D.C., where blacks are no longer a majority, has a new African American affairs director.
By Mike DeBonis WASHINGTON POST
The District’s predominantly African American leaders have long taken pains to address the concerns of underrepresented minority groups in city hall, including Latino, Asian and gay residents.
Now another group of residents feeling increasingly marginalized in the District will have a voice in the office of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser: African Americans.
As of Wednesday, a full-time employee will advocate for black residents in the city of Marion Barry, Duke Ellington and Charles Drew — a “Chocolate City” where blacks made up 70 percent of the population a generation ago but now no longer represent a majority.
In the opening week of Black History Month, Bowser (D) named Rahman Branch, a former high school principal, as the city’s first director of African American affairs during an event at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Congress Heights — a neighborhood east of the Anacostia River whose population is more than 90 percent black.
It was the latest sign of the evolution of the District, where racial disparities have grown as a redevelopment boom in some parts of the city has eluded its least-fortunate corners, and where a new urgency has emerged among some city leaders to make sure the black community — still the city’s political bedrock — is not left behind.
“We see income gaps growing, we’re not satisfied with how fast we’re closing educational gaps, and we know that we have to invest in good jobs and affordable housing,” said Bowser, the latest in a line of black mayors stretching to 1967.
Branch’s appointment reflects not only the anxieties of the city’s black population — which at 49.5 percent retains a racial plurality but not a majority, according to census demographic data — but also the complicated politics of governing the District in recent years.
