Posts about Race

Rob Pitingolo has done a lot of research on which places have more or fewer people with college degrees. DC has the fourth most college degrees per square mile of any city in the nation, but that doesn't apply everywhere in the region or everywhere in DC.

Rob created these maps that show the locations of people with and without college degrees aged 25 and over.

There seems to be a fair amount of mixing in Virginia, but in DC and Maryland, the divide is starker. East of the Anacostia, blue dots are very few; west of Rock Creek and in the central city, they overwhelm the pink dots.

A lot of news stories talk about the DC region in terms of the division between black and white. The city's history of racial segregation has left a legacy of educational and socioeconomic inequality. As a result, many commentators use race as a simplistic shorthand for conflicts that are really about college educated versus not, or wealthy versus poor, or young versus old.

Race is immutable, but other characteristics are not. If our divisions are really about black versus white, they're not going to change unless some people move out of the city, and that's not what we want to happen. But education levels can change, and it's good for everyone if we can help all people in our region access better education.

In 1990, whites made up almost three-fourths of Calverton's roughly 11,000 residents. Though the neighborhood has grown by more than half since then, whites and blacks make up equal shares of its population, at about 39 percent each. The Asian population's been steady, but the Hispanic contingent has tripled to become one-tenth of the community. This graph shows the shifts (numbers may not add up to 100% because Hispanics are counted as an ethnicity, not a race):

Yet as Montgomery County becomes more polyglot, it's not necessarily integrated. Two years ago, my brother graduated from Galway Elementary School in Calverton. Its nearly 800 students are half black, a quarter Hispanic, and just 4.3 percent white.

In a neighborhood where the median household income is $76,000 a year and the average home sells for nearly $400,000, 60 percent of students are on free or reduced lunch. In addition, test scores are generally lower than they are at elementary schools elsewhere in the county.

Signs at Galway Elementary are written in English and Spanish. Photo by Mark Doore, Calverton Citizens Association.

Where are Calverton's white and middle-class residents? Some of have moved to Rockville or Olney, which are generally more affluent and have higher-rated public schools. Those who remained chose to "opt out" of the system, putting their kids in private school. They also take part in other exclusive amenities, like the members-only Calverton Swim Club across the street from Galway. A quick look at the club's website indicates its demographic makeup.

The membership of Calverton Swim Club remains predominantly white, though the neighborhood isn't. Photo by Mark Doore, Calverton Citizens Association.

This isn't necessarily a problem for our family. My parents are very involved in my brother's education and are generally happy with his experience at Galway and now at Briggs Chaney Middle School, which is slightly more diverse. While my family aren't members of the Calverton Swim Club, we can go to the nicer and public Martin Luther King Jr. Pool, which has water slides and a lazy river.

At the same time, it's generally recognized that the United States will cease to be a predominantly-white nation in about thirty years. We're seeing the beginnings of that in Montgomery County. This actually puts us in the catbird seat: If we're going to compete in a global society, we must be able to understand and react to cultural differences. Your kids might be having birthday parties with Salvadorian, Iranian, and Korean kids today, but they're preparing themselves to do business with people from those countries in the future.

Montgomery County has the ability to use its polyglot population as a strength, to create better, unified communities, and draw investment and ideas from around the world. Yet it's frequently thwarted when more fortunate residents try to keep the less privileged out or, as in Calverton, "opt out" of the community altogether.

For years, the Columbia Country Club and the Town of Chevy Chase have fought to keep the Purple Line out of their community. A community group in Silver Spring tried to remove a soccer field in a local park because Hispanic teams from outside the neighborhood used it. And neighbors in Bethesda had a vacant home demolished rather than letting a homeless family live there. These actions may benefit a small minority, but in the end, they hurt everyone.

Montgomery County has long had a reputation for progressive politics due to our affordable housing program and agricultural preserve. As a result, we tend to take diversity for granted, assuming that having Hispanic Heritage Month each October or occasionally eating ethnic food in Wheaton is enough. (Meanwhile, some are afraid to eat in Wheaton at all.) But this isn't enough. In order to fully take advantage of the county's diversity, and to ensure that everyone has a place here, we have to create truly integrated communities.

How can we do this?

We have to work even harder to create an equitable school system, ensuring students in affluent "Green Zone" schools and struggling "Red Zone" schools get the same level of education. Meanwhile, we have to continue investing in older communities like Silver Spring where "Red Zone" schools are located to give people the option of staying rather than moving further out and self-segregating.

We have to create neighborhoods that are accessible to a broad swath of the population, by providing a mix of housing styles and prices. In addition, we have to make it safer and easier to get around by foot, by bike, and by public transit, which benefit all residents, not just those who can afford a car. And we have to make everyone feel welcome here, instead of scapegoating immigrants or teenagers

Most importantly, we have to have the political wherewithal to do these things, rather than capitulate to groups who fight to preserve the status quo.

It's been a long time since Montgomery County was the "perfect suburbia," and it's not always clear what we'll become. Nonetheless, we have the opportunity to become something even greater. It won't be easy, but if we want to ensure the county's continued prosperity, we don't have a choice.

On Wednesday, the Post reported the latest jobless numbers from July: 5.9% of the region-wide workforce lacks a job, a rate that is "well below the national rate of 9.1 percent". This represented an increase, according to the article, from the June rate of 5.8% due to a "steep decline" in the public sector which is "facing turmoil."

A similar report appeared about June unemployment. Joblessness in Ward 8 continued its increased from 16.9% in June 2008 to 28.2% in June 2011.

And the turmoil doesn't end there. Black teenage unemployment nationally is 40% according to the Labor Department, and is no doubt that or higher in the District, whose overall teen jobless rate is the highest in the nation at a whopping 50.1%. The jobless spike along with the housing crisis has destroyed black wealth, which has fallen from 1/7 that of whites in 1995 to 1/11 in 2004 and 1/19 in 2009 according to the Pew Research Center.

Unfortunately, the Post article on these statistics gave little attention to the issue of black unemployment. The only articles discussing the issue in the Post have mentioned it in the context of how it may affect President Obama's chances at re-election.

A Post blogger on media issues, Erik Wemple, who previously covered the District at TBD.com and the City Paper, posted recently on "How to measure the coverage of black issues." Wemple concludes:

Who's right? Has the coverage dipped or increased? Alas, even with Internet search engines and news archiving services, ascertaining volume trends over such a large coverage area is an undertaking fraught with practical and methodological problems.

Do jobless citizens east of the Anacostia River need to riot, like in London, for us to see them? Or will the rest of the city finally notice the tragedy happening in slow motion before us and start debating its causes and solutions?

Some would argue that class, not race is the biggest divider in today's Montgomery, especially with a black County Executive and three minority Councilmembers. But we're still far from being a color-blind society. At Saturday's community roundtable on youth issues, I talked to Joey, who lives in Four Corners and said he'd support a curfew. He won't take his family to Silver Spring at night because of "thug-looking kids" hanging out there. "And I'm not just talking about black and Latino kids," he quickly added. If we don't see race, is that statement necessary?

For years, Montgomery County has been proud of its liberal politics. Now that we're a majority-minority jurisdiction, we actually have to show our progressive values. After all, it's easy to be open-minded when the only minorities you see are the token black family on your cul-de-sac. It's harder when your kids go to a school that's 25% white and the signs in your neighborhood are all in Amharic or Spanish.

Some people are comfortable with that. The rest struggle each day to negotiate a world that doesn't look like it did just twenty years ago, unsure how to respond. Usually, they go with fear. And that can make even the most staunch liberal consider things normally offensive to their principles. Like trusting that police can pick out "bad" kids on a busy downtown street, even before anyone's done anything illegal, and not wrongfully accuse someone based on vaguely-defined characteristics.

The perennial debate over youth behavior and crime in Silver Spring has been going on for years. It's a reflection of how committed people are to ensuring that this community, once lost to disinvestment and urban decay, can remain vibrant and safe. Yet the discussion rarely touches on the elephant in the very diverse room and, as a result, can never be fully resolved.