yumadwhiteboy:

I rarely put more than 10 or so of my own words into a post, but this shit is important. 

If you live in DC, you may know the Fojol Bros. This crew of gadjes serve Indian food from a fleet of trucks painted in crazy colors and blaring Bollywood and hipster tunes in a double whammy of offensive Rroma and Indian stereotypes. They call it “a travelling culinary carnival,” complete with made-up names, fake moustaches, and turbans.

When they give interviews, they talk in nonsense riddles and emphasize the “fantasy” aspect of it all, as if the people and cultures whose very existence they’re mining for profit were somehow never real to begin with. 

Below is an open letter to the Fojol Bros that a friend of mine wrote. Please share widely, ideally by handing out copies of it to the long lines of transplants and yuppies that form outside their trucks.

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Dear Idiots,

 When I read Lindy West’s “A Complete Guide to ‘Hipster Racism’”, I didn’t quite recognize what she was talking about—if only because I avoid hipsters the way white people avoid accountability. But thanks to your boisterously flamboyant technicolor kitsch, I think I get it now. I mean, surely no one is really that brazenly insulting of others’ cultures in this vibrant, diverse town. Like, it’s so over-the-top racist, it’s not racist at all! The commodity you’re trading in isn’t actually Indian food, as it would appear to the unhip, but irony, am I right? Wink wink, nudge nudge?

I’m glad your business is a mobile one, or I might have missed you. And then I’d still be in the dark when it comes to self-conscious, winking cultural irony. Indeed, you are worthy ambassadors of poor taste. Can you imagine if I let my mind wander on M Street and inadvertently found myself beginning to reflect on the importance of not being an offensive asshole? Not to worry. Before I can get too far down that rabbit hole, my thoughts are interrupted by a cascade of sitars blaring from a smoking clown car filled with faux-mustachioed goombas, just in the nick of time. Saved by the food truck!

I kid, of course. I don’t need to ruminate on the nuances of cultural sensitivity to act like a decent human being, but it seems you do. Do understand that by accusing you of hipster racism, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. I’m taking for granted that you’re just well-meaning (if woefully misguided) white boys with a contemptible sense of humor. See, if I were the pessimistic type, I’d say instead that you’re a bunch of callous opportunists banking off the ever profitable enterprise that is Western Orientalism, exploiting DC’s growing vanilla consumer base—after all, with the recent influx of smirking, entitled young bohemians around these parts, there’s certainly no shortage of monied ignoramuses eager to drop cash on any mediocre product if it’s quirky or exotic enough. But I don’t believe you’re that clever.

In any case, whether your shtick is informed by boneheaded obliviousness or a cynical marketing strategy, it’s not cool. Seriously. Rather, it’s decidedly uncool, and unacceptable, and the fact that your business’s regrettable existence has gotten a pass for this long is an embarrassment to my city. Find a new gimmick, or else please set that ugly tin wagon on fire and drive it into the Potomac. Dicks.

Sincerely,

A White Boy Who Don’t Play That Shit

Bethesda Metro Station

DuPont Circle metro escalator

numol:

MISSING: Zana Holbrook of Washington DC | Black & Missing Foundation, Inc. (link)

please pass this around if you can.

Case Type: Endangered
DOB: Jan 01, 1994
Missing Date: Dec 07, 2011   
Age Now: 17
Missing City: Washington
Missing State: DC
Case Number: x

Gender: Female
Race: Black
Complexion: Medium
Height: 5-7
Weight: 110
Hair Color: Black
Hair Length: Medium
Eye Color: Brown
Wear Glasses or Contacts: No

Location Last Seen: DC Police say Zana Holbrook was last seen on Dec. 7 in the 200 block of 37th Place, SE.

Circumstances of Disappearance: Unknown

Last Seen Wearing: She was last seen wearing a black jacket, green shirt and gray pants.

Identifying Marks or Characteristics: Honey blond/black hair with a short cut.

Have information about this missing person? Click here to submit information to our Tip Line

(via queennubian)

tariqwest:

The premise that black and poor people were, for the most part, forced out of DC by direct economic pressures is a problematic one. “A Hard Look at Gentrification” by Ta-Nehisi Coats, deconstructs this idea while touching on why the racial and class transformation of American inner-cities is such an emotionally charged topic for those of us who survived their decline.

Coats writes, “Black people have not owned much in this country. And yet, in the later years of the 20th century, we felt like we felt like we owned many of America’s great cities. We didn’t.” This is poignantly and correctly put.

It was remarkably hard for people of color to thrive in the District in those years of abandon, so we lodged our aspirations elsewhere. Even as we came to “own the city” (in every sense but the most important in America), we stopped believing in the possibility of living well here. It just wasn’t plausible. 

We found ourselves conflicted. We resented the abandonment, moral and literal, of those “flighters” who used to share in responsibility for this city. And we regarded warily (much as they regarded us) those who remained, cordoned off in their ghettos of privilege; was theirs the same “garment of destiny” as ours?

At the same time, we couldn’t help but dream of quitting the city ourselves. Black and poor people weren’t forced out of DC so much as we were coaxed out by the cynical incentives of despair. We were pulled towards places seemingly less toxic to dreams.

Those of us who lived in DC through its most soul-wrenched hours (whether by choice or chance), own the joy and pain, the culture of this city. I literally ache for Chocolate City sometimes, for the people I came up with, for how this city was let to fall down on top of us. I experience Go-Go as no less than eulogy.

Gentrification is an emotionally charged subject, at least in part, because we feel we deserve recognition, a float in the parade of the inevitable. We have marked and been marked by this city. We deserve a sticker or t-shirt or exclusive rights to knowing glances, for loving DC when there was much less to love about it.

I’d settle for a plaque somewhere, perhaps over on Florida Ave next to Big Bear Cafe, that reads:

This is hallowed ground. Communities struggled here, fervently, and occasionally, triumphantly. There was remarkable beauty, in concert with and in defiance of the ugliness, long before there were manicured flower boxes and art walks. Some part of the soul of this city, of those qualities that drew you to it, is bound up deeply in the dying and dancing we did here. We suffered terrible decay so that you could rejoice in renaissance.

dchillin:

If you see a homeless person in need during the hurricane anywhere in DC, call the DC shelter hotline at 1.800.535.7252. Please pass this note along 

lilmissneptune:

Howard University featured in Life Magazine circa 1946.

(via fuckyeahdc)

newmodelminority:

Peace to Janel for staying on me to write about class. Peace to Latoya Peterson for reminding me to think about how cities are similar, different and the reasons why DC, with it’s 25 miles,  is special to me.

I once said that the city was like chitlin’s. Moving from the deep South to DC, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Ohio, New York, and Philadelphia during the great migration Black folks had to figure out how to make something horrible into something livable, or in the case of Chitlins- edible.

There was huge resistance to African Americans living in decent housing in the city.

In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. went to Chicago to protest the housing conditions of African Americans. The Eyes on the Prize Documentary speaks captures some of this time period.

Shoot, African Americans were not allowed to live in East Oakland before the 1950′s.

My homie, Janel, has consistently stated that conversations about gentrification fail to take into consideration that brown bodies, regardless of the employment status reduce the property value. (*noted: Janel please correct me if my reading is off.)

At first, I disagreed with her hard. However, I am not coming to believe that there is some merit to her argument.

For example, if I am a professor, and Goldy is an lobbyist and we move into a condo on a mixed race but largely white street with owner occupied houses in Columbia Heights, with combined wages of approximately- lets say, $150k, the fact that we are high income earners does not mitigate the fact that we are both brown bodies.

At $150K this would put us in the upper middle class or the rich, depending on whose theory you use.

I had always thought that our social class power and education would make our race moot, when living in middle class and affluent neighborhoods.

Our brown bodies are read as reducing the neighborhood property values of our White affluent neighbors.

According to Janel, our neighbors property values would be reduced because we are “brown bodies.” I hope that she writes more about this in the future. #nudge.

Which brings me to the somewhat unique situation of Washington, DC.

More.

(via darkskinnedblackbeauty)