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DC Public and Public Charter Schools
I don't want my kid to be the only white student . . .
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Anonymous
| I am not trying to excuse this behavior. but think you will find it almost anywhere there are large income disparities and factors such as gentrification and tack of economic opportunity and perceived political impotence. You also cannot discount the occasional crazy person. |
Anonymous
This is an interesting post. I think a huge part of it is that in this region, deep segregation still exists. And I think that is at the root of the problem. Add to that the HUGE income disparity in this region. You basically have very wealthy white neighborhoods and very poor black neighborhoods. It's like this in D.C., the Maryland suburbs and Baltimore. Montgomery County is slightly different in that you do actually have large enough Asian and Hispanic populations to make it seem a bit more diverse. But in the rest of the MD and DC, it's a pretty stark contrast. And because the contrast seems to run parallel along both race and income lines, it creates a lot of anger. And then add to that the all of the development, investment, shopping tends to happen in the wealthy white areas, while the poorer AA areas are left to crumble. PG is good example of that. Contractors, govt-connected businesses, commercial development is done primarily in MC, Howard and Anne Arundel county, and yet PG County has space, transit, et cetera, but is still left in the dust. People use the old arguments as an excuse -- crime. And they associate crime with AA populations. What they don't realize is that crime is associated with abandoned spaces, lack of economic opportunity, et cetera. There is a certain hidden racism in it as well. People will use all kinds of excuses for it, but it's racism. And racism breeds resentment which breeds reverse racism. |
Anonymous
I do not believe in 'reverse racism'. AA racism against whites is not reverse. Its RACISM. There is no excuse for it no matter your race, history, etc. I do think its less accepted for white people to verbalize racism than it is for African Americans and this should not be accepted by anyone. |
Anonymous
| I think it is true that Prince George's has been left behind but in addition to the crime perception, there is also a huge (and very much justified) public corruption problem that simply does not exist on the same scale in Arlington, Alexandria, Montgomery, Howard, and Fairfax Counties. |
Anonymous
Travel in DC on the bus or metro when there are no parents around, you'll soon find out what the kids speak like and it not all sweetness and light people. Did you not read the spewing of racial hatred when Obama got elected, but if we are to believe everything that's posted here; white people do not make any racist comments only blacks in Washington, DC. |
Anonymous
There's plenty of public corruption in other counties. However, the local media focuses more heavily on the corruption in PG, and I think that's another form of racism. For example, the county executive in Anne Arundel county is the epitome of corrupt and was just found guilty. Montgomery and Howard counties have their problems, too. There's a lot of collusion between MC officials and certain commercial development companies. and don't even get me started on DC. DC has a history of corruption among public officials, but a bunch of white people moved in, gentrified, and now businesses are flocking there (some chains even that before refused to open stores in the District). So, no, it's not the corruption that is why PG has been left behind; it's the racism. If a bunch of white people suddenly moved in to a section of PG, a number of retail chains who were previously unwilling to open there would suddenly open stores. As for the crime perception, if you watch the local news, whenever a crime happens in PG, they say "murder in PG county," but when it happens in another county, they say the specific area, "assault in Silver Spring" or "flash mob in Rockville" or "assault in NW." This is one way that PG County, even though it is a large area gets hit with an especially bad reputation, but Montgomery County, which has its fair share of crime, has a better public image. |
Anonymous
While this is true, DC is becoming less and less corrupt as the city gentrifies, and voters become more astute. The corruption--along with the poverty and violence--is flowing from DC to PG County. Of course, PG County--and Maryland--has more resources to deal with the problems, so this is a good thing. |
Anonymous
Racism tends to be more of a lower-class thing--rather than upper class. And that applies to the black community as well. You won't hear black bourgieoise refering to each other as "my n****". Meanwhile, there's a parent who comes to pick up their kid at my DCPS ES who pulls up at around 6 every night with the filthiest rap lyrics imaginable blaring out of their car window. Stay classy. |
Anonymous
| It isn't about skin color but poverty... and not just poverty but urban, multi-generational poverty. |
Anonymous
Are you kidding me? Maryland "has more resources" to deal with the problems? Um, no, you don't move all of the poor people into one area and then proclaim that area has the resources to deal with it. It is this attitude that is a source of a lot of the racial tension -- the poor AA community that is being pushed out of some areas, only to be concentrated in other areas and not actually bear the fruits of gentrification in the area they've lived their *entire* lives. |
Anonymous
Why try and stay somewhere for your entire life if it's unsustainable? I grew up poor and we moved many times to deal with changes like plant closures and layoffs, and to be able to afford to live. If you are just sitting around with a set of expectations "because we've always lived here and that's how it's always been" rather than recognizing that reality is ever changing, and pursuing options on your own, then it's your own damn fault if you get "pushed out". Dealing with my own poverty and harsh situations growing up taught me that the victim mentality doesn't solve anything and that you have to take command of your own destiny. |
Anonymous
Racism goes way farther than name calling or the lyrics you play on your car radio. As the parent of an AA child, the damage that can be done to my child by a principal who subconsciously lowers her expectations for my son, or an employer who makes a decision to hire another teenager because he is reminded of his grandson, or the police officer that stopped my 13 year old at the metro yesterday because he "looked suspicious", is far greater than that here. Racism is pervasive in our society, and the people who have the most power, the affluent whites, have the ability to do the most harm with it. |
Anonymous
I'm not sure what you're suggesting. I think we can all agree that no one should be forcibly removed from their homes - but I don't think that's what the complaint is. As an area improves, property values go up, as do rents. If poor people - of any race - can't afford those increased rents, or afford to purchase a home, or pay for all the related expenses that come with homeownership, what shoudl be done? Should a property owner be prohibited from raising rents? Required to sell a property for below market value? There is no inherent right to live in a neighborhood because you have lived there for a long time, or even because your grandparents lived there. I'd love to live in Kalorama, but can't afford to. Who do I see about my subsidy? |
Anonymous
I think the question of what should be done is a hard one, and it may be that there isn't a solution that is legal and ethical. But one thing we don't need do is pretend that when high risk families are forced out a neighborhood, and replaced by affluent families, that it's an indication that a school got "better" or that the families that were there first should be grateful. It's like comparing 2 pediatric oncologists. One stayed current with the latest research, he developed his clinical skills, and followed best practices, with the result being a slow but steady increase in 5 year survival rates. In his field, that's a miracle, because every little increase represents the lives of precious children. Meanwhile, his colleague decides to change his career path. He quits oncology and opens a pediatrics practice. Now most of the children he sees are healthy kids with sniffles or who need school physicals. His 5 year survival rates shoot through the roof. Should we be even more impressed? Should we be shouting to the heavens about his miracle? Of course not, because the increase in numbers doesn't mean a change in outcome for any individual child. When a poster talks about "turning a school around", and what they really means in putting affluent white children in seats once occupied by poor black children (the latter having been forced to PG county), they're talking about the latter. It's not a cause of celebration. Even if test scores go up. |
Anonymous
Ok, you just demonstrated that you don't know the difference between "racism" as a dynamic, and the different ways it is expressed. To say racism is a "lower class thing" is so shockingly ignorant, I'm stunned. So for those of us with parents who've worked as nannies or domestics in a rich household and heard racist epithets on a regular basis, that's not racist because they're white? Or because they don't say it in "public"? For the mortgage brokers who have admitted that banks like Countrywide and Suntrust actually encouraged them to specifically defraud elderly Black and Latino families into balloon mortgages or other bad deals by lying to them (which is different from all the people who knew they were borrowing beyond their means but did anyway), and these banks made $millions on this fraud, that's not racist because they're rich/did it secretly? All of the exposes and lawsuits showing egregious, obvious racism also sexism and homophobia) in hiring/promotion/housing, that's not racism possessed by wealthy powerful people? I'll never forget being in college, and a White aquaintance of mine from a very wealthy family who was a grad student at the Wharton School of business. I had friends in his fraternity, hung out with them many times, and he'd always been totally nice to me. One day another friend of mine who is half-Black but has long hair and blue eyes so people usually don't know that. She was with him and several friends and he was talking about a book he'd just finished that he loved, which proved what he'd always known but couldn't prove: that while White people had evolved since prehistoric times, Blacks had not and were basically thousands of years behind evolutionarily. And that that explained why Blacks are violent by nature. When she asked him if that meant she was half violent, since she's half Black, he only apologized for not knowing she was, not for his crazy ideas. She told me and I was crushed to realize that White people I went to school and socialized with could believe such nutty things and I'd never know because they'd never say it to me. Just because you don't hear offensive music blasting out of a soccer mom's Beamer at pickup from school, or hear Sidwell students on the metro using racial epithets does NOT mean it's "mainly a lower class thing". Rich and poor people alike can be and are racist. Equally important to note, all over the U.S. and the world there are poor and lower-middle income people who are NOT racist. It's always the loud negative people that are remembered. No one remembers the generous, open minded, tolerant people they meet, of all races and classes. |