"It was an unfortunate goofball statement for him to make. All it has really done is make the city look just a little bit more ridiculous."
- Civil rights attorney Tracie Washington on New Orleans' Mayor Ray Nagin's statement that New Orleans would be rebuilt as a chocolate city.
It has been less than five months since Mayor Nagin made, and then retracted, his political faux pas du chocolat, so the recent context for the term makes me question the motivation behind Darnell Parker's renaming of Deano's Lounge to Club Chocolate City.
Although Parker publicly claims to have received a positive response to the name from the white folks he's met, the more universal response from the neighborhood (of a variety of flavors) seems to be more in line with Washington's take on the term - a rolling of the eyes, shaking of the head and (once again) dismissing the sincerity of any commitments to change coming from 2030 East Madison Street.
Incredibly, Parker told The Stranger that his intention is to attract more white patrons and have a more diverse crowd. By changing the name to refer to a single race? By using a term that's already been proven to be objectionable in public dialogue? I don't think so.
The much more likely motivation is that Parker is attempting to bring issues of race and gentrification to the forefront in preparation for his upcoming appeal with the state liquor board. He makes this even more obvious in another statement to aimed directly at the nearby residents: "This business means as much to me as your house does to you." With the established history of Parker's business already documented, I don't think the liquor board will actually fall for such a ruse; I am more concerned that the black community might.
In his recent columns in The Seattle Times, Danny Westneat has been attempting to create a dialogue about the changes in the Central Area, and encountering the resentful arguments from both sides. Like Westneat, I was surprised to hear the bluntness of Rev. Samuel McKinney's comments at the recent University of Washington forum on this topic, and was even more unsettled at the manner in which he painted the problem as entirely one-sided, saying: "Black people have never excluded anyone. We have been welcoming all along. We may have been segregat-ed, but we are not segregat-ing by our nature."
These and other generalizations on race throughout the evening made me reflect on the famous dream of McKinney's deceased colleague, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: that his children would be judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin. I believe that King wanted all God's children to be judged that way, as he also said:
"Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred... The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom."
Along these very same lines, many of the non-black residents of the Central Area, both new and old, are also interested in preserving its character and diversity while adapting to the expanding urban core and increasing population of Seattle.
Many also want to provide for low-income housing, better schools and combating the blight of drugs and crime with increased social services and enforcement. They want the equality and freedom that Dr. King spoke of. Change is inevitable, but together, and with our community groups and city government, we can work toward a common vision that welcomes the positive changes and controls the negatives.
But to do that, we have to look beyond the skin color of our neighbors, business owners and people walking or jogging down the street to see who is on "our side." This lesson was painfully emphasized last summer, when the corrupt developer Laurence Anthone (exposed in a Seattle P-I article,) hustled the owners of local businesses like Carol's Essentials and Ezell's for tens of thousands of dollars each. "Because he is African American, I thought he was trying to help the community," Carol Huston was quoted as telling the P-I.
My question, then, is whose side are Parker, and his landlord Dean Falls, really on? Are these legitimate businessmen interested in helping the community, and if so, why would they wait so long? Or are they hustlers like Anthone, who have been capitalizing as much or more from the disillusionment and vulnerability of the black community than they do from the non-black residents? Deano's ironic name change shows Parker cares far less about "getting along" than he does about trying to hold onto his liquor license.
In my opinion, Club Chocolate City along with the liquor store, squalid tenements and drug distribution network centered on Mr. Falls' property, are not parts of the neighborhood character that need to be preserved for future generations.
Mike Clarke is a Miller Park resident.
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