Prince George’s County: Growing, and growing more segregated, census shows (Baltimore: low income, foreclosure)

[EdwardA]

Originally Posted by TechlawyerinPG

Being a token minority in the junior high/high school years in the midwest really messed with my self esteem. I did get a great education but I chose to go to a black college despite test scores and grades that qualified for Ivy League because I wanted to experience being the majority and to gain a new perspective about being black than what I had been exposed to. It was a great experience for me and instilled a lot of pride about my standard of beauty and my culture. I went on to a top ranked law school where I was the minority again and I always am usually the only one or one of a few in the legal department but those 4 years in college which helped to nurture my identity as a black woman were invaluable to my personal development.

Originally Posted by TechlawyerinPG

The post did a similar article a few years ago about black families who had moved from PG or DC to Ashburn and some nice parts of Montgomery County and their kids still had poor test scores/grades
In this article I remember the parents within the same districts were very involved with their kids education and had hired tutors that they shared the cost for and had study sessions at their homes
This is one of the things that baffles me, or maybe the foundation of learning and study habits is developed in the elementary years when they were in worse schools and they are playing catch up?
If I move to a neighborhood where homes are 3 times what I paid specifically for schools with great rankings, I would be pissed. I've read articles that say AAs do best typically in either a setting where they are largely represented or in private school...who knows if there is any validity to the study. With all the constant redistricting and increased class sizes I keep reading about all over this regions best districts it seems that buying a home just for better schools is not a guarantee of success. That is when I consider staying in PG and doing private...though this would not help with our horrid commutes to our jobs in NoVa.

I think these two excellent posts highlight the conundrum many middle Black class parents face. Do you move to an area that is overwhelmingly non-black but has a reputation for great schools? Or do you move to a majority Black area which has not so great schools but at least your child will be somewhat more confident in their skin as a black person.

[bowian]

Originally Posted by meatkins

But that's my point, I'm not denying what you have or people you know have experienced, I'm just stating that the facts that they have presented are showing there is a trend happening within our communities. My point was for us we are basically down playing how this is being viewed. It seems innocent for us to say, well hey I don't have a problem with white people, but then if we heard the same thing about white people doing it we would be mad and say they are avoiding us. How do you think other races perceive this? It doesn't matter why people are actually doing it, it is a matter of how it is being perceived and that's the point I think article is making. Whether we agree with their assessment of our county, I think we can all agree that these type of statistics make us look like separatist.

I see. I just have two points:

1. It's not a good idea to order yourself and your life on the primary basis of perceptions. You do realize that non-blacks can perceive blacks as being separatist regardless of whether we flock to all-black neighborhoods? That's the inte'resting thing about perceptions.
In college, all it took was for several of us to sit together at lunch to start tongues wagging about isolating ourselves. A joke I heard repeatedly in the work world was "you know if more than two of us are sitting together they think we're starting a revolution."

2. Other races and ethnic groups live among themselves without accusations of isolation. Why the fascination when blacks do it? And no, don't start talking about those trends in that Post article because I think the answer goes beyond that.

[The Dissenter]

Originally Posted by EdwardA

I think these two excellent posts highlight the conundrum many middle Black class parents face. Do you move to an area that is overwhelmingly non-black but has a reputation for great schools? Or do you move to a majority Black area which has not so great schools but at least your child will be somewhat more confident in their skin as a black person.

For grades 4-10 my mom did the non-black area with great schools and 11th and 12th it was the minority-majority area with mediocre schools (TC Williams in Alexandria.)

I would personally choose the non-black area with great schools for my kids. There is no guarantee that you are going to live in or be in an area with a lot of black people the rest of your life (I live in an area in Louisville that is only 6% black and that isnt the LEAST black section of Louisville) and it would be better to learn how to interact with people of different races than you.

If I had kids I would very seriously consider moving back to the Hampton Roads area because there are school systems there where the education quality is solid and there is still a nice population of middle class blacks.

[TechlawyerinPG]

Originally Posted by Alanboy395

For grades 4-10 my mom did the non-black area with great schools and 11th and 12th it was the minority-majority area with mediocre schools (TC Williams in Alexandria.)

I would personally choose the non-black area with great schools for my kids. There is no guarantee that you are going to live in or be in an area with a lot of black people the rest of your life (I live in an area in Louisville that is only 6% black and that isnt the LEAST black section of Louisville) and it would be better to learn how to interact with people of different races than you.

My choice is not to live and attend public school in a middle class black neighborhood...my choice is between living in a middle class black neighborhood where we are like 63% of the population (yet 98% of the public school) and attending private school with small class sizes where we are approx. 15-20% of the school (hence you do learn how to interact with different people) vs. moving to a neighborhood where we will be like 3%-10% of the residents in the neighborhood and 3-10% in the public school likely with large class sizes.
The other factor in all this is the commute issue which for me actually over time is becoming less of an issue with the gradual increase in the number of days a week that telecommuting from home is allowed at my company. That doesn't help the husband though but he can get to his NoVa job in 30 min.

[simetime]

Originally Posted by Alanboy395

For grades 4-10 my mom did the non-black area with great schools and 11th and 12th it was the minority-majority area with mediocre schools (TC Williams in Alexandria.)

I would personally choose the non-black area with great schools for my kids. There is no guarantee that you are going to live in or be in an area with a lot of black people the rest of your life (I live in an area in Louisville that is only 6% black and that isnt the LEAST black section of Louisville) and it would be better to learn how to interact with people of different races than you.

If I had kids I would very seriously consider moving back to the Hampton Roads area because there are school systems there where the education quality is solid and there is still a nice population of middle class blacks.

I think the main reason for that is because of the military exposure. From what I have seen the best (at least intergrated) schools are the ones located near military bases and have a large poportion of military brats. Due to the fact that many of them travel to diffrent parts of the country/world they (the kids) have a better understanding of diffrent cultures/races

[Ceemac]

Hi! You got some of the information right. I'm a blogger who's Black. I'm a woman; everyone always thinks I'm a man. HA! I'm very new, relatively, to PGCo so I'm not as emotionally invested yet as I was in DC; I'm a native Washingtonian. I did my research on demographics EdwardA but you have the right to your opinion, even if it is a bit irrational and emotional. Thanks so much to all of your for reading the blog and discussing the post.

[bowian]

Thanks for commenting, Ceemac!

[EdwardA]

Originally Posted by Ceemac

Hi! You got some of the information right. I'm a blogger who's Black. I'm a woman; everyone always thinks I'm a man. HA! I'm very new, relatively, to PGCo so I'm not as emotionally invested yet as I was in DC; I'm a native Washingtonian. I did my research on demographics EdwardA but you have the right to your opinion, even if it is a bit irrational and emotional. Thanks so much to all of your for reading the blog and discussing the post.

Looks like I have to expand why I say you're just another emotional black blogger.

You said:

Fairfax County has a population of 1,086,743. Of that population, white people total 686,467, Black people 100,195, Hispanics 169,694, and Asians, 193,843. Now you’re going to tell me that of those more that 650k white people living in Fairfax County that there is little segregation?

It's not about someone telling you anything. It is about analyzing a set of data and coming to a conclusion. You took an aggregate demographic population of Fairfax and without any basis in fact assumed there has to be segregation. You know what they say about folks who assume.

Here's what the Post wrote

Census: The new U.S. neighborhood defined by diversity as all-white enclaves vanish - The Washington Post

A Washington Post analysis of 2010 Census data shows a precipitous decline in the number of the region’s census tracts, areas of roughly 2,000 households, where more than 85 percent of the residents are of the same race or ethnicity — what many demographers would consider a segregated neighborhood

The biggest drop has been in Northern Virginia, where only one in 20 neighborhoods is a racial or ethnic enclave. No suburb is more diverse than Fairfax County, where just 2 percent of neighborhoods are segregated.

You wrote:

It is I that am using Fairfax County in my statistics because this should be a fair comparison. Northern Virginia is NOT a county; it’s like using Hyattsville for comparison with Fairfax County and DC.

The above part in bold directly contradicts your condemnation of the Post using Northern Virginia. So not only are you perpetuating faux outrage, you evidently have trouble comprehending what you read.

You wrote:

There are “enclaves” of Koreans in Annandale and Centerville, large populations of Jewish people in Howard County and the City of Fairfax, huge populations of El Salvadorans in Hyattsville, but somehow because of all this brown, Prince George’s County has been deemed
segregated.

Hmm not sure what point you're trying to make here. The post actually touches on how Hispanics in PG (Hyattsville is in PG) live in "enclaves". That was one of the points in the PG article, that the relatively few non-blacks who make PG home tend to live in "enclaves" away from Blacks.

As for your other examples you provide no data to prove that these areas are similarly segregated as PG.

If closely examined, the Black people in Prince George’s County are not just Black. They are mostly Christian, they are married, they make above average salaries, they are mostly between the ages of 25-55, and I’m sure a whole host of other commonalities. Get over yourself WPost because the day is over when you can write stuff like this and not be called to the carpet for it.

Not even sure if any of the above is even true but I'll take your word for it. So what? What does that have to do with the article? We're discussing racial segregation not the marriage habits of the county.

The part in bold is why I initially you emotional. What exactly did the Post do to upset you? Download Census data and form a narrative about it?

In short I hope if you continue to blog about PG but do not get so emotional and defensive after every perceived criticism. We need critical analysis of what is going on and ideas to change them around not more of this perpetual righteous indignation.

[pgtvatitans]

Here goes piece that I just read that sums up a large portion of this discussion.

The Bourgie Blues

"These black parents are most concerned with helping their children negotiate the black-white color line, as opposed to managing relationships with other people of color," Lacy told me in a recent conversation. "They know that when their children grow up, they will spend large chunks of time working, shopping, and perhaps, living in the white world, where mainstream norms and values prevail. But at the same time, they don't want their children to abandon their racial identity in order to fit in there."

[pgtvatitans]

There is also another article that was originally posted up by TechLawyerinPG, that had some very interesting views on the plight of the middle class black family in the DC area. Here goes one of the key points in the article:

Next American City » Magazine » The Dilemma of the Black Middle Class (http://americancity.org/magazine/article/the-dilemma-of-the-black-middle-class/ - broken link)

Black separatism, even of the affluent black kind, then, comes with palpable costs. When a white person chooses to move to a middle-class suburban enclave of “her kind of people,” she makes this choice, perhaps unconsciously, with certain expectations and assumptions that society tends to live up to—assumptions that a black middle-class suburbanite, living in a similar haven of “one’s own,” cannot make, at least not confidently. Among those assumptions:
1. I can escape neighborhoods of poverty, particularly black ones.
2. My children will be able to attend good public schools. They will be prepared, maybe even well prepared, for college.
3. My neighborhood will be free from crime.
4. My property taxes will be manageable, and I will receive better government services at lower cost than I would in the city.
5. I will be able to shop and buy all the things I want and need, at stores located near where I live. I will have a nice range of options for eating out near where I live.