Tom Sherwood and I don’t agree on much, especially in public. But WRC-TV’s top political reporter and I have both arrived at the same conclusion: Economics and money, rather than politics and the government, are determining the fate of the nation’s capital. I would add that money is trumping race as the District’s new wedge issue.
The subject surfaced Monday night at the Shaw Library during a discussion of our 1994 book, “Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C.” The faces of the folks who filled the room reflected the city’s change: In 1994, Shaw was the heart of a community that had been African American since the 1930s; Monday’s crowd was overwhelmingly Caucasian.
When we reported and wrote the book, D.C. was clearly divided along racial lines. Rock Creek was a moat, with blacks on the east side, whites on the west. Few if any Caucasians lived east of the Anacostia River. Now those lines have blurred. The city is a more polyglot mix of African Americans, whites and Latinos — dare I say, integrated.
Take Sherman Avenue, a street that runs parallel to Georgia Avenue in Ward 1. In February, Nancy “Lucki” Pannell, a sweet, 18-year-old senior at Coolidge High, was shot and killed on the stoop of her family’s house on the 2800 block. I interviewed her neighbors and wrote up her tragic demise, at the hands of the neighborhood’s violent gangs.
Last week my eldest daughter asked me to check out a used bike she wanted to buy. I pulled up to the house and realized it was next to Lucki Pannell’s. The bike owner is a grad student at Georgetown University. “How’s the neighborhood?” I asked. She said: “Lots of group houses like ours. Mix of blacks, whites and Latinos. Pretty safe. Good place to live.”
Daughter No. 2 just landed a job as hostess at Lost Society, a restaurant and club at the corner of 14th and U streets, across from the Reeves Center. The clientele, she tells me, is white, black and well off — integrated, as are most restaurants up and down 14th Street.
My Tuesday column insinuated that Mayor Vince Gray might be moving services east of the Anacostia River.
Some saw this as a racial statement; Chamber of Commerce President Barbara Lang accused me of race baiting, even. Been east of the Anacostia recently, Ms. Lang? You will find Latinos and Caucasians in the mix. More and more we are Vince Gray’s “One City.”
Success and survival in Washington, D.C., are no longer defined just by race. Are we past racial problems? No. Are race and class intertwined? Sure. But if Marion Barry was the mayor who lead by his race, and Adrian Fenty was the “education mayor,” we now need a leader who focuses on money and jobs. Start with education, continue with training, prepare Washingtonians to work. Money talks.
If Sherwood and I wrote a book today, its subtitle could be “Money, Power and the Rise of Washington, D.C.” But Sherwood and I might disagree.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
