The White City

[bgwah]

The ugly truth is that it is about crime rates.

Not *quite* right as a few highly diverse cities like San Diego and El Paso have lower crime rates than Seattle or Portland. But it is a good proxy for urban social integration, which has to do with race but is not the same as it.

El Paso is more Hispanic than Seattle or Portland are white.

[Beet]

So NYC isn't a progressive city?

Not really.  Among white voters living in Manhattan below 96th street and a few trendy outer borough neighborhoods, yes.  But once you get to the outer boroughs, the long-term resident white voters are pretty conservative.  Portland and Austin didn't elect someone like Giuliani.

So the point is that outer borough whites are superior to Portland whites because they live in the same metro area as a lot of blacks? This discussion is starting to get into the twilight zone.

[cinyc]

So NYC isn't a progressive city?

Not really.  Among white voters living in Manhattan below 96th street and a few trendy outer borough neighborhoods, yes.  But once you get to the outer boroughs, the long-term resident white voters are pretty conservative.  Portland and Austin didn't elect someone like Giuliani.

So the point is that outer borough whites are superior to Portland whites because they live in the same metro area as a lot of blacks? This discussion is starting to get into the twilight zone.

I said nothing about superiority.  Just that NYC isn't as "progressive" a city as many think once you leave Manhattan.  Outer borough long-term white resident voters are more conservative than many think (though not as conservative as conservatives on the national scale).  Giuliani wouldn't have been elected in Portland or San Francisco.

[Beet]

Ok, but I think Storebought is trying to make some point about why progressive whites are secretly racist.

[Lief 🗽]

DC is a progressive city, and it's only like 40% white. We have all the socially liberal things the cities in the article have (gay marriage, medical marijuana, a city-wide free condom program, a better public transportation system than any of those cities, hipsters).

[Sbane]

DC is a progressive city, and it's only like 40% white. We have all the socially liberal things the cities in the article have (gay marriage, medical marijuana, a city-wide free condom program, a better public transportation system than any of those cities, hipsters).

The author selectively chose cities that proved his point. And even there he failed.

[Cubby]

The phenomenon of "White Flight" traditionally has been White vs Black mostly. Hispanics are a bit harder to pin down since there is almost no real White Flight from White Hispanics but somewhat a good amount due to Native American Hispanics. Asian "White Flight" is probably likely only in areas with good amounts of Hmong or Khmer populations I suppose.

When you say "Native American Hispanics", do you mean Hispanics born in the United States or Native Americans (aka Indians) who are of Hispanic ethnicity?

Your point is correct though, I've never heard of white flight from Hispanics.

[Brittain33]

A logical extension of this argument is that white residents of South Boston are more comfortable with minorities that white residents of San Francisco, because they live in a city with a higher percentage of African-Americans, and are quietly more admirable on race relations in spite of their more complicated politics on other issues. LOL.

[memphis]

So NYC isn't a progressive city?

Not really.  Among white voters living in Manhattan below 96th street and a few trendy outer borough neighborhoods, yes.  But once you get to the outer boroughs, the long-term resident white voters are pretty conservative.  Portland and Austin didn't elect someone like Giuliani.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IrE6FMpai8
Yeah, that guy's a major conservative.

[Verily]

So NYC isn't a progressive city?

Not really.  Among white voters living in Manhattan below 96th street and a few trendy outer borough neighborhoods, yes.  But once you get to the outer boroughs, the long-term resident white voters are pretty conservative.  Portland and Austin didn't elect someone like Giuliani.

See, that's the thing. They would elect someone like Giuliani, only he'd be running as a Democrat. The difference is that the Democratic primary is controlled by unions and racial interests in NYC, not that the politicians are more conservative. The white vote overall in NYC was around 65% Obama, which is comparable to the white vote in Austin or Portland and certainly not conservative.

There are plenty of "un-hip" areas in the outer boroughs that are mostly white and strongly Democratic: Forest Hills, Astoria, Bay Ridge, Riverdale, etc. And the liberal white areas outvote the conservative ones, so it doesn't matter how the conservative areas vote unless they can get liberal whites on board--which was really how Giuliani and Bloomberg won (see maps of Manhattan and inner Brooklyn).

[Mechaman]

A logical extension of this argument is that white residents of South Boston are more comfortable with minorities that white residents of San Francisco, because they live in a city with a higher percentage of African-Americans, and are quietly more admirable on race relations in spite of their more complicated politics on other issues. LOL.

Yeah really.
If anything this author is just proving his own inner racist assumptions.  I mean god forbid we actually consider diversity to include people other than white or black.......

[Brittain33]

He's also riffing off the fact that the political priorities of affluent city-dwellers (who may be disproportionately white, but aren't exclusively so) are different from those of working-class communities despite belonging to the same party, and then tries to map that onto racial disparities across cities to make some argument about racial views blah blah which doesn't hold up. The Democratic Party is a coalition and different people have different emphases on what they want from government. The needs of Detroit and Cleveland are different from the needs of Portland and Austin because they have very different economies and history.

I don't have a personal drive for the schools in my city to be good, although I support the efforts of parents to get the resources and good management they need; I do want us to have better mass transit to aid my commute to downtown Boston, and lots of my neighbors wouldn't benefit from that because they don't work 9-5 (the T is only good in rush hour) or in those office buildings. So it goes.

[Storebought]

Ok, but I think Storebought is trying to make some point about why progressive whites are secretly racist.

No I'm not, like I would believe anything so simplistic.

I am curious that suburban white flight, a social phenomenon that is well investigated both academically and by the popular media for decades, always assumed that it stemmed entirely from racist conservative whites' refusal to live anywhere near the presence of blacks, as though no other motivation could be found.

[Brittain33]

I am curious that suburban white flight, a social phenomenon that is well investigated both academically and by the popular media for decades, always assumed that it stemmed entirely from racist conservative whites' refusal to live anywhere near the presence of blacks, as though no other motivation could be found.

The leap here is that progressive cities like Seattle, Portland, and Austin are populated by people who "white fled" from more diverse areas. That's unproven, and problematic for many reasons. One, it ignores all aspects of diversity other than white-black, as has been stated. Two, it implies that white progressives who moved to those cities did so because they didn't want to be near minorities, which they don't even make an effort to prove. My experience among progressives in Boston is that they moved here from less diverse places, at least measured by the white-black axis this article assumes: western New York, suburbia up and down the northeast corridor, everywhere else in New England (particularly Maine), rural areas in the northeast.

Not to play diversity bingo, but I grew up in an N.J. suburb that was middle class, a mix of Jewish, non-Jewish Caucasian, and Asian, right next to a poorer city with a very different demographic mix. I moved to one of those 80+% Democratic "cool cities" where, guess what, my neighborhood is significantly more diverse economically and ethnically than where I grew up. My next-door neighbors on one side are Haitian (one floor) and Brazilian (the other), we're gay, our other neighbors are working-class white, our tenants are recent college graduates. That's been stable for the last 10-12 years, except for the tenants. This experience could be had in similar neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, D.C., Oakland.

If we assume that the young college-educated white progressives some Republicans love to hate are to be considered racist because they gravitate toward cities with a small African-American population, remember that most of them grew up in suburbs which were similarly non-diverse, and as young people, are likely to move to places that are economically dynamic--not those which are stagnant, and which also tend to have suffered the most from middle-class flight of all racial backgrounds. If you wanted a job in the media or tech industry right out of college, you can't move to Cleveland and expect to find what you want.

The "cool progressives" aren't moving to Appalachia or the Dakotas, either. Are they afraid of white people?

[Storebought]

A logical extension of this argument is that white residents of South Boston are more comfortable with minorities that white residents of San Francisco, because they live in a city with a higher percentage of African-Americans, and are quietly more admirable on race relations in spite of their more complicated politics on other issues. LOL.

Yeah really.
If anything this author is just proving his own inner racist assumptions.  I mean god forbid we actually consider diversity to include people other than white or black.......

San Francisco had a higher population of black residents when it was governed as though it were South Boston. It is a demonstrable fact; there is no sense in denying it. The same is true for Austin and Portland.

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DC has those things because it is 55% black and not the 70%+ it was before 1990. With the possible exception of the free condoms and the improved transportation system, the rest of those progressive hallmarks are of small concern to the long time residents of the city, many of whom now live in Maryland.

Not that one needs white progressives to have any of those things. New Orleans, except for a brief moment during the Truman-Eisenhower years, was a majority black city and it was, and is, very strongly socially liberal, even after its transition from an all-white Democratic government to a (mostly) black one.

[Brittain33]

San Francisco had a higher population of black residents when it was governed as though it were South Boston. It is a demonstrable fact; there is no sense in denying it. The same is true for Austin and Portland.

I know little about the history of Austin and Portland, but what happened in San Francisco was that the area got wealthier, neighborhoods gentrified, and minorities moved elsewhere.

What does this have to do with progressive Democratic politics? It sounds to me like the opposite of what this article claims--progressives flocked to areas with African-American populations, pricing many people out of their own communities and making the neighborhoods less diverse.

[Brittain33]

DC has those things because it is 55% black and not the 70%+ it was before 1990. With the possible exception of the free condoms and the improved transportation system, the rest of those progressive hallmarks are of small concern to the long time residents of the city, many of whom now live in Maryland.

There's a presumption here that there isn't a diversity of opinions among African-Americans living in different areas. The experience of same-sex marriage politics in D.C. in recent years indicates that African-American Democrats were supportive of this issue as a result of ongoing dialogue within the Democratic Party there, which hasn't always happened elsewhere to the same extent.

You are imposing distinctions where they may not exist so clearly. 

[Beet]

Ok, but I think Storebought is trying to make some point about why progressive whites are secretly racist.

No I'm not, like I would believe anything so simplistic.

I am curious that suburban white flight, a social phenomenon that is well investigated both academically and by the popular media for decades, always assumed that it stemmed entirely from racist conservative whites' refusal to live anywhere near the presence of blacks, as though no other motivation could be found.

So you deny the existence of white flight? Because the racial motivation of white flight rather obviously flows from how white flight is defined. Note that it is not argued that the rise of suburbs arises entirely from racist conservative whites' refusal to live near blacks. There could be other reasons for whites to move to the suburbs, such as the better socio economic status and more comfortable living quarters associated with the suburbs. But this ties back again into racism, because racism results in blacks being regarded as lower socio economic status. The point is that it is not just that whites who fled blacks are individually racist or conservative, but that the system, implicitly supported by all the individuals in it but not able to be changed by any particular individual, assign blacks a lower socio economic status. This of course remains true today. Crime is a part of it, but it's also a large part of the excuse.

At 55% black, DC is still a lot more black than the country as a whole. I mean, it's got both of the elements you are asking for; and it's also got in its suburbs the most prosperous African-American majority county in the nation by median income. Yet I remember in another thread you had nothing but trash to talk about it.

[Storebought]

I am curious that suburban white flight, a social phenomenon that is well investigated both academically and by the popular media for decades, always assumed that it stemmed entirely from racist conservative whites' refusal to live anywhere near the presence of blacks, as though no other motivation could be found.

The leap here is that progressive cities like Seattle, Portland, and Austin are populated by people who "white fled" from more diverse areas. That's unproven, and problematic for many reasons. One, it ignores all aspects of diversity other than white-black, as has been stated. Two, it implies that white progressives who moved to those cities did so because they didn't want to be near minorities, which they don't even make an effort to prove. My experience among progressives in Boston is that they moved here from less diverse places, at least measured by the white-black axis this article assumes: western New York, suburbia up and down the northeast corridor, everywhere else in New England (particularly Maine), rural areas in the northeast.

Not to play diversity bingo, but I grew up in an N.J. suburb that was middle class, a mix of Jewish, non-Jewish Caucasian, and Asian, right next to a poorer city with a very different demographic mix. I moved to one of those 80+% Democratic "cool cities" where, guess what, my neighborhood is significantly more diverse economically and ethnically than where I grew up. My next-door neighbors on one side are Haitian (one floor) and Brazilian (the other), we're gay, our other neighbors are working-class white, our tenants are recent college graduates. That's been stable for the last 10-12 years, except for the tenants. This experience could be had in similar neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago, D.C., Oakland.

If we assume that the young college-educated white progressives some Republicans love to hate are to be considered racist because they gravitate toward cities with a small African-American population, remember that most of them grew up in suburbs which were similarly non-diverse, and as young people, are likely to move to places that are economically dynamic--not those which are stagnant, and which also tend to have suffered the most from middle-class flight of all racial backgrounds. If you wanted a job in the media or tech industry right out of college, you can't move to Cleveland and expect to find what you want.

The "cool progressives" aren't moving to Appalachia or the Dakotas, either. Are they afraid of white people?

I will reply to the bolded parts since they don't reflect personal experience, which is inarguable. But I will add my own personal experience: Three of the four people I knew in middle/high school who have since moved to Portland would have voted for David Duke in the 1991 LA governor's election if they were old enough. The two that moved to Seattle, OTOH, were standard liberal-minded whites.

Again, for the third time, white-black interaction was the one focused on because of the intractability of integrating  native-born, southern-descended black Americans. Not wealthy, professionally educated modern-day Asian immigrants, or Jews (who were discriminated against in housing and recreation, but not in employment), or Hispanics, who come in any race and can escape racial baggage unless they are identifiably Mestizo or Afro-Caribbean or can't master English.

And the argument the author of the paper noted was that white progressives move to progressive cities for the same reason that white conservatives, or even white non-politicals, moved from inner-cities in the Midwest to all-white suburbs or to sunbelt cities -- namely, to improve their own quality of life, however they defined it. Except that white progressives can do so without the demagoguery.

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That argument strikes me as circular: why is there middle class flight from these places now? Industrial decline doesn't fully explain it, since the progressive cities faced a similar industrial decline at the same time but aren't saddle with the same physical and demographic legacy that the old industrial cities do. Or the curious fact that cities that don't face terminal economic decline, but aren't identified as progressive, don't have a higher cachet, even when they better integrate their older populations, for ex. Columbus OH.

What I would like know is this: How can cities St Louis and Cleveland, let alone a Birmingham AL or a Jackson MS should develop, given that both have white-collar and professional employment, high- and street-culture, amenities like public transportation and sidewalks, yet aren't 'progressive', and don't have a means to evacuate their underclass?

[Storebought]

Ok, but I think Storebought is trying to make some point about why progressive whites are secretly racist.

No I'm not, like I would believe anything so simplistic.

I am curious that suburban white flight, a social phenomenon that is well investigated both academically and by the popular media for decades, always assumed that it stemmed entirely from racist conservative whites' refusal to live anywhere near the presence of blacks, as though no other motivation could be found.

So you deny the existence of white flight? Because the racial motivation of white flight rather obviously flows from how white flight is defined. Note that it is not argued that the rise of suburbs arises entirely from racist conservative whites' refusal to live near blacks. There could be other reasons for whites to move to the suburbs, such as the better socio economic status and more comfortable living quarters associated with the suburbs. But this ties back again into racism, because racism results in blacks being regarded as lower socio economic status. The point is that it is not just that whites who fled blacks are individually racist or conservative, but that the system, implicitly supported by all the individuals in it but not able to be changed by any particular individual, assign blacks a lower socio economic status. This of course remains true today. Crime is a part of it, but it's also a large part of the excuse.

At 55% black, DC is still a lot more black than the country as a whole. I mean, it's got both of the elements you are asking for; and it's also got in its suburbs the most prosperous African-American majority county in the nation by median income. Yet I remember in another thread you had nothing but trash to talk about it.

You're argument nearly strikes me as a strawman. How can I deny the existence of white flight? It's been repeatedly observed and I've acknowledged as such before.

But I say that the progressives' solution to that fact is an unsavory as the crude and obvious white flight of the 1960s. It still involves a kind of denial that those people even exist -- either by moving to cities or rural counties that are, in fact, whiter (in the non-Hispanic sense) than the US as a whole, or it means pricing the current residents out of wherever they happen to live currently through bourgeois real estate development. And even then, the latter occurs only in places the progressives deem worthy of development, because of interesting (if dilapidated) architecture or proximity to the refurbished downtown. Just because one happens here doesn't deny that the other isn't concurrent elsewhere.

[Beet]

Seattle, Portland and Austin haven't had the same industrial decline as Cleveland, St Louis or Birmingham. The latter cities are highly segregated. So even if they were meccas for young progressives, it would not automatically indicate high integration. Generally, the trend seems to be the more heavily industrialized the city was (including NYC) the more segregated. The fate of industrial cities was pretty much sealed decades ago and whether they are considered progressive or not in the future will probably end up being a consequence rather than a cause of their ability to revive themselves economically. The same was true of D.C.

[Beet]

But I say that the progressives' solution to that fact is an unsavory as the crude and obvious white flight of the 1960s. It still involves a kind of denial that those people even exist -- either by moving to cities or rural counties that are, in fact, whiter (in the non-Hispanic sense) than the US as a whole, or it means pricing the current residents out of wherever they happen to live currently through bourgeois real estate development. And even then, the latter occurs only in places the progressives deem worthy of development, because of interesting (if dilapidated) architecture or proximity to the refurbished downtown. Just because one happens here doesn't deny that the other isn't concurrent elsewhere.

Progressives' solution to white flight is to attack socio economic inequality generally. Absent explicit racism such as redlining or conscious refusal to live near blacks, it is economic inequality that causes the problems you speak of. It is no accident that blacks made some of their greatest income gains relative to whites during the New Deal era. It is true that even among progressives, not all are economically leftist. Not all believe in equality of result. During the 1990s and 2000s a lot of progressives shifted their focus away from economic issues. This turned out to be a mistake. Progressives are increasingly become populist as the economic suffering continues. Unlike the right, the left will focus on economic outcomes when they do become populist.

[Storebought]

But I say that the progressives' solution to that fact is an unsavory as the crude and obvious white flight of the 1960s. It still involves a kind of denial that those people even exist -- either by moving to cities or rural counties that are, in fact, whiter (in the non-Hispanic sense) than the US as a whole, or it means pricing the current residents out of wherever they happen to live currently through bourgeois real estate development. And even then, the latter occurs only in places the progressives deem worthy of development, because of interesting (if dilapidated) architecture or proximity to the refurbished downtown. Just because one happens here doesn't deny that the other isn't concurrent elsewhere.

Progressives' solution to white flight is to attack socio economic inequality generally. Absent explicit racism such as redlining or conscious refusal to live near blacks, it is economic inequality that causes the problems you speak of. It is no accident that blacks made some of their greatest income gains relative to whites during the New Deal era. It is true that even among progressives, not all are economically leftist. Not all believe in equality of result. During the 1990s and 2000s a lot of progressives shifted their focus away from economic issues. This turned out to be a mistake. Progressives are increasingly become populist as the economic suffering continues. Unlike the right, the left will focus on economic outcomes when they do become populist.

Again, none of this is any reason why white progressive choose to move to already wealthy places like Seattle and not to cities that could stand the capital investment, like the non-sunbelt Southern cities or practically any in the Midwest not named "Chicago." Or that progressive urban development entails a causal or at least coincidental decline of the populations that have made those older places strong candidates for white flight.

As for the New Deal improvement of black income levels: Yes, it occurred during the heyday of semiskilled employment, one which will never occur again. Especially not in the progressive cities, since the manufacturing apparatus is dismantled and that improving the dysfunctional public education system present in practically every US city that condemns every child passing through to illiteracy, doesn't stand as a concern for urban progressives.

[Brittain33]

Again, none of this is any reason why white progressive choose to move to already wealthy places like Seattle and not to cities that could stand the capital investment

Can we identify exactly who you are talking about? What is the presumption that progressives naturally bring capital to the table? Primarily they bring human capital in the form of their skills and educations, not financial assets, because we are talking about people just starting out in their careers. Unless they are willing to be entrepreneurs, and many aren't, moving themselves to a place without opportunity for them to practice their professions would only deplete their individual human capital with no benefit to the local economy.

[Mechaman]

Seattle, Portland and Austin haven't had the same industrial decline as Cleveland, St Louis or Birmingham. The latter cities are highly segregated. So even if they were meccas for young progressives, it would not automatically indicate high integration. Generally, the trend seems to be the more heavily industrialized the city was (including NYC) the more segregated. The fate of industrial cities was pretty much sealed decades ago and whether they are considered progressive or not in the future will probably end up being a consequence rather than a cause of their ability to revive themselves economically. The same was true of D.C.

Also, to go along with the topic of integration, so-called "progressive" cities like Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco are well above the national average for multiracial population proportions.   Out of a national total population of 7.0 million Americans who identify themselves as multiracial, 37% of that population lives in the Western United States, where many of the cities the author of this article calls "too white" are, making it by far the most multiracial region of the United States in terms of proportion of population.
Considering how fundamental racial integration is to progressive thought, I would say that would make alot of these places quite progressive.  If I used the same logic as the author here uses, I could very well conclude that, based on the research I gathered, that a lot of these "college educated white progressives" are moving to these places where interracial relationships are not stigmatized like they are in other parts of the country.
Just saying.