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To be fair Providence was like 3% Black in 1960. It’s not like the city was black and the suburbs were white. I wouldn’t be shocked in some random town like Bristol or Cumberland had a higher black population proportion than Providence proper sometime in the 1930-1970 range. I do agree about the Midwest (and to an extent Boston) which has big black populations in the 1940-1970 range.
Several Boston area banks were found to be illegally colluding to keep blacks and Hispanics out of suburbs in Mass and Rhode Island in 1992/1993. It was a pretty big deal actually and really opened up suburbs in the area after 1994. Public housing wasn’t even desegregated in Boston until 1989…
Like i said the suburbanites of the St Louis/Milwaukee areas is predominantly white and for both cases settled by German Lutherans and Catholics and for the latter's case Poles as well. Just go to Millstadt in the Metro east and Germantown in WOW counties.
Detroit really isn't a surprise not showing up on the least white since while it has a large black percentage, it has a low Hispanic and Asian percent. But if you also included "white (non Arabic)", Detroit's white percentage would go down significantly as close to 10 percent would be Arab, which for the most part are classified as white and seemingly that group still is marking white for census purposes (unlike Latino/Hispanics which made a huge shift in classifying themselves from white, or black in the case of Afro-Latinos, to multi-racial).
There is no metro that is even close to Detroit when it comes to Arabs. I believe on a percent basis for 1 million-plus metros, Cleveland, Boston or Chicago would be next but only at about 2 or 3 percent of the total compared to Detroit which if it isn't already at 10 percent, it's closing in on that.
Edit: FWIW, here is a clear example of Arabs mainly marking white. Would you consider Dearborn, Michigan, to be an overwhelmingly white city? It's upward of 40 percent Arab, yet when looking it up on the 2020 census, the numbers show that it is 86 percent "white alone" and only 2.5 percent Asian, 5 percent multi-racial and 1.3 percent other.
There are likely quite a few metro areas where the white population is a little inflated by the inclusion of Middle Easterners (to a lesser degree than Detroit, of course). Some of the major source countries of immigrants in Nashville, for example, are Iraq (Kurdistan) and Egypt, as confirmed in ACS data. Many parts of the United States - especially midsized to large metro areas - are indeed far more diverse than their perceptions often suggest.
Several Boston area banks were found to be illegally colluding to keep blacks and Hispanics out of suburbs in Mass and Rhode Island in 1992/1993. It was a pretty big deal actually and really opened up suburbs in the area after 1994. Public housing wasn’t even desegregated in Boston until 1989…
You specifically said during the first wave of suburbanization. Which is not true. Both Providence and the suburbs were overwhelmingly what during both the Initial wave (1920-1930) and the initial GI bill wave (1947-1957). Boston had a significant black population but still much smaller than most Midwestern places.
“White flight” as existed in Detroit did not really happen in Providence because there were not enough Black people.
Even today outside the Deep South, Segregation is basically a measure of what % of the minority population is African American. Which is why SF Bay, Sacramento and Seattle with mostly immigrant diversity is integrated. Boston, NYC, Washington are in the middle and The largely Black/White Midwest (and Buffalo) tops almost every list
Last edited by btownboss4; 01-03-2022 at 05:46 PM..
To be fair Providence was like 3% Black in 1960. It’s not like the city was black and the suburbs were white. I wouldn’t be shocked in some random town like Bristol or Cumberland had a higher black population proportion than Providence proper sometime in the 1930-1970 range. I do agree about the Midwest (and to an extent Boston) which has big black populations in the 1940-1970 range.
I believe Newport had a higher black percentage than Providence, but don’t quote me on that.
Actually, I just found out that Newport was 7% black in 1900 and Providence was about 3% in 1910. So, that may have been the case for a while.
I do wonder what the racial demographics would be if you took out St. Charles County out of calculation for St. Louis. Even St. Louis county is only 62% white and that’s the primary suburban county of St. Louis.
Also, while Milwaukee does have that white suburbs, diverse city thing going on, a lot of older-ring suburbs like West Allis are rapidly diversifying. The northwest section of the city and suburbs is all majority black nowadays as well, which wasn’t the case in the 1990s. Milwaukee county, which has the city of Milwaukee and some pretty white suburbs is less than half white.
Also, The Twin cities used to right there with Pittsburgh in terms of most white metros.
Here is the % of non-hispanic white population for each of the metropolitan areas in the top 10.
Whitest Metropolitan Areas in America:
1. Pittsburgh 82.1% white
It's a bit crazy just how white the Pittsburgh area has remained. Even smaller upper-midwestern cities that were close to 95% plus white in 1990 like Sioux Falls, Fargo, Grand Forks, Rochester, and Cedar Rapids are at or below Pittsburgh's percentage as of 2020.
It's a bit crazy just how white the Pittsburgh area has remained. Even smaller upper-midwestern cities that were close to 95% plus white in 1990 like Sioux Falls, Fargo, Grand Forks, Rochester, and Cedar Rapids are at or below Pittsburgh's percentage as of 2020.
Lots of refugee resettlement in the Upper Midwest.
You specifically said during the first wave of suburbanization. Which is not true. Both Providence and the suburbs were overwhelmingly what during both the Initial wave (1920-1930) and the initial GI bill wave (1947-1957). Boston had a significant black population but still much smaller than most Midwestern places.
“White flight” as existed in Detroit did not really happen in Providence because there were not enough Black people.
Even today outside the Deep South, Segregation is basically a measure of what % of the minority population is African American. Which is why SF Bay, Sacramento and Seattle with mostly immigrant diversity is integrated. Boston, NYC, Washington are in the middle and The largely Black/White Midwest (and Buffalo) tops almost every list
1. You picked one point of things that I said…
2. This is true for places on this list not named Providence…
3. What I said still applies to why the suburbs are less diverse in the Boston CSA
4. Your last point isn’t entirely true because- Los Angeles exists and a place like Washington is much more African American than Buffalo. Same for a number of sunbelt metros like Charlotte and Atlanta.
5. Doesn’t really matter if African Americans were there at the time people broke out for “country day schools” just outside city limits, at least not so far as I can tell- those redlined area were still where they had to move and live upon their arrival into said cities. The dynamic of impoverished/immigrant/southern migrant here and wealthy/wasps there had been lo NY established. Whereas in the west there was less time -if any- to establish those sort of patterns.
Ultimately the difference in housing style/density in city vs suburb is more pronounced in older cities like Buffalo St Louis and Providence than it is in Atlanta or Las Vegas. You living in the city implies a lot more than it does there. The old, dense, housing stock is where minority concentration have been confined whereas you go a place like DC or LA and that’s not the case. City matters because it implies a lot of things when you say “Providence teens” people already have an image of who that is- and they’re not white. Now seeing as all of Rhode Island is Providence metro…saying “Rhode Island teens” conjures a pretty different mental image.
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