it's hard for me to believe that my hometown, dc, is about not to be majority black. according to this analysis, it was over 70% black in 1970, when i was twelve. it certainly seemed higher than that to me, and it may be that the census undercounted the black folks a bit. either way it was chocolate city. it was a black thing, you wouldn't understand. blackness to me was a nexus of fear and desire; it's taken me twenty years in the most lily-white spot in america (southern york county pa, and thereabouts) really to lose the wigger affect. the best art was black; the toughest/coolest guys were black; the hottest girls were black.

but dc - the whole region, now - was also among the most strictly-segregated cities in the world, and when my junior high in upper northwest suddenly integrated by busing in 1971, the white flight was intense. but also rational: what might kindly be called a culture clash featured a wave of informal muggings (it took me awhile to be able to maintain my lunch money on any given day); heroin; 15-year-old middle-class white girls turning up pregnant; sudden reduction or elimination of academic standards etc, etc. still i'm probably not the only person, or even the only white person, who's gonna miss chocolate city.

my daughter's fave song right now: