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For Whites in Prince George's, a Mirror on Race
She met Abby at a social committee meeting and liked her right away.
"I really don't feel threatened by people of any race moving in here," Jackson said. "I guess it's because we have such a large number of African Americans doing well, we're so fully entrenched here, there's a great deal of wealth in these areas and I don't think you have the concerns like you have in D.C. in terms of gentrification happening."
  Abby Hopper at a Prince George's pool with daughters Madeline, left, and Ellie. The Hoppers moved to the county from a white area of Baltimore. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post) |
Kimberly Arnold, a black neighbor and CIA contractor who lives across the street from the Hoppers with her husband, Greg, a Red Cross project manager, and Jabril, their son, says she'd even prefer to have more whites move in, because then maybe the county would get more restaurants and stores.
"I want a mix because we live in a world that's a mix," says Arnold, "and nobody who's been brought up to know better wants to live in an all-one-race neighborhood." Although she sees the new faces as a good sign, both the Arnolds, who spent time in Prince George's growing up, have seen white flight at eye level, having watched white neighbors succumb to distrustful panic. So now Arnold waits and watches. It's great that they're coming in, she says. "Let's see how long they are actually going to stay."
The Hoppers are cool people, the Arnolds say, and when the girls see Jabril outside, they always want to come play. The couples get each other's mail when someone's out of town, and Gregory Arnold says Greg Hopper will often come over and shoot hoops.
For all that, he says he doesn't know that he would let his son go over to their house to play.
Pause.
Why is that?
"I'd just feel uncomfortable," Arnold says.
Maybe, if they had boys, it would be different, but who knows, he says. It'll just be one more conversation to be had on the front lines of integration.
More for the Money
Jim Estepp, chief executive of the Greater Prince George's Business Roundtable and former chairman of the Prince George's County Council, has lived in the county almost his entire life. He watched it grapple with rancorous busing debates in the 1970s and decades of seismic population shifts.
For two years, Estepp, who is white, says developers and home builders have been saying that the number of whites signing contracts for new homes "has gone from absolute zero to reliably 10-15 percent of their new contracts."
