There's ethnic pride and then there is something else
Last night the 5C meeting took place at Mt. Sinai Baptist Church. One of the presenters at the meeting was looking for approval for a modification, brought on by "suggestions" by the city government, for a hotel and conference center to be built over by the Children's Hospital and Catholic U. There was the horse trading of what the developers could provide for the 'community' in return for support. You don't ask, you don't get, so you may as well ask. Most of the chatter was in regards to meeting space. One of commissioners, a flashy dressed and exceedingly verbose man, asked about jobs for the community, specifically for native born African-Americans; to the exclusion of African born, Latino, or any other non-white persons, as I understood what he was saying through all those words. Now, it's fine to want to support your own ethnic group, however asking someone to give preference to your ethnic group over other minority ethnic groups, is somewhere in the land of wrong.Labels: ANC5C meeting, employment
posted by Mari @ 19.11.08
6 Comments:
would that gentleman happen to be the commissioner of an SMD that includes most of the edgewood neighborhood (north of rhode island and east of 4th st NE)?
That was very blatant of him. If he was asking for jobs on the line of "Prefer people who live inside the DC city limits'' than, fine.
Something tells me that the speaker had a very narrow view of what is the "community"
Why yes, Imgoph, it the commissioner for the SMD that includes Edgewood.
Nora- Community is flexible. It can mean particular groups in a certain geographic area, the general public in a general geographic area, or whatever is relevant. Commissioners generally try to get things, services, whatever for people in their geographic area, and are a little less concerned (not that they don't care) for people several SMDs away from their area. In another segment of the meeting Anita Bonds questioned presenter Ted Mcginn about a test node that was focused on a neighboring SMD, asking if it wouldn't make more sense to include her (my) area which bordered the proposed test site.
The rep for 5C08, who was being blatant represents an area that I see as less diverse, than the areas west of North Cap. To play the devil's advocate he may be trying to secure jobs for his lower income constituents that usually get filled by industrious and entrepuneral immigrant populations.
Welcome to DC! Every development project has a whole team of well-paid hoods whose job it is to extort money in the name of employing black people. Of course, if white people did this, it would be racist, but it is perfectly fine for black folks to do it, even with taxpayer money.
ANCs aren't paid. However, they do get power, dinky and/or great power. Dinky when there's nothing going on, and no one listens. Great and awesome power if you can get minions, and developers and other interests who desperately need your approval and the position fits in with other power nodes.
Most of ANC 5C appears to be more fair minded.
"what's in it for me?" sounds like "can I make some cash off our nation's first African-American president-elect."
Are other people looking at this in a different way?
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