Which city on the West Coast has the strongest Black presence (populations, difference)
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So the nearly 1 million blacks in the Los Angeles area are invisible? The Crenshaw District doesn't exist?
As long as the criteria is not clearly defined all we can have are opinions. As long as we are comparing one city to another that 1/10 its size we will be speculating. Nothing wrong with that. But lets call it what it is.
The point 18Montclair was making is that you don't have to go to a certain part of town to see black folk in Oakland... You see us all over the city.
Not to mention the gangster/West Coast rap style started in LA.
That is debatable. Too $hort, while born in L.A., started his Rap career in Oakland in 1983, a year before Ice-T and at least three or four years before N.W.A. Too $hort was the first notable California rapper and he reps nothing but Oakland. In fact, N.W.A. were highly influenced by the explicit raps of Todd Shaw and it shows from the raunchy subject matter of their lyrics to their often bass heavy beats.
Uhhh, Los Angeles by a few miles. What a question. Any question that has "capital" and "West Coast" in it will will automatically be Los Angeles except maybe technology.
The LA area still has more than 1 million black people for now, while Oakland has only 100k and fast declining. Not to mention the gangster/West Coast rap style started in LA.
While LA has far more blacks, Oakland's black population in terms of percentage is far greater. Although diverse, Oakland is still an African-American city.
Actually, Tacoma(in terms of cities of 100,000+ people) has the largest Black presence in the Pacific Northwest. Suburbs such as Lakewood, Spanaway, Federal Way, Tukwila, Kent, and Renton also have sizeable Black presences. Renton was the one time home of Ken Griffey Jr.
Dude get off it. There are no black people in Seattle. And let's be real, Tacoma is basically a suburb of Seattle. I know people think of it as a seperate city, but when calculating MSA, they also include Tacoma's population. That's like saying Atlanta and Stone Mountain should be considered separate. Makes no sense.
Seattle just doesn't have a black populaion. Black people live there, but trust me you can be in Seattle for a reasonable amount of time and never run into black people. Unless you go to the small pockets they hang out in, but that's true for any city. Seattle black population is incredibly low.
Dude get off it. There are no black people in Seattle. And let's be real, Tacoma is basically a suburb of Seattle. I know people think of it as a seperate city, but when calculating MSA, they also include Tacoma's population. That's like saying Atlanta and Stone Mountain should be considered separate. Makes no sense.
Seattle just doesn't have a black populaion. Black people live there, but trust me you can be in Seattle for a reasonable amount of time and never run into black people. Unless you go to the small pockets they hang out in, but that's true for any city. Seattle black population is incredibly low.
Dude get off it. There are no black people in Seattle. And let's be real, Tacoma is basically a suburb of Seattle. I know people think of it as a seperate city, but when calculating MSA, they also include Tacoma's population. That's like saying Atlanta and Stone Mountain should be considered separate. Makes no sense.
Seattle just doesn't have a black populaion. Black people live there, but trust me you can be in Seattle for a reasonable amount of time and never run into black people. Unless you go to the small pockets they hang out in, but that's true for any city. Seattle black population is incredibly low.
I agree. Why is Seattle even on this poll? Seattle has always ranked as one of the whitest big cities, if not the whitest, in America. Seattle's black population has always been very low. Even San Francisco was a whole lot blacker than Seattle not too long ago. San Francisco was closer to a fifth black in the 70's at an all time high of 16% of the city. The southern half of SF was more like 25-50% black in certain areas and neighborhoods in the 70's, 80's and early 90's. But San Francisco has seen the most dramatic drop in its black population of any big city in America over the last thirty or forty years. Surprisingly, SF's Hunter's Point district had the highest concentration of black-owned businesses and black owned real estate in the entire state of California in the 80's.
But Oakland definitely is the most black city on the West Coast. Even though Oakland is not majority black anymore, Oakland is much more culturally black, as a whole, than San Francisco or any major West Coast city. Los Angeles is more dominated by Chicano culture as a whole. When people think of L.A., they think of lowriders, Dickies workwear, Chuck Taylors etc. These are cultural facets of a largely Mexican-American Los Angeles culture that is even present in L.A.'s black community which is much less widespread in the Bay Area. Even the more diverse areas of Oakland have a strong aura of blackness in culture:
Dude get off it. There are no black people in Seattle. And let's be real, Tacoma is basically a suburb of Seattle. I know people think of it as a seperate city, but when calculating MSA, they also include Tacoma's population. That's like saying Atlanta and Stone Mountain should be considered separate. Makes no sense.
Seattle just doesn't have a black populaion. Black people live there, but trust me you can be in Seattle for a reasonable amount of time and never run into black people. Unless you go to the small pockets they hang out in, but that's true for any city. Seattle black population is incredibly low.
I lived in the heart of Seattle and saw black people everyday. I worked for two large pnw Fortune 500 companies and worked with blacks everyday. If you live in Mill Creek you will see far less black people.
I think once a city or metro gets past a certain number of people(like 800,000+) I think once it gets to that level, percentage doesn't matter as much. If greater LA has a million+ Blacks, and they only make up like 10% of the population, does that really negate LA's Black presence?
Especially if Blacks have already left their historical, and cultural, marks on the city. We see this with South Central, and all the middle-class neighborhoods like Baldwin Hills, Leimert Park, etc. These are still some of the most famous, if not THE most famous middle-class to affluent predominantly black neighborhoods in the US. Plenty of black megachurches for Black actors, athletes, etc. Plenty of Black shows and films take place in LA. And Mayor Bradley was one of the 1st Black mayors of a large US city, and was mayor in LA for many, many years.
And South Central was historucally one of the largest predominantly black geographic city districts in the nation. At this point, percentage doesn't mean all that much. Think of it this way, even the blacks in the blackest states in the nation percentage wise, are still dwafed by the White population.
That is debatable. Too $hort, while born in L.A., started his Rap career in Oakland in 1983, a year before Ice-T and at least three or four years before N.W.A. Too $hort was the first notable California rapper and he reps nothing but Oakland. In fact, N.W.A. were highly influenced by the explicit raps of Todd Shaw and it shows from the raunchy subject matter of their lyrics to their often bass heavy beats.
He's originally from New Jersey too(Ice-T that is).
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