“There goes the neighborhood” is usually a lament that too many minorities are driving out the whites. But on the front of Monday’s Washington Post, they turned that on its head. Too many white people (even white liberals) threatened to ruin “a funky isle” in the District of Columbia.
The front-page headline was “A funky isle in a sea of change” and the subhead was “Meridian Hill Park upholds its diverse ethos in a gentrifying D.C.,” but the caption warned “Old-timers fear that the park, surrounded by new apartments and eateries, could lose its bohemian flavor.”
Who knew “bohemians” meant “the opposite of Caucasians”?
Reporter John Woodrow Cox’s story flipped to an inside page just before the racial angle of “young white people” kicked in:
This is Meridian Hill Park on a summer Sunday. Fueled by the beat of its renowned weekly drum circle, the 12-acre stretch of fountains and trees a mile and a half north of the White House serves, in a changing and sometimes divided city, as a gathering place for all the District's disparate tribes: black and white, rich and poor, young and old, immigrant and local, gay and straight, boring and bizarre. [flip to A-14]
But some who have watched the park evolve for decades worry that the flood of one group moving to the area - young white people - will eventually drain Meridian Hill of its distinctive diversity.
Like much of the nation's capital, the Northwest neighborhoods that surround the park have undergone a rapid demographic shift in the past decade, with blacks and Hispanics moving out.
"Yuppified," one woman said as she and her girlfriend watched more than 50 people unfurl yoga mats over the grass.
Jane Adams, who has lived near the park since 1959, has witnessed the change. A white woman married to a black man, the 68-year-old remembers when she was the only Caucasian on her block. Now, every time she walks through what many people call Malcolm X Park, she sees more faces that look like hers than her husband's and wonders, "Where the hell am I?"
"Over the last five years," she said, "it's completely shifted."
Then came a sentence that could sound racist: “Adams and others are quick to acknowledge that Meridian Hill is safer than ever.” Because the whites are taking over? If it's safer than ever, then what is "in peril"? Apparently just the "funky boheman paradise" vibe is in peril.
Cox worried:
And for now, the park stands as a testament to diversity, evidenced by the human mosaic swirling across its landscape each Sunday. "A healthy balance," one old-timer called its mix of old D.C. and new D.C.
But with Washington's property values still climbing, the aging mom-and-pop shops still closing and the pricey new apartment buildings still opening, the people who know the park best question whether such a balance will last.
It's not hard to imagine how a story like this would go over in the Post newsroom if the influx of "young white people" was instead of young blacks, Latinos, or Muslims. A reporter handing in a story like that might end up fired. Speaking of diversity in peril, the Post has to worry they haven't had a lot of females on the masthead.
