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By the way, I've never heard Canadians or Australians use the terms "white flight" but that doesn't mean the phenomenon doesn't exist in those places (some people still move away from neighborhoods new immigrants arrive at, because they don't want to be neighbors with them).
I would say that the West coast or California seems in between the east coast of the USA and Canada/Australia in some ways. In the east the long-standing racial tension or divide seems to be the white-black divide, and in Canada/Australia the biggest dichotomy seems to be white and non-white recent immigrant or white and aboriginal/native.
No matter how we try to slice and dice it, human nature is that all people simply like to live where they feel the most comfortable, secure, and safe. It is why we see some neighborhoods that are predominantly Italian, or Jewish, African American, white, or whatever. When people of other races and cultures move in the people there start to see things changing and many times decide to move somewhere else.
West Philly was that way for years and years, and when more and more blacks began to move in many of the long time residents didn't like what they saw happening, so the "flight" began to places outside the city, like Bucks County and surrounding areas.
It might have less actually to do with skin color than lifestyles. People of different races have different views on life and when you start mixing those different views it can lead to disharmony and problems........for example, some people may prefer a very quiet neighborhood and others might tend to be a little noisier and outgoing. If I lived in a nice quiet neighborhood and other whites moved in that were partying all the time and who didn't keep their properties up, I would consider moving too.
It will never change IMO, and it has less to do with race than it does with being comfortable with your neighbors.
Yes, I believe PBS did a program on this some time ago. I think we Americans are so busy with a microscope examining our flaws, we get this idea that other countries don't have similar problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markovian process
Part of why I mentioned the West coast (including California) separately is that though there are racial tensions, they seem kind of different and why I put Canada and Australia in a similar comparison is that these places all seem to have racial tensions where non-whites were more recent immigrants or transplants (eg. blacks in the Great Migration, recent Hispanic and Asian immigrants) rather than in the East where there was a longer history of black-white tensions and relations obviously which got more time to be institutional and thus more likely to have influenced the long-term urban landscape.
That's not to say there's no racism either, but it seems different out west in how the history developed.
The income segregation rather than explicit race segregation mentioned for Oakland actually reminds me of what people say for Canadian or Aussie cities -- that a poor neighborhood seems to be just seen as a poor neighborhood that happens to have immigrants or non-whites, rather than one that is specifically a white neighborhood, black neighborhood, Asian one etc.
That is not the case in Australia, from what I have heard from people who have visited there. The racism is towards the aboriginies, and also recent immigrants. From what my daughter told me, Australia does not have a "softer" type of racism than does the US.
Quote:
Originally Posted by markovian process
By the way, I've never heard Canadians or Australians use the terms "white flight" but that doesn't mean the phenomenon doesn't exist in those places (some people still move away from neighborhoods new immigrants arrive at, because they don't want to be neighbors with them).
I would say that the West coast or California seems in between the east coast of the USA and Canada/Australia in some ways. In the east the long-standing racial tension or divide seems to be the white-black divide, and in Canada/Australia the biggest dichotomy seems to be white and non-white recent immigrant or white and aboriginal/native.
I reiterate, I don't know where you get this idea that it's "softer racism" in these other countries.
FWIW, there is little overt racism here in Colorado, which may be why my daughter noticed it so much in Australia.
That is not the case in Australia, from what I have heard from people who have visited there. The racism is towards the aboriginies, and also recent immigrants. From what my daughter told me, Australia does not have a "softer" type of racism than does the US.
I reiterate, I don't know where you get this idea that it's "softer racism" in these other countries.
FWIW, there is little overt racism here in Colorado, which may be why my daughter noticed it so much in Australia.
I don't know much about Australia. However, Colorado, without much of a history of residentially segregated inner city neighborhoods like much of the northern US nor the discrimination of the southern US, is rather different from some other parts of the US. I'm familiar with the UK, primarily London. The feeling I got was that the locals were somewhat less comfortable of immigrants than Americans but there wasn't as much specific racism towards blacks: blacks were considered just another non-British immigrant group. The black-white intermarriage rate is much higher than the US, suggesting less social segregation*. Race and ethnic comments seem a bit less stigmitized there, as well.
Also, the topic of the thread is a "history of ethnic/racial tension in the US" affecting urban planning not current levels of racism in the US. Racial tension affecting cities was mostly decades, so levels of racism back then is what's more relevant. No other developed country besides the United States has poor minority areas with as high violent crime to the level of the US [not saying other countries don't have some issues, but the US is much higher]. As long as the poor minority ghettos exist, there will probably still be some racial stereotypes and tensions. No other developed country has a history of a large "native" former slave population, either. In some aspects, Latin America is a better match.
*If you think that's because there's a smaller black population, I don't think that's most of it. It's still substantial. London is 15% black, and metro-wide maybe 10%
Great info here, but wanted to clear a couple of things up. People from the West Indies came to NYC during the First Northern Migration and settled in the same areas as African Americans. NY at one time had more enslaved people of African descent than GA at one time and turn, there has always been Black communities concentrated in parts of NYC and other cities in the state.
There were west Indian immigrants to NYC in the early 20th century (including the parents of Colin Powell and the recent mayoral candidate Bill Thompson), but there are far more recent ones. And while there has always been a black community in NYC, it became far larger in the mid 20th century and later. This link claims that about 28% of the NYC metro's black population is foreign born, and more must have at least one foreign born ancestor so west indian immigration must be more recent. Though this fact from the link is obviously wrong, as the density is impossibly high:
The largest most concentrated Black population in America consists of more than 900,000 African Americans living in a 4 mile square area in the New York Borough of Brooklyn.
the west in general is not the same as other parts of the country. The poster you quoted mentioned that. You wouldn't find the same patterns of block busting, racial steering as much there.
the west in general is not the same as other parts of the country. The poster you quoted mentioned that. You wouldn't find the same patterns of block busting, racial steering as much there.
I'm not entirely sure about that. Even in western cities, there are "black" parts of town, where a majority of the residents are black. Ditto Hispanic parts of town. That's not to say that blacks and Hispanics don't live in other parts of town, as well. The big issue with blacks is that there simply are fewer blacks here in Colorado than say, Pennsylvania.
The income segregation rather than explicit race segregation mentioned for Oakland actually reminds me of what people say for Canadian or Aussie cities -- that a poor neighborhood seems to be just seen as a poor neighborhood that happens to have immigrants or non-whites, rather than one that is specifically a white neighborhood, black neighborhood, Asian one etc.
The Bay Area definitely has places I think of as "black" neighborhoods. In 1980, the following census tracts in Oakland were 80%+ Black.
And the majority of these tracts are contiguous in East Oakland. This was the Oakland from "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper."* The demographics look different now, but the same could be said of Harlem, where White gentrifiers, Hispanics and Asians are turning once black majorities in many census tracts into black pluralities.
So it seems that segregation (at least as it relates to blacks) was just as extreme on the West Coast. The difference is that there are so many more blacks on this side of the country. Prior to this last census, there were more Blacks in New York City than there were in the entire state of California. The NYC metropolitan area may have more Blacks than all of the western states combined.
*By 1990, the number of 80%+ tracts in Oakland decreased from 19 to 13. The 1970s and 80s Oakland is the one Mark Curry (and Too $hort) grew up in, but the 1990s Oakland is the one we saw on the show.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 03-19-2014 at 10:49 AM..
That is not the case in Australia, from what I have heard from people who have visited there. The racism is towards the aboriginies, and also recent immigrants. From what my daughter told me, Australia does not have a "softer" type of racism than does the US.
I reiterate, I don't know where you get this idea that it's "softer racism" in these other countries.
FWIW, there is little overt racism here in Colorado, which may be why my daughter noticed it so much in Australia.
I don't think there's too much overt racism anywhere (with a few notable exceptions like genocides and European soccer stadiums). I've been all throughout the Deep South and never has anyone said to me, "Shine my shoes, boy!" It's hard to judge racism if it's not directed at you anyway.
What's a bit different in the U.S. is a greater degree of segregation (some voluntary, some not). And that's largely because we've had two different American cultures developing parallel to one another since 1607: White American culture and Black American culture. In America, Blacks have a culture and identity that is extremely distinct (churches, music, food, national anthem, colleges, etc.). That's not really the case in England or France where there's much more assimilation (and the government actively promotes it in the latter).
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