Matthew N. Green

Chocolate City, Vanilla Swirl, or Something Else? Race and Ethnicity in City and Region

“Blacks’ Majority Status Slips Away.” So proclaimed the Washington Post’s above-the-fold headline on March 25, 2011, trumpeting an event that caused a stir among columnists, bloggers, and long-time city residents. The percentage of Washingtonians who were African American had dropped to just half, according to the U.S. Census. It was the lowest level in over five decades and a dramatic change in the city’s demographic identity. In the 1970s the capital had earned the nickname “Chocolate City,” but as the head of the Greater Washington Urban League put it, “Now they are calling it Vanilla Swirl.”1

Political Host to the World

What makes a city international? For some cities, it is having a diverse immigrant population.1 For others, it is economic interdependence with foreign markets. Both are features of Washington, D.C. But the city is also home to countless embassies, legations, and international governmental organizations (IGOs); dozens of foreign political leaders visit it every year; and it has scores of nonprofits and think tanks that focus on multinational political issues.2 Taken together, they constitute another side to the city’s international character that is shared by few other American urban places: its status as a center of international politics.

Home Rule, Race, and Revenue: The Local Politics of Washington

Washington, D.C., the center of national politics, also has a politics all its own. As in any city, Washington’s local politics can be quite complex: community leaders, the local media, businesses, unions, churches, and government officials competing and cooperating to make policy for a diverse citizenry. But three central, enduring, and interconnected elements of Washington explain much of its local politics and make those politics unique. The first is D.C.’s lack of full self-governance and representation in Congress. The second is the influence of African Americans and racial attitudes and identity in determining city affairs. The third is the significant constraints on the city’s ability to raise and spend revenue. In this chapter, we examine each of these themes in detail and the ways they distinguish Washington, D.C., from other American cities.

A City of Magnificent Museums

Washington, D.C., is a city known for its museums. Drawing visitors from around the nation and the globe as well as local residents, the capitals museums are among the most visited in the world.1 But in addition to its most popular sites—the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the National Gallery, and others located on the National Mall—there are many, many others. Seventeen Smithsonian Institution museums and art galleries, over forty historic houses, and dozens of other public and private museums on topics as diverse as espionage, medical research, and postage stamps are located in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.2

A Center of American Protest

Two blocks from the White House, at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., stands the Willard Intercontinental Hotel. Through its long history, which began in the early years of the nineteenth century, the hotel, known as “the Willard,” has served as an informal center of political power while playing host to countless visitors.

Institutions, Power, and Political Community in Washington

National politics permeates Washington. It can be seen and felt in many ways. Perhaps the most obvious way it manifests itself is in the city’s reputation: Americans associate Washington with political power to such an extent that its very name is often used as short-hand to describe the entire national government. As a consequence, the capital’s image, and its ability to draw or repel outsiders, has long been affected by citizens’ views of political affairs and power.

The Economic Life and Development of a Capital City

Metro riders who arrive at the NoMa-Gallaudet stop in northeast D.C. encounter an impressive display of recent and ongoing development. Cranes swing far above the skeletons of new buildings that rise from lots once empty and abandoned. The glass and cement headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, built in 2008, sits just steps from the Metro station. Elsewhere stand freshly built office buildings, apartment complexes, restaurants, and stores, and a Hilton hotel that abuts the Metro tracks. Even the station itself is new, built less than a decade ago.

Rome on the Potomac: The Classical Architecture of Washington

First impressions of a city are shaped by architecture, and Washington, D.C., evokes a powerful impression indeed. The city’s tallest structure is the Washington Monument, an Egyptian-style obelisk that looms far above all else. Bold columns and grand archways decorate white stone buildings throughout the capital. The city’s grid street pattern is overlaid with diagonal avenues and traffic circles, which, while at times confusing to navigate, direct the viewer’s eyes to many impressive buildings. It is no wonder that the city has been called “Rome on the Potomac.”

Neighborhoods and Suburban Communities of Washington

As the clock strikes noon on a sunny day in April, a steady stream of individuals moves in and out of the Eastern Market Metro station. Serenaded at the top of the escalator by a musician playing a bongo drum accompanied by a synthesized instrumental track, the eclectic travelers range from business suit-wearing men and women to tourists juggling cameras, strollers, and shopping bags. The surrounding streets are lined with narrow nineteenth-century row houses, many of which accommodate businesses on the street level with residences above. The market, for which the Metro stop is named, was built in 1872 and restored after a ruinous fire in 2007. It anchors the neighborhood and serves as both a community gathering place and a tourist destination. Looming large on the horizon is the U.S. Capitol building, leaving no doubt about why the neighborhood is known as Capitol Hill.

Memorialization, the Mall, and the National Imagination

As Pierre L’Enfant surveyed the territory of the newly minted capital in 1791, he imagined a city filled with wide boulevards and monuments befitting what would become a great empire. While the city would fall short of such expectations for its first several decades, it eventually acquired the status its founders had envisioned for it, though in a modernist mold. Today Washington contains hundreds of monuments and memorials, serving as coveted territory for those seeking to commemorate a person, event, or cause on a national scale. As a centrally planned, symbolically important, and highly contested ground for commemoration, the Mall and its structures comprise a nationally significant locus of city culture.