Comments at the WashingtonPost.com website:
* So when blacks left DC for PG County, is it racist that the crime rates in PG went up? Or is just simply because – not ALL blacks – but certainly the thug blacks just packed up and moved their business (crime) elsewhere.
* Never mind how this “article” isn’t on the opinion page. How in the world did it get past any editor. According to the author, affordable housing has disappeared. However there are at least 8 organizations devoted to affordable housing in DC. At just one of them, there are thousands of units. Just as you would expect.
* Pet knows the motive of landlords, but doesn’t quote any. Meaning she doesn’t know them at all. She’s ascribing her beliefs. Her race-baiting liberal beliefs.
* I agree, the writer of this article is clueless. Tenants rights in DC are the toughest in the country. DCHA and DCRA are all over ANY Owner who violates the laws. All any tenant has to do is file a complaint. All units have two inspections every year and not at the same time. One by DCHA and one by HUD. Of course things fall thru the cracks and yes there is a housing shortage but here we have activism masquerading as journalism. The ‘women’ who called 911 on these young men shouldn’t be allowed to procreate. How stupid to think that an potential ‘robber’ would hold open a door. And after the police confronted them they had every reason to fear.
* Let’s face it, rap music has made us realize there could be a danger if you’re approached by a couple of guys wearing hoodies and baggy jeans with the underwear sticking out. Why are people even surprised?
* The condition of the capital city of the United States of America has been a horrible embarrassment for decades–a gleaming Capitol District surrounded by horrible ghettos–more or less overlapping with the so-called “Chocolate City” period. As an American, I for one am very happy to learn that it’s finally being cleaned up and economically improved.
* Here’s an idea: every once in a while, the paper features some big foldouts with faces, as in “Faces of Those Killed by Police,” or “Faces of Immigrants Who Have Done Great Things,” or whatever the meme of the month is. How about running one of these which captures “Faces of Those Convicted (By a Jury of their Peers) of Crimes In Georgetown?”
Let’s see how unreasonable these unreasonable fears are. Show us some faces.
* What a racist article. Harder to be black in DC? Why? DC is restricted to blacks? Under what law?
* I recall a lecture in business school at UCLA in the 70s on “the value of slums”, which was intended to be outrageous : but the point was, that there is a real market for very cheap substandard housing in many urban areas, and to engage in wholesale slum clearance will displace poor urban residents needed for low wage jobs. This is both really distasteful but also obviously true.
* Petula needs to drink a big cold glass of reality. I dare her to actually go through the police twitter feed and count the “look out for (LOF)” descriptions of the last 500, 1000, or 5000 tweets and post the numbers in her column. It’s 90%+ “AA male(s)”. I know she doesn’t see it as much because the Post refuses to report that the suspects were black – they will only mention race if the suspect is white – but the truth is right there in the pudding. 90%+ young black guys.
Now let’s do a little simple math – blacks make up about 45% of the population. Roughly half of the black people here are male, so 22.5% of the population. Exclude small children and middle age and elderly black males and you’re down to about 10%. Ten percent of the population committing 90%+ of the crime.
Noticing that and acting on it – crossing the street, calling the police when you feel unsafe, etc, is not racist. It’s not even just that you have a grasp of simple mathematics. It’s self preservation. We, as a species, identify threats and avoid them. We don’t touch hot stovetops, we run from bears, and we pull over on the shoulder of the freeway to change a tire rather than do it in the center lane. Now, is it possible that those threats won’t hurt us every time? Sure. But we have a biological response to avoid them when we can. That’s the way we are wired as a species, it’s normal, and it’s not something I am willing to feel guilty about.
I’ve never crossed the street to avoid an elderly black lady with a walker late at night, because I’ve never seen an LOF for a black grandma with a Colt in the waistband of her pantyhose hitting people with her walker and stealing their iPhones. If that turned into 90% of the LOFs, though, I’d cross to avoid them too.
* She calls its gentrification, I call it progress. Maybe she’s too young to remember the state of the typical American city in the late eighties/early nineties. There wasn’t much “nurturing” going on.
* Yeah. Being the murder capitol of the US was pretty awesome. Good times, good times..
May I suggest Chicago? You’d love it there! Real authentic.
So what was your favorite part? Paying homeless people not to vandalize your car outside the old 9:30 Club?
The point being of course that the out-of-control violence was a direct result of a permissive attitude.
* Petula seems to consider slum clearance a racist plot, and the existence of slums as a racist plot, and the concentration of blacks in one city as a racist plot, and the dilution of the black population as a racist plot. Moral: at WaPo every story about living in the city revolves around the racist plot narrative.
* Is pocket billiards racists because the white ball chases the colored balls around?
* Petula Dvorak, a high-white-guilt-priestess, is simply chanting her “I hate myself for being WHITE–and YOU should TOO!” rosary for other true believers in the religion of the Scared Brown Peoples. Her Twitter site has less than 3000 followers so she couldn’t even fill a Dallas mega church with enough idiots to by her far left propaganda.
* She is actually kind of funny, in an absurdist way. My favorite article was the one where a black guy knocked her down and stole her iPhone in Baltimore. I have no doubt she was wracked with guilt about the whole thing. Truly bizarre.
* God forbid that she mention that nearly all robberies and other crimes of violence are committed by blacks in DC.
* To the “reallargeprofessor” who wrote “Thank you Ms. Dvorak. I am a black man with an advanced degree and a medical degree with three children born and raised in Washington, D.C. The overwhelming majority of black Americans are hardworking upwardly mobile Americans. My kids log on to WaPo regularly to read commenters call them criminals, deviants, and freeloaders. My wife and I are seriously considering moving to Africa or the West Indies and so are many of the county’s other productive African-Americans. We realize that there will be no equality for us in this country. The saddest question is…where can Native Americans go?”
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. But seriously, please dont act like a victim. You know as well as I do that Africans (and Asians and Whites and Latinos and presumably Eskimos) have never had it so good as they have in the USA. For every one doctor (like you) wishing to leave the USA for supposed slights, there are 100 doctors around the world (including Africa) who would be glad to trade places with you.
* Gentrification often involves replacing one favored urban demographic with another. A lot in DC has replaced AAs with millennials or LGBT. The gays are incredible for property values.
* How exactly does the author suggest that residents of DC be cautious and aware of their surrounding?
Are we no longer allowed to use street smarts, such as paying attention to who else may be on the street when walking home late at night?
I remember that it use to make me laugh twenty years ago when I could tell that old women when cross the street to avoid me when I had long hair and would often wear clothes purchased at salvation army when I was in college. But, I respected their right to use their judgment as to who they thought might pose a risk to them.
* It’s also undeniable that the city has also become miles better to live in than it was 15 years ago. Lattes > guns.
* Why not diversify by moving some of the “black flight” out of Washington DC into subsidized housing in Georgetown and other wealthy areas? Children of poor black families would get a chance to go to better schools and live in nicer neighborhoods. Financing would come from increased property taxes resulting from increasing property values and (if necessary) increasing property tax rates.
* The woman was a concerned citizen, and she had a right to call 911. The uncomfortable truth is that most street crime in DC is perpetrated by young black men. This city has an epidemic of brutal violence perpetrated by young black men.
