White Center Now: The blog about White Center

Perusing the White Center Community Development Association website, we note an item from almost a week ago, in which a community newsletter from Shorewood draws WCCDA ire. The piece singled out by the WCCDA site writer complains about dog waste along Shorewood trails and suggests penalties for offenders, such as “sending their beloved pets to White Center to be recycled (eaten).” A complaint letter was written to the Shorewood on the Sound Club, signed by WCCDA’s Aileen Balahadia, Karen Veloria and Heather Downey and saying in part:

We do not find this remark funny- we find it offensive, as this stereotype is obviously applied to the communities of color in our diverse White Center. It is also abusive to our goal to market and promote our wonderful, hard-working, and largely immigrant owned small businesses and restaurants.

We appreciate community residents like yourselves getting together to improve your neighborhood. We’d implore you to please do so without dragging down a neighbor, especially one like White Center that has done so much to counter such negativity over the last few years.

We’ll be checking with both WCCDA and the Shorewood group to see if there’s been followup, since a week has gone by. 2:13 PM UPDATE: We heard back from Shorewood newsletter editor Kevin, who said he had replied to say he’s sorry they were offended. Aileen at WCCDA confirmed they had received a response but it wasn’t as much of an apology as they felt was in order, since the remark was published in a community-wide newsletter.

Tags: Shorewood, white center

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