Katie Connolly Takes Back “Apartheid,” Adds Asterisk
Saying "it seems I've aggravated a lot of people with my reference to apartheid," Katie Connolly has struck that word from her recent blog post at Newsweek on race, class, and D.C.'s low marriage rate.
The passage in question now says:
Anyone who's lived in D.C. is aware of the city's dirty secret: it essentially operates under an unwritten form of apartheid that the wealthy northwest rarely engages with the swathe of low income people who share their city.*
And the asterisk-clarification:
It seems I've aggravated a lot of people with my reference to apartheid. I agree it was a poor choice of words, which unfairly exaggerated the social and class issues we have in DC. I've reworded that sentence to more accurately reflect my intention, which was to highlight the fact that there are two distinct class worlds in DC: an affluent group that clusters in the north west and a much poorer community whose work helps enable the higher living standards of the richer residents. It's also a reality that, like in many urban areas, a majority of those who live in DC's poorer areas aren't white. Those areas have worse schools and less access to services. In my mind, the contrast is stark and unjust, and in order to remedy this unfairness, DC residents should be conscious and open about the class politics surrounding them. But I admit that's a very different situation than in South Africa, and the analogy was a bad one.
Among the aggravated: Kwame Brown.
Ideas? Comments? I’m at eniedowski@washingtoncitypaper.com, and on Twitter.
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Linked From: October 26th, 2009Council vs. Fenty—Is This War?: Loose Lips Daily - City Desk - Washington City Paper
11:04 am[...] writer who describes D.C. as living under ‘apartheid’ withdraws the reference after Kwame Brown et al. [...]
2:49 pm
I think she is still off base. I know she wants to present DC as some sort of a Eloi vs. Morlocks world, but the fact is that most of the workers who "enable" the higher living standard don't come from NE or SE DC, but rather from the suburbs. Yes there are stark disparities, but she doesn't have any suggestion to remedy that other than to command more class consciousness, which seems to be about all she's willing to do herself.
3:11 pm
Yeah, the ridiculously high unemployment rate east of the river definitely supports the idea that those enabling workers aren't all coming from the poorer parts of DC.
Besides, this: "I’ve reworded that sentence to more accurately reflect my intention, which was to highlight the fact that there are two distinct class worlds in DC: an affluent group that clusters in the north west and a much poorer community whose work helps enable the higher living standards of the richer residents."
Pretty much describes what's left of the entire U.S. now that Dubya is finished with it.
3:16 pm
Wow, she's a genius. Thank you oh wise one for your insights. Really. Quite profound. She's really opened my eyes to inequality.
3:17 pm
Yeah, EdTheRed, cuz D.C. was the only place with class divisions in 1999.
3:37 pm
Touche, Mike Riggs...however, things did get much worse from 1999 on:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/income-inequality-is-at-a_n_259516.html
4:25 pm
Hey, CP! I want more reporting on this story.
First off, I would like to know where Katie Connolley lives. The only Katie Connolley in the phone book lives in Chantilly. I don't need some suburbanite lecturing me on DC life.
I grew up in the suburbs of DC but have lived in the city for the last 31 years. When I moved to town I lost friends because the were the type who are afraid to come into the city. Her article strikes me as being written by that type. If her connection to the city is that she just comes into downtown every day that should be disclosed.
And her view that the city is made up of rich white overlords being served by a AA/latino underclass offends me. I think it says more about her than it does about DC.
And finally, I think Newsweek would be well not to just revise this -- they should retract it and apologize. I am surprised they want to have their name associated with an article of this quality.
4:35 pm
She strikes me less as a suburbanite who doesn't know much about DC and more as a recent arrival who feels guilt about the gentrification that changed the neighborhood enough for her to want to live there.
5:40 pm
When the District stops sending its prisoners - mostly black - to private for-profit prisons in white states, prisons owned & run by white people, when America stops using capital punishment 90% of the time on black men who have killed a white person, when the crack / powder cocaine disparity in sentencing is reversed & the thousands of black people punished excessively are released from prison & receive compensation for the government ...
When black kids have schools as good as white kids have. When black people have the same life expectancy as white people have.
When all that happens, sure, I'll agree, no apartheid.
5:46 pm
It is unfair to South Africans of african ancestry who lived under apartheid to compare their hell to the tribulations of DC.
To say that a disparity exists in town is not unfair, however. Although the disparity in DC is no longer an overt racial one, but now one of wealth.
A publicly stated goal of the Williams admin., which appears to have been continued by Fenty, was to save the city's financial ruin by attracting a more wealthy populace.
That would and did solve the financial crisis, but rapidly rising house prices mean rapidly rising taxes for all (neighbors, too), rapidly rising cost of services, etc.
Between 2002 and 2006, the average cost of a house on my block tripled. Less than half (maybe less than a third) of my neighbors now lived here before then.
Some leave because they cash out on a cash cow.
But many Washingtonians with historic ties to the area have had to move out of the city because it is no longer an affordable place to live. Maintaining a house means paying taxes and living up to your neighbors expectations of neglect.
In addition, many of you forget there are not 600,000 home OWNERS in DC. Many of us rent. If my landlord raises the rent to market rate, i will have to leave as well. PG County, where ya at!
I don't personally disdain Ms. Connolly's poor aim. People who have not lived here long might not understand the many layers of onion skin involved.
7:40 pm
Meh....
1:45 pm
You white folk sure are touchy about the racial/class divides in this city. What's it like to have to pass us poor, black folk everyday on your way to work, knowing that little racist policies like funding schools based on property values will always separate me and my kids from you and yours? No, that's not apartheid, that's capitalism rooted in the genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of the Africans. Without that long legacy, things might look different for you and me. Without acknowledging that legacy and deciding to seriously address it, well... Just so long as we can seriously call it apartheid, I guess it's okay.
1:55 pm
The USA has been built on genocide, slavery, & now, apartheid. White people lie to themselves so they don't face the truth. Right on, LBD.
Look at the rate of imprisonment of black people. Look at capital punishment: it exists to execute black men for killing white people [& the occasional white lunatic]. Tying school funding to property values ensures generation after generation of discrimination in education. The District sends its prisoners, who are almost always black, to private, for-profit prisons which are located in white states and owned & run by white people.
Oh, but yeah - white people like to ask the question, so they seem so concerned & liberal, but then they give the wrong answer.
The USA has been built on genocide, slavery, & now, apartheid. White people lie to themselves so they don't face the truth.
2:20 pm
Comrade Al,
Most people only need to look in the mirror to see the source of their problems. When parents of kids don't care whether their kids even attend school or are learning anything, you can't blame that on white people.
Let's look at the rate of incarceration of black men. Again, white people aren't making black men sell drugs and kill each other (black on black crime is a FAR GREATER issue than black on white crime). The vastly higher rate of incarceration is due to repeated stupidity (i.e. not learning that a long-term criminal lifestyle leads inevitably to prison or early death).
And to answer your last statement, let's substitute the FACT that "Black people lie to themselves so they don't face the truth".
You ask the right questions, you just don't want to face the harsh truth.