unenlightenedgoblin t1_j6p0266 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 9:47 PM

Reply to comment by 1800TurdFerguson in Anyone miss the old DC? by sg8910

I mean DC ran on slavery right up until the war, so much less of a white working class than comparable Northeast and Midwest, but it was certainly still present. Swampoodle (NoMA today) has a pretty well documented history of white working class settlement. In terms of the working class overall, large portions of the city saw the removal of small, affordable alley homes in 20th century urban renewal schemes. Not only did this erase naturally-affordable housing in dynamic, mixed-income areas, it also shifted the geography of poverty such that it became concentrated in the new top-down housing projects that were built in their place. Most of the poor whites gtfo’ed after this happened (the King riots basically closing the door completely).

I’m from the Rust Belt so it was a huge culture shock for me. The black culture in DC is richer (both financially and culturally) but otherwise not substantially different from my hometown. The white people in each city though live in completely different worlds.

1800TurdFerguson t1_j6p40w4 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 10:12 PM

But those white working class populations were often ethnic enclaves. Look at Boston or Chicago. One of the largest mass lynchings was perpetrated against Italians in New Orleans. The Crescent City has a long history of various white ethnic groups migrating to the city - Greeks, Italians, Irish, Slavs (mostly Croats). I’m not that aware of DC’s early industrial history, but I’m not aware of the city having those kinds of ethnic population centers.

unenlightenedgoblin t1_j6p5b73 wrote on January 31, 2023 at 10:20 PM

It was certainly never a Chicago or New York-style ethnic patchwork. Especially historically DC had a lot of cultural influence from the US South (including, critically in the migration context and as you alluded to in New Orleans—zealous anti-Catholic sentiment. There historically are not many Catholics in the South, literally because of terrorist threats against them.)

My main point isn’t to explore in-depth how this developed, but rather to illustrate the way that explicitly-racialized patterns of poverty and privilege are much more apparent in DC, despite it being one of the nation’s most diverse. I think it also explains a lot of national political trends. I truly think most people in DC have only a superficial understanding of the extent of white poverty in the United States, and the McLean and Potomac types are just about the most privileged people in the entire world. It ain’t like that back home, or in much of the country. White people around DC will acknowledge this to some extent, but I don’t think they’re truly aware. The result is a national race and class narrative that is disproportionately influenced by the existing divides in the DMV, while simultaneously tonedeaf in terms of their own contributions toward upholding or benefitting from these inequalities.

1800TurdFerguson t1_j6p7g8z wrote on January 31, 2023 at 10:34 PM

I’d argue that someone who hasn’t seen it up close can’t really appreciate how bad it is for some people. Poor people in this area are relatively more affluent than those in many parts of the country. Parts of Alabama are seeing a resurgence of illnesses we largely eliminated through modern sanitation, and Mississippi’s largest city can’t keep the water flowing to its residents. People who haven’t been through those parts of the country, or Appalachia, or probably even some long-forgotten Rust Belt towns, haven’t experienced it. It’s a lot different when you have a poor (or poorly run) state with a ramshackle social safety net. A lot of people are poor here, but there are people living in desperate, abject poverty in other parts of the country…including some not far from here. It’s almost like we live in different countries than they do.