors making the drive to women’s facilities, eagerly anticipating a glimpse of Mommy.

That disparity is also reflected in the dearth of organizations dedicated to helping women who were formerly incarcerated transition to life on the outside. In fact, there is only one group in the country that focuses solely on helping such women– Our Place D.C. Our Place is on K street NW, just down the street from Pedro and Vinny’s renowned burrito stand. There, on “burrito block”, in an understated building, in a cozy suite of offices one floor up from the traffic on Route 29, lives are being changed.

It’s easy to forget about such women; they are imperfect, guilty of poor judgment or more, and all of them are ex-cons. Most of us reserve our support for the “innocent”, or more accurately, for sympathetic victims. It doesn’t occur to us to consider those who have served their time, only to be dropped off in this city with nothing but a prison-issued sweatsuit on their backs. “It used to be worse”, Ashley McSwain tells me. She’s the Executive Director of Our Place. Before, newly-released women would arrive in that orange jumpsuit associated with inmates. “We convinced them to change that. The effort was called ‘Justice, not Jumpsuits’.”

McSwain is the kind of warm, unpretentious lady you’d want to sit next to at a beauty salon; the non-profit she runs reflects that vibe, all brightly painted rooms, uplifting art and comfy chairs. When I walked in to Our Place last week, I didn’t think “prisoners”. It actually reminded me of a college counseling department. I kept expecting to see internship offers or posters for graduate school on the walls.
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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Non-profits, Poverty, Race and Class
February 18, 2011 | 5:37 PM | By

A Different Aspect of the Digital Divide

Flickr: Wayan Vota

Sorry, baby. Your internet is slow!

Everything is nicer in the suburbs, including broadband! Via the Investigative Reporting Workshop at AU:

People who live in low-income areas of the District of Columbia on average get less for their broadband dollar than those who live in the wealthy suburbs — and subscribers in rural areas get the worst deals of all, according to a new study.

The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University analyzed customer speed tests and surveys around the nation’s eighth-largest metropolitan statistical area, which has a population of about 5.4 million…

The numbers indicate that while people in poor neighborhoods may pay a little less each month for service, they are likely to experience much slower speeds.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Digital Divide, Race and Class
February 17, 2011 | 12:33 PM | By

Yesterday’s Kojo Show was so DCentric

In case you missed it– yesterday, Kojo Nnamdi spent an hour talking to Robert Puentes of The Brookings Institution and John McIlwain of the Urban Land Institute about “Growth and Change in Greater Washington”:

Census data are confirming what Washingtonians already know: Our region is booming, with the suburbs becoming more urban and the city luring residents who once fled the metropolis. We’ll explore the trends behind the data and how we should be responding to maintain a high quality of life in both the city and the suburbs.

The thoughtful trio discussed issues that would be of extreme interest to DCentric readers, including:

- Diversity without integration

- How D.C.’s height limit limits D.C. (taller buildings accommodate more people, increase tax base)

- Complaints from the ‘burbs about Hispanic immigrants who are renters, with multiple people in one home

- How the 30-year, fixed mortgage built the suburbs

- Whether Generation Y will be able to afford homes– could it lead to a major shift in home ownership nationally?

Interesting, right? Go here, to listen at your leisure.

FILED UNDER: Media, Kojo, Race and Class, WAMU
February 15, 2011 | 11:39 AM | By

Morning Edition Chokes on Chocolate City

During today’s Morning Edition, NPR played a story called “D.C., Long ‘Chocolate City,’ Becoming More Vanilla” by Alex Kellogg. The piece covered the demographic changes that everyone loves to discuss– namely how Chocolate City is going from Dark to Milk– and it did it in Anacostia! So not only did it hit DCentric’s sweet spot, it hit a few local bloggers’ sore spots. One of them was profiled in the story:

David Garber, 27, owns one home in Anacostia and is about to buy two more that are now boarded up. Garber, who is white, says people were happy when he moved to the neighborhood several years ago, because he rehabbed a home that was a haven for drug dealers and addicts.

He left the neighborhood after a 2009 incident where 15 friends were robbed at gunpoint at a Christmas party at his home. He insists that wasn’t the primary reason he moved, and he refuses to say the area is less safe than other parts of town — even though its violent crime rate is the highest in the city. He also insists the neighborhood is still affordable to anyone and everyone who wants to live there.

After the piece aired, Garber tweeted this:

NPR segment this morning about changes in Anacostia, in which they skew facts to tell a worn-out, sensationalist story: http://bit.ly/fDgWjR
February 15, 2011 10:03 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@DG_rad
David Garber

…which inspired me to reach out to him, to learn more about what was skewed and sensational. I love learning about the stories behind stories, don’t you? I’ll keep you posted, trust.

Update: I spoke to David Garber yesterday. Find that interview, here.

FILED UNDER: Media, Gentrification, NPR, Race and Class, Racial Divide
February 14, 2011 | 3:22 PM | By

Miss Metro? Hire a Taxi or Sleep on the Street.

Flickr: Chris Dag

Fisheye view of the red line.

Last week, I posted about the debate surrounding Metro’s proposal to close earlier on the weekends for maintenance and monetary reasons– “Metro: It’s not just for drunks.“. This weekend, the Washington Post dispatched four reporters to spend “the wee hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings riding the trains to gauge reaction.” Most of the piece focused on party people, but one anecdote stood out:

After midnight, Metro is the domain of the young and intoxicated. In this atmosphere, it’s easy to pick out the night commuters, who stand out of the way like hungover club kids might in the morning rush.

On the Green Line, Aloh Che, 63, quietly reads a newspaper. His eyes look tired. A patch on his jacket explains why he is out at 1 a.m.: security. His job often ends at midnight.

“Once you miss the bus, then you miss the train, then your only alternative is hiring a taxi or sleeping on the street,” he says. He’s done that – slept on the street until Metro started up again. “Three or four times,” he says.

Che, a native of Cameroon, works in Bethesda and has worked two shifts this day. By the time he gets home to New Carrollton, the buses will have stopped running, so he will pay a taxi driver $10 to take him the rest of the way.

FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Immigrants, Metro, Race and Class, WMATA
February 14, 2011 | 11:29 AM | By

Chocolate City gets Wealthier and Whiter

Flickr: Oblivious Dude

The Georgetown Waterfront. Lazy and uncreative shorthand for "wealthy" and "white"? Perhaps, but it's such a pretty photograph!

Loyal DCentric reader @BelmontMedina used Twitter to point us to this WaPo story from V. Dion Haynes. Haynes says that jobs are “changing D.C.’s income and racial makeup”. Or, to be blunter, the people of D.C. are becoming richer and whiter.

From 2000 to 2009, the District gained 39,000 households with incomes of $75,000 and higher, according to a Brookings analysis of Census data. During that same period, the city lost 37,600 households with incomes of $50,000 or less.

At the same time, the city’s proportion of black residents dropped to 52.7 percent from 59.4 percent, while its share of white residents rose to 33.3 percent from 27.8 percent.

Why such a stark change?

The loss of middle- and low-income residents is likely related to a growing mismatch between the people who calls the District home and the jobs available. A large number of the city’s unemployed may not be qualified for the jobs that are being created — mainly in the federal government and in professional and business services. Some experts say they believe those factors are driving minorities into suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia…

The problem is particularly acute for black D.C. residents, whose unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2010 was 18.9 percent, compared with 2.5 percent for whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute. A large proportion of blacks in the District are undereducated and do not qualify for the jobs most in demand.

And now, two things I want to point out:

1) When the City Paper included this story in their Loose Lips Daily roundup, they noted that the “District is becoming richer and whiter, says new Brookings report—just not on election day!” Zing! One D.C. resident had this to say about that snark wit. I mean, tweet.

Is @wcp trying to provoke? "District is becoming richer and whiter... just not on election day!" http://t.co/8EyAc6T
February 14, 2011 12:11 pm via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite
@EricFidler
Eric Fidler

2) Speaking of tweets, please feel free to send similar tips or story ideas to us via Twitter. We’re @DCntrc and we are always grateful for the help.

FILED UNDER: The People, Gentrification, Money, Race and Class, Racial Divide
February 11, 2011 | 4:57 PM | By

Potter’s House: All Races, All Classes, All Good

DCentric

The Potter's House: food, books, more.

The Potter’s House has been in D.C. for over five decades. Have you heard of it? If you haven’t, you’re not alone. I’ve been here for 12 years and even when I lived on Columbia Road–where it is located– I wasn’t aware of its existence. I finally noticed it two weeks ago, when I was taking a walk. It looked like a small, specialty bookstore and that was intriguing enough. When I tried to check out its hours of operation, I saw something surprising in small letters, on a weathered sign. On Tuesdays, a group meets there to discuss “Racial Reconciliation” at 12:30 pm. What kind of bookstore was this? Well, it turns out– it’s a unique one:

Potter’s House Books offers several thousand titles focusing primarily on spirituality and social justice…In addition to the Bookstore, the Potter’s House also is a restaurant/coffeehouse, art gallery, worship space, and community meeting place. On Friday nights, it also is the venue for a concert series called “Sounds of Hope,” which features mainly local musicians performing for the benefit of community nonprofit groups.

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FILED UNDER: Around the City, Adams Morgan, Delightful City, Race and Class
February 10, 2011 | 6:00 PM | By

Metro: It’s not just for drunks.

Flickr: Manuel Arrington

A late-night reveler puts her feet up.

“WMATA Board ponders cutting late-night service”, the Greater Greater Washington headline reads. Cue the comment storm from people who are outraged that late-night revelers won’t have a safe way to get home, thus increasing the possibility of those people driving around drunk, killing us and each other. But, wait! There’s more!

NOW cue the knee-jerk fury of those who are outraged that the first group is pandering to drunks. “Why should we enable hard-partying? It’s in no one’s interests! Metro is for commuting to work, not bars!”, they preach. So what’s a transit agency to do? Metro needs to save money and perform maintenance on the creaking, wheezing system that we all complain about; if we want WMATA to fix things, it’s only fair that we give them enough time to address the mile-long list of issues we collectively maintain via Twitter.

All of that is true. So is this: between the sputtering and arguing online, the plight of the other people who rely on Metro is ignored.

Yesterday, when I took my puppy out to turn our street into a latrine, I noticed that Marisol was still sitting in our lobby. That was odd; she usually works the afternoon shift, from 3-11pm. It was midnight.

“Is everything okay?”, I asked.

She smiled, sweetly. “Yeah…I had to stay a little bit late and I missed the last train home.”

I was alarmed. “Are you okay? What about your baby?”
Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Metro, Race and Class, WMATA
February 9, 2011 | 1:55 PM | By

Kate Masur’s “Example for All the Land” at NPG

DCentric

Author Kate Masur, reading from "An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle for Equality in Washington, DC"

Today, Kate Masur, Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University, read from her new book, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle for Equality in Washington, DC at the National Portrait Gallery (hat tip to the City Paper for letting us know about this event).

After the reading, Masur took questions from the standing-room-only crowd. As she quoted from the Reconstruction-era diary entry of a racist white Washingtonian, I was startled by how over a century later, similar sentiments could be found in the comments sections of local blogs and newspapers. Masur said she wanted to “illuminate the larger picture of dynamism in Washington” via the stories in her book. She also reflected on how once slavery was “resolved”, many local white Republicans cared more about business than equality.

When Masur mentioned that An Example for All the Land –the first examination of Washington during Reconstruction in over five decades– explored why D.C. became a hub for black education and an African American middle class, the crowd buzzed with interest.

One attendee, Barbara Burger of Washington, D.C., enjoyed the presentation. Burger explained, “I’m a native Washingtonian. My family has been here since 1880. I’m very interested in any studies that explore the African American situation. I’m very happy to see she’s taken it upon herself to write a book and do research that will hopefully have an effect on the perceptions of this city.”

Next week on DCentric: an interview with Professor Masur, and more about her book.

http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1770
FILED UNDER: Culture, History, Books, Race and Class, Smithsonian