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I think people in Portland and Seattle are just speaking blindly without having any idea or experience on how it is to live with African Americans when they make remarks about being open-minded and colorblind. If the Pacific Northwest started attracts lots of blacks and the black population in the area began to increase tremendously; it would be a completely different story.
agreed. they talk about all this acceptance but most of those people would die if their neighborhood started turning black. having been to 26 states so far, i can say the most minority accepting region is the south. that's one thing northerners and people from the west will never admit though mainly because they're ignorant and fake. they want to be seen as progressives only if they're not bothered with the problem personally. god forbid their town turns black but it's ok if a place other than theirs does.
I am going to be honest. I am black. I lived in Durham all my life. I've lived in Chapel Hill and I've lived is Raleigh. The black population in durham (15 minutes outside of raleigh) is doing its thing. WOP WOP!
I agree.
I also think there's at least a grain of truth in the OP, even though the article doesn't present the full picture either.
Here in the Triangle - the 4 primary cities - Raleigh, Cary, Durham, Chapel Hill - each have a distinctly different racial vibe (I'm black, by the way), even though they all claim to be progressive. And they are - a lot moreso than is the norm across most of the South.
I think Durham is really the place where non-white (NOT just black) communities are really developing in some great ways. I have black, Asian and Latino friends in Durham, and things just seem really vibrant. There are very serious issues in Durham as well, which should not be minimized, but it's a city full of very thoughtful people from a lot of backgrounds.
Diversity in Chapel Hill is a little weirder. Chapel Hill is pretty loud-mouthed in asserting it's progressivism - it's hip, it's multiculti, it's green, it's gay-friendly, it's awesome ... if you have money. It's also very insular, elitist - it's pretty much turned into North Carolina's response to Marin County: the kind of place that loves everyone and everyone's ideas, but 70% of the in-town workforce can't afford to work here, and I don't expect that will change anytime soon. You have to question how genuinely any town values the ideas and identities of people it claims to love, while pricing out: a progressivism that is decorative, not deep. Due to the compressed nature of Chapel Hill's real estate market, this will not improve.
I think similar kinds of forces - real-estate compression in particular, do combine with the fact that many of these "creative class" star cities (SF, Seattle, Portland) have traditionally lower non-white populations to begin with. This doesn't apply (not as much, at least) if you have lots of $, and you fit into a certain demographic niche (you're a hipster, artist, techie, geek, barrista, academic, indie rocker, grad student...); outside of that you may not fit in (or be able to buy in and then fit in) quite so well.
agreed. they talk about all this acceptance but most of those people would die if their neighborhood started turning black. having been to 26 states so far, i can say the most minority accepting region is the south. that's one thing northerners and people from the west will never admit though mainly because they're ignorant and fake. they want to be seen as progressives only if they're not bothered with the problem personally. god forbid their town turns black but it's ok if a place other than theirs does.
They probably wouldn't care, as long as they keep up the property and home values. I'm black myself but when we start moving in a neighborhood it normally goes downhill.
I still dont see how having large black populations make any city progressive. African Americans are often not progressive themselves (same with any race). So Africans Americans dont like the Pacific Northwest overall, is that a huge deal?
agreed. they talk about all this acceptance but most of those people would die if their neighborhood started turning black. having been to 26 states so far, i can say the most minority accepting region is the south. that's one thing northerners and people from the west will never admit though mainly because they're ignorant and fake. they want to be seen as progressives only if they're not bothered with the problem personally. god forbid their town turns black but it's ok if a place other than theirs does.
Location: Austin, TX/Chicago, IL/Houston, TX/Washington, DC
10,138 posts, read 16,041,021 times
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Austin is not an Anti-Anything city. The stereotypes for cities like Austin, Boston, San Francisco, Portland, Denver, Seattle, & Other cities like that are overplayed. They are hip, trendy, and liberal places and they aren't anti anything. Saying they are based off demographics is illogical.
For the record I have lived in 2 of the cities mentioned above and been to them all besides Seattle. So I am qualified to speak on it as an Asian American Minority.
I think people in Portland and Seattle are just speaking blindly without having any idea or experience on how it is to live with African Americans when they make remarks about being open-minded and colorblind. If the Pacific Northwest started attracts lots of blacks and the black population in the area began to increase tremendously; it would be a completely different story.
You act as if no one in Portland or Seattle has ever met a black person before or ever lived in area with a lot of black people...or that the only minorities that exist are black people.
a) A huge section of the population of both cities are transplants from larger and more diverse metros like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc...
b)In recent history(since the 1940s) both cities had predominantly African-American neighborhoods located near the center of the city. These areas have recently become gentrified--and become less black, due to the recent inflx of upwardly mobile transplants, which has pushed many poorer residents into the cheaper suburbs--which isn't unique to PacNW cities.
The neighborhood I live in Portland--even after the recent gentrification of the area is still about 30% black. Portland and Seattle have historically had small black populations, but the current percentages are similar to other large western cities...Seattle is about 8 percent black and Portland is about 6-7 percent black, but Los Angeles itself is only about 10 percent black at this point, while San Francisco, San Diego and Denver are each about about 7 percent black. Due to emigration trends from the South, except for a few places like Oakland, there are very few places in the West that really have black populations as large as the South or urban centers in the Midwest or Northeast. But the largest minority populations on the West Coast are obviously going to be Hispanics and Asians, both of which have increased throughout the Northwest in the last 20 years.
Would it make a difference in Portland or Seattle if there were larger black populations? Yes, but does it really make a difference that the mostly white hipsters in Brooklyn in Williamsburg are living in an adjacent neighborhood to the largely black Bedford Stuyvesant area and other parts of Brooklyn? Or that hip liberals in Los Angeles live in trendy Silver Lake in the midst of largely Hispanic neighborhoods. It's the same demographic as the stereotypical liberals in Portland...
And anyhow I live in Portland and I spend a lot of my time in Seattle, and except for the general liberal-by-default talk about tolerance, it's not as if most people walk around talking about how "color-blind" we are... Should we judge Atlanta for statiscally not having high numbers of Asians and Hispanics?
And anyhow I live in Portland and I spend a lot of my time in Seattle, and except for the general liberal-by-default talk about tolerance, it's not as if most people walk around talking about how "color-blind" we are... Should we judge Atlanta for statiscally not having high numbers of Asians and Hispanics?
Even though I'm generally pretty down on Seattle, the fact of the matter is that the place is one of the least inherently-racist places I've ever been. The place is predominantly white by a very large margin, but seems way more diverse than it actually is due to the fact that Seattle is dominated population-wise by culturally-mindful white folks who are absolutely happy to dabble in other cultures, no matter how under-represented they actually are in the area. It's probably more inclusive in terms of mindset than San Francisco, all things considered.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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That's stupid, why should Portland and Minneapolis have lots of blacks if there were hardly any blacks in those regions to start with? It's not like they have laws banning black folk, if they want to go they will, no one's telling them where to go.
That's stupid, why should Portland and Minneapolis have lots of blacks if there were hardly any blacks in those regions to start with? It's not like they have laws banning black folk, if they want to go they will, no one's telling them where to go.
Lord, wth are people getting that we are saying Portland and Seattle should have large black populations?????
I guess as an African American; I see things differently.
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