Go read Ta-Nehisi Coates on crime, race, and living in DC.
Like Ta-Nehisi, I too lived in DC in the mid to late 1990s, and from the looks of things we didn't live all that far apart. I lived on Logan Circle (13th and P) before it gentrified, and he lived a neighborhood or two away in the area around Howard U (no address specified). Like him, I had only one "encounter" in my entire time living in the city, including all of my time spent in clubs deep in the East.
I honestly don't know enough about the lives of Ezra, Spencer, Megan, and Brian to know why their experiences are so different from mine, but clearly they are different. And its weird... sometimes I read their posts and marvel at just how much my hometown has changed over the past decade (the fact that there are tanning salons on U Street says it all), but other times it seems as if not all that much has changed.
DC has a very strange and sad history, one filled with stories of deliberate negligence and neglect. It is a city that has come a long, long way since the 1980s, but given the mountain it has to climb, it makes perfect sense that change has only taken it so far.
But back to the point at hand. Lines like this - "As I reflected more on it, I came to a very uncomfortable--if obvious conclusion--if your a mugger in D.C., a young, white, bookish blogger probably looks like the perfect mark" - make Ta-Nehisi's post today's must read.
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