The White City

[Beet]

How many people can really afford to choose the city of residence based on such a flimsy factor such as cultural "hipness" anyway?

Taken together, there are probably a lot more progressives in medium sized cities in Texas or Indiana than there are in Portland; there are probably more progressives in cities across Red America than there are in the five cities mentioned here.

[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.

[Beet]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

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.

Choose to focus on the speck and miss the larger picture if you wish to. If you're really concerned with the revival of declining industrial cities or the elevation of poor populations and black populations, it's not going to happen under the 'free market' neo-liberalism that passes for the status quo these days, nor will it occur inchoate tea partyism.

[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.

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.

Choose to focus on the speck and miss the larger picture if you wish to. If you're really concerned with the revival of declining industrial cities or the elevation of poor populations and black populations, it's not going to happen under the 'free market' neo-liberalism that passes for the status quo these days, nor will it occur inchoate tea partyism.

As opposed to what, exactly, hiring out these generators of white flight for internships at Apple?

By the way, this will be the last post of yours I respond to.

Lol, first of all, moving from one mostly non black area to another mostly non black area for economic reasons is not white flight. I'm afraid it hurts you that your fellow co-conservative whites historically flew away from blacks for explicitly racist reasons, and not just economic ones. If it makes you feel better to believe that liberals who move to Portland are racists too, go ahead.

And to answer your question, no, as opposed to investment in workers and their communities in the form of government led or sponsored industrial development, skills training and community development, rather than leaving them and their communities to rot away.

[Beet]

Lol, first of all, moving from one mostly non black area to another mostly non black area for economic reasons is not white flight. I'm afraid it hurts you that your fellow co-conservative whites historically flew away from blacks for explicitly racist reasons, and not just economic ones.

That's another definitional thing. Moving from Detroit and Philadelphia to Atlanta and Phoenix isn't what is commonly considered white flight. Lots of African-Americans have left the north for the Sunbelt since the 1970s, too. White flight is leaving a city for a suburb or a suburb for an exurb within the same metro area. Moving from Detroit to Livingston County, or Philadelphia to Chester County, would be closer to w.f.

Yes, because if you are white and stay in the same town your whole life, which is a predominantly white town, is that white flight? If you move across the street in this town, is that white flight? If you move across the town to a more upscale part, is that white flight? If you move to another town like it another state that is also predominantly white, is that white flight? Does it make your racist? Of course not. I'm not sure what Storebought is trying to do, he seems to deny that progressive liberals are racist ("I would never believe somethign that simplistic") and that white flight does not exist. But he seems to also imply that white flight is something progressive liberals do. Implication: white flight is not racist. That is the only logically consistent conclusion from the multiple positions he's taken.

The problem with this is that the phenomenon of white flight is clearly racially motivated. Otherwise, why would it be called white flight? To take race out of the white flight phenomena is effectively to deny it altogether, even if you claim it is not. This really should not be something that is so hard to accept.