Liberal Places/Conservative Places

[angus]

South Boston is very conservative.  Cambridge is very liberal.  Dorchester is economically liberal, newton is a bit more economically conservative.  Out there in Everett it gets more conservative too.  You can tell easily on the subway.  some parts of some lines have lots of folks reading the Boston Herald, other parts of other lines have lots of folks reading the Boston Globe.  Dead giveaway, usually.  

Also, don't confuse the terms liberal and conservative with Democrat and Republican.  These are not mutually orthogonal sets.  Also, don't confuse liberal and conservative (which have more to do with funding issues) with authoritarian (aka populist) and anarchist (aka libertarian), which have more to do with the so-called wedge issues.  Then there's the matters of Education and Defense, which do not necessarily correlate well with other measures of penny-pincher vs drunken sailor spending.  

For example, Pittsburghers vote like economic liberals, but are big authoritarians on the social issues.  On the contrary, Losangelinos vote like economic conservatives (especially out in the county) but like libertarians on social issues.  It's rather more complex than the question permits.

[angus]

Libs,

How about Flint MI?
Austin TX,
Portland OR,

Cons,

San Diego CA,
Mobile AL,
Cobb Co, GA

I never been to Flint.  I'd guess that bad weather makes people a bit more socialist.

Lived in Austin, but never felt like I was surrounded by socialists.

Been to Portland.  It's more Dyke, butch/bulldyke, than liberal.  Nice place.

San Diego is great, beautiful climate.  With such a strong naval presence, I could see how'd you would misinterpret it as conservative.

Haven't spent much time in Alabama or Georgia.  My guess is that it's full of poor blacks who are economically liberal for sure.  Fortunately they don't vote.

[angus]

Flint is populist (very poor, very rundown, very leftwing)

pretty much what was in my mind's eye.  thanks.

[angus]

There's a place called Gore, Illinois that is very conservative and a place called Bush, Illinois that slightly less so.

[angus]

as far as i know walworth county where i live has never voted democratic in a presidential election.
sounds conservative to me

What about when the Democrats were the Conservative.  

That's part of the reason it is so faulty, historically inaccurate, and generally detrimental to understanding political culture to say Democrat=Liberal and Republican=Conservative.  For example, most people I work with are Democrats.  Most people I work with also consider themselves more conservative than I, and are usually taken aback when I proudly inform them, when the question arises, that I support our President.  

GOP is the nationalistic party.  It has been so since its first national convention in Pittsburgh in 1856.  The democrats are best defined relative to that.  Whatever the current alternative to nationalism is.  First it was regionalism, or sectionalism.  Later it was imperialism (though the gop has its share of imperialists).  Nowadays it is internationalism.  The fundamental nature of the republican and democrat parties HAS NOT changed.  The people they attract come and go, but the defining characteristic does not change.  

It is not surprising, therefore, that a Republican county in Wisconsin has stayed Republican.  Though I suspect a serious search might turn up a time or two when their nationalism, though not shaken, might have given way to more pressing concerns momentarily.

[angus]

First of all, let's be clear about our language.  Segregation means that the law has imposed a separation of people by race.  While this took place in the south, it did not take place in Boston.  Segregation does NOT mean that different races of people are not spread around evenly, to the liking of everybody.

This is inaccurate.  We all know MA was the first US state to abolish slavery, in about 1781, so it may come as a surprise that it was the last major city in the US to desegrate it schools.  Perhaps surprising, but true.  You are probably thinking of the Roberts v. Boston case of 1848 where a black student sued over the right to attend white schools.  A city ordinance passed in 1845 said any child "unlawfully excluded from the public schools" could recover damages, so little Sarah Roberts was allowed to quit her 'colored' school and attend a 'white' school so the city wouldn't be sued.  

In 1896, Chief Justice Shaw's conclusions in Roberts v. Boston were cited before the U.S. Supreme Court in the now infamous case, Plessy v. Ferguson. "Separate but equal" became the law nationwide. The court ruled that as long as equivalent facilities were provided, classification by race was not an abridgment of a person's rights.  It seems clear that Shaw did not intend this to be the legacy of his decision, but it was!  In the 1850s, state courts were reluctant to intrude on the function of the legislature.  Shaw recognized the injustice of segregated schools.  However, he believed the Roberts case did not raise any constitutional issue on which he could rule.  He also believed social injustices could not be remedied by the Court.  In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court believed so as well.

Meanwhile in Boston, while integration remained the law, the reality was far different.  Settlement patterns established over generations resulted in rigidly segregated ethnic and racial neighborhoods across the city.  The result was de facto school segregation. By the 1960s, this pattern of racially segregated school districts was consciously being sustained by white city officials and voters.  Black parents again turned to the courts.  In 1974, under a federal mandate, Boston once again began the process of integrating its public schools.

Thus, fully twenty years after Brown v. Board of Education, black folks in Boston required a federal court decision to permit them in Boston's white-only schools.  I'd say it is entirely accurate to posit that desegration was very late coming to Boston city schools.

[angus]

Oakland (CA)

yo mang, whatup

west coast in tha house

why y'all always be callin us liberal



Berkeley?   Yeah, that's a socialist's nearest port in a storm for sure.  Not quite cambridge, not even, but definitely liberal in the classic sense.  Primo weed around berkeley, too.  On economics and socioeconomics, they're downright authoritarian.  make no mistake about that.