Racial Divide

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November 22, 2010 | 3:50 PM | By

How D.C. is different: Hate Crimes-edition

Photography by Jason Pier @ www.jasonpier.com

2009 National Equality March

Over at TBD, Amanda Hess looks at “How D.C. hate crimes compare to the nation’s“:

The District of Columbia is the rare jurisdiction where crimes based on sexual orientation dominate hate crime stats. According to the report, almost half of the nation’s hate crimes—48.8 percent—are committed based on the victim’s race. But in D.C., as many as 85 percent of hate crimes reported to federal law enforcement are based on the victim’s sexual orientation.

Further down in her piece, Hess reported that hate crimes in D.C. which target sexual orientation “most often involve black suspects” targeting victims of various races.

In 2008, the District reported 30 offenses based on sexual orientation, eight based on race, three based on ethnicity, one based on religion, and zero based on disability. Last year, D.C. again reported 30 based on sexual orientation, but noted a decline in other kinds of hate crimes—2009 recorded three incidents based on race, two based on ethnicity, and zero based on religion or disability…

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Hate Crimes, LGBT, Racial Divide
November 18, 2010 | 1:40 PM | By

“Before we do anything though, lets help DC9 re-open”

thisisbossi

Memorial in front of DC9.

I can’t figure out why, exactly, but seeing this at the top of Brightest Young Things‘ weekly roundup of events and things to do-email made me a little queasy:

This week’s BEST WEEKEND BETS is, as always, hand selected from BYT ALL CITY and calibrated for maximum fun and minimum stress, and will be punctuated by images from random tumblrs we spent to much time on this week because, well, we can.

Before we do anything though, lets help DC9 re-open.It’s as easy as sending an email with:

Subject: I feel safe at DC9
Send to ABC board and council members
http://aboutdcgov.dc.gov/DC/About+DC.Gov/Feedback
Email: abra@dc.gov , jim@grahamwone.com

OK-OFF WE GO NOW.

Lets all just have a super weekend

It’s as easy as sending an email? But then what? Someone who lives in a different neighborhood, who may have a different complexion sends an email advocating for DC9 to remain closed? I get that the charges have been dropped, and if we believe in the presumption of innocence then my head tells me that it’s only fair to allow this business to reopen…for now. The squishy red thing in my chest disagrees with my head, violently.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Around the City, ABC Board, Crime, DC9, Ethiopian Community, Racial Divide
November 15, 2010 | 2:21 PM | By

Redskins Coach vs. Redskins Quarterback

tonbabydc

Tony Dungy and Donovan McNabb

I don’t know if “issues of race are often discussed head-on” in D.C. (unless the writer means “among people of the same color”) but I was glad that one of you sent me this story about our local NFL team: “Is Coach Shanahan Racist or Just Dumb?”

Here in D.C., in Obama’s so-called post-racial America, issues of race are often discussed head-on, and talk of the strained relationship between McNabb, who is black, and Shanahan, who is white, have dominated conversations in barber shops, offices and sports bars across the city – and across the country – for the past 14 days.

“Indications are now that the Shanahans, father and son, don’t much like the way McNabb prepares for games,” Michael Wilbon, a prominent sports columnist, wrote in The Washington Post. “Mike’s assertion makes it sound like McNabb is some dummy, an ominous characterization he’d better be careful about, lest he run into some cultural trouble in greater Washington, D.C.”…

This is not Denver, Shanahan’s last coaching job. This is the nation’s capitol, nicknamed “Chocolate City,” a place where scores of highly-educated African-Americans cheer for the Redskins – and the team’s black quarterback – every Sunday…

And so Shanahan’s humiliating insinuation that McNabb cannot intellectually absorb the complexities of the Redskins offense after 11 successful years as an NFL quarterback was taken as a collective insult to many black Americans in D.C. who viewed McNabb’s demotion – and the way it was handled – as discriminatory.

FILED UNDER: Culture, Racial Divide, Redskins
November 12, 2010 | 11:38 AM | By

“And I’m not prejudiced, but…”

After the jump, you’ll find the latest racism-related video to go viral. So far, two of you have sent it to me, even though it didn’t take place in D.C. I’ll warn you that it’s disturbing and filled with ugly language, including the “N-word”. Here’s what it’s about:

Things got ugly when a black mail carrier refused to take back a letter he’d delivered to a lady in Hingham, Mass. She went on a racist rant and slapped him. He secretly taped it all on his cell phone.

So many people assume that the South has a monopoly on racist behavior. I remember when I told my friends that I was starting this exciting new job at WAMU, and one of them, who was from Massachusetts, said, “It’s a shame that D.C. has so many racial issues.” Inwardly, I felt confused because I had heard the exact same thing about their home state. I didn’t say anything because I don’t know Massachusetts that well. I don’t know it any better after watching what’s below, but I do think it’s unhelpful to stereotype certain regions as “backwards” or prone to racism. The quote I excerpted above is from Gawker, where commenters are already chiming in about their lack of surprise that such a thing would happen in Hingham, MA.

I grew up in sunny Northern California, where I got called the N-word plenty of times. I have friends who grew up in Mississippi who never heard that word, once. Massachusetts doesn’t have a problem with racism; America does. Ignorance is everywhere– so is kindness and fairness. What’s interesting to me is how we live in a time when people can use the power of their mobile phones to record what they are seeing, upload it and allow it to go viral. Ten years ago, no one would’ve seen or heard what you are about to watch.
Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Media, Racial Divide, Social Media, That's racist., Video
November 11, 2010 | 3:14 PM | By

The Unemployment Rate for African American College Grads

NazarethCollege

Even if you go to college and “do the right thing” by getting a degree, you still may find yourself out of work…especially if you are black:

Education is not a guaranteed path to wealth for any race or demographic. Still, education should be at least a more secure path towards finding employment. It should be but it is not so for many African American college graduates. According to the latest release by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate among African American college graduates who are 25 and older is 7.3 percent…

As expected, since the year 2000 African American college graduates have always had the highest rates of unemployment. However, in 2006, during the nationwide housing boom, African American graduates narrowed the gap between their unemployment rate and the rates of the other races to less than one percentage point. However, as the economy worsened, that gap began to grow. Then between 2008 and 2009, the unemployment rate for African American college graduates jumped from an average of 4 percent to 7.3 percent.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Economy, Race and Class, Racial Divide
November 11, 2010 | 10:22 AM | By

DCist Does the Right Thing

JamesCalder

Yesterday, we wrote about DCist’s cheeky response to the stupid Travel + Leisure assertion that Chocolate City is filled with unattractive people; DCist quoted a new study which mentioned that we are a very educated city and that the life expectancy for white residents is very high! The problem was, that same study by the American Human Development Project initiative indicated that life expectancy for black D.C. residents is the lowest, of any state. I was part of a Twitter conversation about the glaring omission, with two bloggers from PostBourgie. A DCist commenter expressed their displeasure as well:

I wasn’t going to mention it, but since you brought it up…. the lede reminded me of Sommer’s post about how she thought a study saying DC was tops in cocaine use was unfair because 1) she didn’t see it nearly as much as she did in LA; and 2) they included crack, which for some reason she thought should not count as cocaine use.

DCist editors look and sound exactly as you would expect.

Except in this case, they don’t. Hours after he published “Who Needs Attractiveness When You’re Living This Well?“, Editor-in-Chief Aaron Morrissey amended his original post: Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Media, Race and Class, Racial Divide, Social Media
November 10, 2010 | 3:01 PM | By

“On the Internet, society’s most intractable issues with race and class are increasingly prominent.”

antoinedodson24

A still from Antoine Dodson's YouTube Q + A

I love what Cord Jefferson has written about Antoine Dodson and other viral videos starring people of color:

…15 million is how many times just one of the many YouTube videos of Dodson has been viewed. In other words, Internet users around the world have tuned in 15 million times to stare and laugh at a black man angry because his sister was nearly raped.

…What is interesting, however, is how common and accepted such biases have become on the Web. In the comfort and solitude of one’s bedroom, laughing at a troubled, poverty-stricken person of color is far more socially acceptable than doing the same on a busy street corner. What’s more, the disposable immediacy of the Internet means it isn’t always conducive to critical thought. Users take in hundreds of images and videos per day — and thousands of lines of text — and rarely pause to analyze what they’ve seen or why they click…

What we’re left with is an Internet community that feeds us, in the isolation of our homes or desks, distasteful videos by the truckload while rarely asking us to stop and absorb what we’re seeing. The Antoine Dodson video isn’t just insidious because we’re laughing at a low-income black man’s frustrations. It’s insidious because the Internet allows us to ignore why we’re laughing.

FILED UNDER: Media, Race and Class, Racial Divide, Social Media, That's racist.
November 10, 2010 | 10:45 AM | By

Look! 40% of D.C. is thriving!

Rafakoy

There were no statistics available on the life expectancy of blue people.

UPDATE: DCist has apologized.

I was skimming Twitter when I noticed several people had linked to this DCist post, “Who Needs Attractiveness When You’re Living This Well?“. There was a stark difference in how the links were annotated; the white people I follow on Twitter had reactions like, “this is great!”. The black people I follow on Twitter wrote things like, “There really are two D.C.s”. Here is the DCist post, in its entirety (emphasis mine):

Okay, so maybe we’re not the best looking people around. But according to a report by the Social Science Research Council’s American Human Development Project initiative, the Washington region is doing pretty well for itself when it comes to life expectancy, education and income, topping a ranking of the ten largest American metro areas in those statistics. The long life expectancy of white D.C. residents (the longest among any group in the survey at 83.1 years), large numbers of people with college educations (about 47 percent of the D.C. region have at least a bachelor’s degree) and the employment and income boost that the federal government provides to the District and her surrounding suburbs were the driving forces that landed the Washington metro area the top spot. Take that, you shallow Travel+Leisure readers!

I understand why they didn’t include the statistics about D.C.’s chocolate residents; the average life expectancy for black people is the lowest, of any state. That’s not the greatest statistic to use when trying to address linkbait, and refute the baseless claim of an irrelevant magazine which no one reads.

FILED UNDER: Media, Race and Class, Racial Divide