STUDIES IN
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE
edited by
GRAHAM RUSSELL HODGES
COLGATE UNIVERSITY
RACE, CLASS, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR NEIGHBORHOOD IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
NELSON F. KOFIE
First published 1999 by Garland Publishing, Inc.
This edition published 2014 by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright 1999 Nelson F. Kofie
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kofie, Nelson F.
Race, class, and the struggle for neighborhood in Washington, D.C. / Nelson F. Kofie.
p. cm. (Studies in African American history and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-3114-2 (alk. paper)
1. Afro-AmericansWashington (D.C.)Social conditionsCase studies. 2. Washington (D.C.)Social conditionsCase studies. 3. Washington (D.C.)Race relationsCase studies. 4. Community developmentWashington (D.C.)Case studies. 5. PoorWashington (D.C.)Political activityCase studies. 6. Social changeWashington (D.C.)History20th centuryCase studies. 7. Apartment houses, CooperativeWashington (D.C.)Case studies. I. Title. II. Series.
F205.N4K64 1999
305.8960730753dc21
98-55171
For my wife, Nancy, and my son, Omar
Contents
While writing I benefited from the goodwill and financial support of several individuals and institutions. Without the generousity of these people, my effort to tell the story of Sun-Hope neighborhood-communitys residents would have been difficult. This book started with a suggestion by Dr. William Chamblis to consider conducting an ethnographic study of Sun-Hope community for my doctoral dissertation. I accepted the challenge and received further assistance from other people associated with the community. Having acquired Hope Mansions, the president of Shelter Incorporated was most delighted to provide as much assistance as I asked. The Peoples Advocacy, which was tasked with assisting the tenants to establish a co-operative organization, granted me internship position. This enabled me truly to participate in and observe events taking place in the community. The residents were most generous in reflecting and sharing their varied stories with me. Some of them wanted the best for me in the pursuit of my Ph.D., so that they were willing to call and keep me informed about the going-ons during times when I was absent from the community. Their phone calls were invaluable sources of critical information that made the story of Sun-Hope complete. After each day spent in the communitywhether participating in a meeting or Bible study, listening to complaints about the living conditions, watching transactions between drug dealers and buyers or the police conduct drug raidsI always retreated to the comfort of my home in the suburbs evermore conscious of the privileges I enjoy and the many blessings bestowed on my life.
One organization which provided financial support deserves mention. The Center for Nonprofit Governance and Philanthropy, Indiana University-Purdue University, funded my research for 2 years, and provided me the opportunity to present pieces of my work at conferences. More funding came from Goucher Colleges summer grant which enabled me to conduct follow-up interviews and research, and to cover the cost of editorial service.
Some special individuals nurtured my thinking about the Sun-Hope and its residents. My thanks to my grad school buddy Cheryl-Ann B. Repetti who always listened, questioned and responded wisely to my theoretical renderings pertaining to the case of Sun-Hope. Ronald Weitzer spent considerable time combing through the original manuscript for flaws and provided invaluable suggestions to improve it. Jennifer Bess came to the rescue; her editing was priceless. I am deeply greatful.
Dr. Nelson Kofie
Towson, September 1998.
Race, Class, and the Struggle for Neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
The urban experience and the emergence of predominantly African American neighborhoods continues to be focus of academic research.1 Unlike other ethnic enclaves, predominantly African American neighborhoods were planned, structured and maintained by the white dominant group, either by plan or by default. Enforced de jure segregation laws, local ordinances, discriminatory banking and real estate practices, as well as a general atmosphere of racist attitudes, ensured that African Americans, regardless of income, were clustered into congested, dilapidated, and underserved neighborhoods in urban areas. From their inception, predominantly impoverished black neighborhoods were, and continue to be, sustained by a white culture of segregation.2
Besides defining the form and content of race relations, the culture of segregation shaped social class relations as well. Historically, Richard Meister noted, [t]he urban experience has not been the same for the black American as it has been for the white. For whites, the city has offered opportunity and mobility. The city has not offered blacks these same avenues of progress.3 The culture of segregation, by plan or default, determined where they lived, the kinds of employment open to them in the segment economy, and the inflated interest rate loans which financial agencies were willing to offer them to buy a home or start a business. The culture of segregation was, in effect, another structural blockage thwarting the upward mobility of urban African Americans.4
This apt observation, while not completely obsolete, requires reexamination. There have been marked changes in the social factors which encouraged the differing opportunities and mobility of blacks and whites in the city. Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, overt racial discrimination in employment, housing and educational attainment have all abated considerably due to favorable legal and attitudinal changes. The result has been a notable increase in opportunity and mobility for black Americans who have education and marketable skills. Thus, what remains constant within the black urban experience, compared to experiences of other white ethnics, is the continuing destabilization process within previously mixed-race and -income neighborhoods, and the emergence of a seemingly entrenched black underclass.5
Following the white flight in the 1960s, a disproportionate number of the black middle- and working-class families exited many black urban neighborhoods too.6 For those who were unskilled, inadequately educated and who lacked the economic means to move out, these neighborhoods took a turn for the worse. Replacing the outgoing tenants were predominantly poor people. In tandem, landlords felt no pressure from the poor tenants to improve services, and city governments experiencing a dwindling tax-base shifted resources and services to predominantly middle-class or white neighborhoods. The outcome has been the concentration of predominantly impoverished residents in declining and decaying public and assisted housing in the inner-city areas. In these areas, the disproportionate number of residents are families with female heads of households, living below the poverty line or on the threshold of poverty, and welfare dependent. Young males are frequently unemployed and teenage girls have babies out of wedlock. All of these strains, combined with a general malaise people feel, account for the structure of the de facto black ghettos.7
