Making Room

This piece was co-written by Gillian Burgess.

Next month, the Arlington County Board will approve its Capital Improvement Plan (or CIP) after a truncated process. This critical component of Arlington’s budget outlines the investment that the county will make in infrastructure in the future.

I grew up in a predominantly white suburb in Minnesota. My family didn’t talk about race, but we had plenty of ways to indicate that black people were not our neighbors. I remember my parents warning me not to cross the river into Minneapolis. Once, after taking the wrong exit into a black neighborhood of Northern Minneapolis, my dad told me to lock the doors as we drove through.

This prejudice didn’t disappear when I moved to deep blue, progressive Arlington. But now I am more aware of the coded language white people use to mark black people as outsiders. I read Nextdoor complaints about people from outside the neighborhood playing basketball in Virginia Highlands Park. I’ve seen posts on DC Urban Moms decrying the school busses that pull up in front of Arlington’s affordable housing buildings. Without ever mentioning race, we can clearly show who is and isn’t welcome in our neighborhoods.

I have lived in Arlington for almost 5 years and I’ve come to see the “Arlington Way” as both a blessing and a curse on the County.

For those not familiar, the Arlington Way as a tradition of citizen democracy, realized through an extensive culture and apparatus for public engagement around most County policies, as well as new commercial or residential developments. The goal is to give residents many opportunities to influence, or at least register their opinion, on a range of regulatory and administrative topics and projects that will have a broad impact.