Demographics of woke white people

[Torie]

compared to the general population:
- way more likely to live in a top 20 US city (Hoboken)
- way more likely to be LGBT
- way more likely to donate to a politician or political organization then most people
- way more likely to live in an area thats voted D presidentially for decades
- way more likely to have gone to a university at all, or gotten a four year degree
- way more likely to exclusively get their news/information/political discussions over social media
- much more likely to work in media, entertainment, tourism or education
- much more likely to be from an "ellis islander" catholic or jewish family then other whites
- much more likely to have moved away from their home town or neighborhood
- more likely to have grown up "comfortably", regardless of parental economic situation
- somewhat more likely to live in an area thats gone from R -> D presidentially since 2000
- somewhat more likely to work in government
- somewhat younger(tbh probably average age in the 30s)
- somewhat less likely to have kids or be married then other people their age
- wealthier then the general population, maybe average or above average for whites

Hey, a rather uncomfortably high numbers of hits for me. I am at risk of going Woke. Sad!

[Torie]

Ethnicity matters less and less when it comes to the white urban elites. It was quite different when I started my career. And there has been a huge amount of intermarriage.

[Torie]

Ethnicity matters less and less when it comes to the white urban elites. It was quite different when I started my career. And there has been a huge amount of intermarriage.

Anecdotally, there is something generational going on in my Italian American extended family on my father's side. I had assumed that this pattern was idiosyncratic but maybe there is more to it.

All of my female cousins came out of college with extremely liberal opinions that they did not have going in, and they became prone to starting vicious fights with my aunts - all of whom are educated, professional women, but also all stereotypical conservatives in their political views.

These cousins, at once status-conscious in a way that makes them want to distinguish themselves from their parents' generation while also acting in a way that unmistakably reflects similar work ethic and attitudes toward ambition, have all moved to major metros, mirroring the move of my father's generation from their small Upstate NY hometown to once-thriving regional metros like Rochester and Syracuse.

Interesting. Is some of it that the salience of your  cousins'  ethnic heritage has largely waned away? May I ask what the small Upstate NY hometown was? Dan and I have visited a large number of them now as we trek the blue highways. Syracuse struck us a very sad looking place when we visited to get our vaccines. It seemed almost comatose. One of my major clients in Orange County California was an Italian family from Syracuse. They still owned something of a real estate "empire" in Syracuse - thousands of apartment units.

[Torie]

Interesting. Is some of it that the salience of your  cousins'  ethnic heritage has largely waned away? May I ask what the small Upstate NY hometown was? Dan and I have visited a large number of them now as we trek the blue highways. Syracuse struck as a very sad looking place when we visited to get our vaccines. It seemed almost comatose. One of my major clients in Orange County California was an Italian family from Syracuse. They still owned something of a real estate "empire" in Syracuse - thousands of apartment units.

There's the Catholicism and the food, of course, but also less obvious patterns of thought and behavior that remain consistent across generations even after more obvious ethnic shibboleths have faded. I don't have a firm thesis here but there seems to be something to how this intersects with modern politics and generational assimilation.

I have noticed it in other families as well and it even maps loosely into what is represented, albeit in heavily stylized and caricatured fashion, on The Sopranos.

To answer your second question, my father grew up in Dolgeville, former home of the Daniel Green Company and its shoe factory. There were also factories where workers manufactured piano parts and baseball bats with lumber brought down from the southern Adirondacks. If you have been through Little Falls, you have been nearby.

Sadly the trajectory of these small factory towns has been no better than that of Syracuse. As late as the seventies, even in the midst of pronounced economic decline, the community retained a lot of strength. My father and his six siblings all maintain that it was good place to grow up, but none of them stayed there and both my grandfather's grocery store and the small sauce factory that he operated are now long gone. There are few jobs, even fewer that pay well, and much of the housing in the village has become a Section 8 dumping ground.

Italians are never dull. Dan and I have not yet been on highway 29 west of Gloversville. We knew a chap whose family owned a glove making factory in Gloversvillle. Those jobs are now all outsourced to Indonesia. The wages may be low, but not low enough. Gloversville is a nice looking town however overall.