CHARLOTTESVILLE is one of the most wonderful places to be a student, to raise a family, and to retire. Nestled in the rolling hills of the Piedmont, surrounded by mountains, coursed through by streams and rivers, it was the place one of the greatest Americans made his home. To the immense satisfaction of the city’s inhabitants, it was named the best city to live in the United States or Canada by the 2004 edition of “Cities Ranked and Rated.” The city, as obsessive as the University about rankings, maintains a page on its Web site listing all the honors bestowed on it by various magazines and publications.
The city, in other words, has a good brand that is in most respects deserved. However, the great irony of Charlottesville, like that of many cities in the South and around the country, lies in its permanent underclass. The people whose families have lived in Charlottesville the longest are the people who benefit from the city’s success the least. As a rough measure of the existence of this underclass, it is worth noting that the city’s 17.2 percent poverty rate in 2004 was substantially higher than the 9.2 percent rate in the rest of the Commonwealth. That poverty is not to be found primarily amongst the University students who stay in Charlottesville, the retirees who have made it home, nor among affiliates of the University or the industries which have grown around it. The poverty here is mostly home-grown.
In a Southern city it is no surprise that the permanent underclass in Charlottesville is largely, though by no means entirely, African-American. This underclass is partly the legacy of historical public policy. In the 1950s, when many of Charlottesville’s current residents were educated, the city school system was still segregated. In fact, the city was a flashpoint of the “massive resistance” to desegregation pushed by Virginia’s then Senator and former Governor Harry Byrd. Venable Elementary was closed for much of 1958-1959 as white parents created makeshift schools in basements across the city when the Governor ordered schools closed rather than integrated.
Today, Charlottesville schools are integrated, but still, de facto, have distinct tracks. On one track, students who plan to go to college take advanced classes and apply in large numbers to the University and other top colleges. On the other track, students take standard courses and few attend college. Students’ selection into these tracks depends heavily on their family backgrounds.
The education system in the city is not the only area in which Charlottesville is stratified. Housing in the city is distinguished by zones of poverty and affluence, perhaps most surprising for how nearby to one another they are to be found. Students at the University know that “Shady Grady” — the area East of 14th St on Grady — should be avoided, and few would venture at night near the public housing on Hardy Drive, though it is not far from Wertland St, nor to Friendship Court, though it is not far from the Downtown Mall.
To the extent that most students experience the “other” Charlottesville, it is through fear of crime that might emanate from it. This summer I helped more than a dozen people apply to regain their civil rights, which Virginia, according to an unusual practice, permanently takes away from all felons (thereby disenfranchising approximately a third of African-American men). Looking through the indices of the cases at the Charlottesville Circuit Court was a depressing experience. One could see the legacy of inherited criminality in multiple names that differed only in the suffixes, Sr., Jr., and III, and in some cases dozen of cases against individuals with the same uncommon surname.
Stratified education, housing, and criminal justice are only three of a vast number of respects in which there is a second Charlottesville that many students hardly realize exists. There are no easy solutions to this “two-city” phenomenon. The city government constantly thinks about these issues and most of them are beyond the powers of a municipal administration, even one greatly concerned with equity and fairness.
As students at the University distinctly on one side of the urban divide, there is a question of what responsibilities we have to the long-time citizens of Charlottesville. I have no conclusive answers, besides insisting on the importance of not blinding ourselves to the reality that even in our wonderfully livable city, many people find their lives quite difficult to live. Whether by tutoring, teaching literacy, English or adult education classes, or being involved in mentoring programs, there are countless ways to be involved in bridging the divide in Charlottesville. It makes no sense to wait for government to channel social energy to tasks you can elect to participate in yourself.
Andrew Winerman’s column appears Thursday in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.winerman@cavalierdaily.com.
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