After ten years of living in the greater DC area, I became a District resident in 2010. In those three years, I’ve grown to see more complexity in many different subjects, but most clear to me is how this city eyes the politics of race and of affluence. The front lines of DC’s gentrification are not a comfortable place, for the new or the old. And yet, they’re inescapable for a city in the midst of change and growth.
Tiffany and I moved to Monroe Street NE in the Brookland neighborhood, a part of DC that is both old and new all at once. Brookland is one of DC’s most diverse neighborhoods. There are new residents (white, black, hispanic), old residents (white, black, hispanic), poor residents, rich residents, the childless and families, and all are well represented in Brookland. I won’t call that coexistence easy or flawless, but I will say that this is a neighborhood that, for the most part, gets along despite their differences. The meetings can be contentious – see the 901 Monroe development for a good example – but this isn’t a place where all decorum is thrown out the window, making it an exception in Ward 5, known for its online drama.
On Sunday night, thirteen people were shot in front of their homes at Tyler House on North Capitol Street. The 284 units of Section 8 public housing at Tyler House are the site of a $25M renovation planned for the near term, separate from a necessary $100M commitment from Mayor Vincent Gray for the expansion of affordable housing for the District.
Much of the focus in the reporting on the shootings was placed on the neighborhood where the shooting occurred, and not on the victims. Discussion was framed around the big nightclub nearby and the changing status of the District rather than the thirteen individuals who were shot – thankfully none fatally – in front of their homes.
We don’t know the motives of the shooters.
We don’t know who they were, or who they were shooting at.
We don’t know what drove them to fire into a crowd on Sunday night.
The backlash towards the quotes in the article came quickly and fiercely, decrying councilman Tommy Wells’ response (to initially assign blame to the nightclub, not the shooters), and the city’s overall indifference to the violence that can mar our city’s visage. In many cases, that backlash is well-deserved, especially with a paucity of evidence in the shootings
In the followup discussion on Twitter, I was struck by tweets from our Shadow Representative Nate Bennett Fleming, who suggested that the concept of decentralizing public housing was “similar to the ‘back to Africa’ arguments regarding dealing w/ country’s race problem…” (Note from the Author, 5:37pm: Fleming contends that he was only making a logical argument aligning removal of “the problem” as a solution, and was not making bias claims against the author or Commander Solberg, whose quote in the Post was seed for this conversation)
In the three years since I moved into the District, I’ve been called a Klan member for supporting a pizza place in Brookland, and compared to slaveowners for supporting a multi-use development in Brookland.
This is part of a discourse I am increasingly uncomfortable with: how quickly we move to dehumanize each other in the pursuit of winning arguments. It is a trend that I find objectionable because it is only interested in keeping that division alive and present and painful, instead of all of us advancing together as one.
It seems that every civic interaction I’ve had since moving into the city has been fraught with this dialectical guilt, this heavy assumption of a historical burden. I am not arguing that we should ignore this history, or that it has no effects, but rather that we must find a more productive, open-hearted means of engaging with each other than leaping to heated ad hominem.
The point of this is to say: we all want an end to violence. We all want beautiful, livable neighborhoods, and good schools for our kids, and seniors to age in place if that’s their desire. These are things we all share in common. I don’t know anyone in our community that doesn’t want these things. There’s a lot of baggage in our history – heavy, heavy stuff – but sometimes your neighbor is just your neighbor, and they’re just trying to help.
I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.
Great piece Tom. Really well stated.
Hello all,
This is Nathan Fleming, who was referenced in this article. Mr. Bridge mischaracterized my statements, I was not responding to the “concept of warehousing of poverty” as Bridge suggests. I was responding to an officer who stated that the only way to end problems in the said area was to close down Tyler House.
I believe that the stated logic, that because a problem is so difficult to solve, that the only solution is to remove the problem completely is similar to the logic behind the “Back to Africa” proponents in the post Civil War period. I stated as such, in attacking what I believed to be the flawed logic of the officer. Mr. Bridge’s characterization and depiction makes it seem as if my comment was similar to those unfair/racist comments made to him in the past. It was not. I did not attack anyone, or compare anyone to racists. I don’t think that the officer is racist, nor would I have any way of knowing if he was or was not.
I agree with Mr. Bridge, and I think he should take his own advice, and not let our uncomfortability when discussing issues tangentially or directly connected to race prevent us from having the discussions we need to have to move us forward. Ironically, he didn’t attack my logic, he attacked me for making the statement, the same style of ad hominem attack that he discourages in his blog post. I hope that this is a learning experience for Mr. Bridge not to rush to judgement based on past experiences.
Mr. Fleming,
Actually, the logic you reference is part of the problem, too. I don’t believe it’s logical to believe the worst of a comment’s context, and your leap that Solberg was coming from the same place as 19th century leaders that believed the races as fundamentally unequal is unfortunate. It’s symptomatic of the greater divide that we have where we immediately assume the worst of each other.
I object to your contention that I’m engaged in ad hominem when we’re talking about the content of your quote, and not of your character.
But, to Tom’s point, what made me angry about this article, is that I thought I was being compared to racists/those with racial biases. What Tom was miffed we me about was that he thought my comment compared the officer to racists. Even though that was not my intention, I did not pay careful attention to how my remark could have been misinterpreted. What I’ve learned is that no one likes to be compared with racists, not myself, nor others. So we must strike a balance between intellectual freedom and being sensitive to how comments can be perceived. As a public official, I learn a lot of lessons in public. Lesson learned. I hope others can learn from the experience as well.
Tom, to respond to your comment, it is clear that there is still a misunderstanding as to what I was trying to say. I never said nor intended to imply that Solberg was coming from the same place as 19th century leaders. I simply was asserting that Solberg’s flawed logic (IMO) and the flawed logic of the 19th century leaders were flawed in a similar manner. This flaw is the thought that a deeply complex problem is best solved by removing the problem. This approach fails to consider that there are other ways to address the problem. Notice that Solberg said that the ONLY way to address problem is to close down. 19th century leaders thought that the only/best way to deal with the race problem was not to address it via education/economic development etc….but to send blacks back to Africa (i.e. remove the problem).
Never said he was coming from the same place as those leaders, but that the logic of both were flawed in a similar manner. I was not suggesting that he held similar racial views as those proponents, which is at the heart of the misinterpretation. This is why I thought it would have been best to ask for what I was meaning before assuming so in a public blog post.
Tom, to respond to your comment, it is clear that there is still a misunderstanding as to what I was trying to say. I never said nor intended to imply that Solberg was coming from the same place as 19th century leaders. I simply was asserting that Solberg’s flawed logic (IMO) and the flawed logic of the 19th century leaders were flawed in a similar manner. This flaw is the thought that a deeply complex problem is best solved by removing the problem. This approach fails to consider that there are other ways to address the problem. Notice that Solberg said that the ONLY way to address problem is to close down. 19th century leaders thought that the only/best way to deal with the race problem was not to address it via education/economic development etc….but to send blacks back to Africa (i.e. remove the problem).
Never said he was coming from the same place as those leaders, but that the logic of both were flawed in a similar manner. I was not suggesting that he held similar racial views as those proponents, which is at the heart of the misinterpretation. This is why I thought it would have been best to ask for what I was meaning before assuming so in a public blog post.
time to move to the suburbs cracker
Well said!
More power to you, Tom, for wading into the morass that is local DC politics. It’s such a thankless task that most people get discouraged from participating – including me. If you are a white person, you will inevitably be called a racist, no matter your liberal bona fides. After a while, the accusations lose their weight and become absurd. You want cleaner city parks? Racist.
I say keep at it and ignore the mediocrities who seem to find their way into political office with depressing regularity.