Cities White People Like
As always, I’m late to the conversation about Aaron Renn’s post at The New Geography, probably because my better judgment tells me that blogging about race is something I should simply avoid. Reihan and Ta-Nehisi Coates have staked out two hermeneutic poles, with Reihan at the wonkier end discussing preferences in housing wealth accumulation and Coates (there’s that damn first name/last name blogger’s conundrum again — having never met nor exchanged tweets with Mr. Coates, I’ll default to the last name but defer to his preference if it matters) steering the debate toward a more personal scale.
For those who haven’t seen it, Renn’s post argues that self-described white urbanists have claimed all the cachet of urban living without any of the social or political challenge by gathering in enclaves like Portland and Minneapolis — places that turn out to have suspiciously small black populations:
This raises troubling questions about these cities. Why is it that progressivism in smaller metros is so often associated with low numbers of African Americans? Can you have a progressive city properly so-called with only a disproportionate handful of African Americans in it? In addition, why has no one called these cities on it?
Renn is using a rhetorically convenient definition of “progressivism” here, since it means a particular combination of fussy transportation policies and land use regulation, not left-leaning politics as generally understood. He has stacked the deck in other ways (whites manage to self-segregate quite well in larger metros, for instance, and how, exactly, would one “call these cities on it?”), but it’s the source of his resentment that I find interesting. At the risk of putting a lot of words into his mouth, I think he’s implicitly claiming that any American cultural experience is inauthentic if it fails to reckon with the presence of African-Americans, not as victims, but as members of a shared history and culture. He’s reminding white Americans to check themselves before settling for any cultural accomplishment that excludes blacks, who, as James mentions in citing Sullivan, are quintessentially American in even the most reactionary sense. You could make the case, for example, that we have seen the Front Porch Republic and it’s full of black people.
I like Coates’ response to Renn, and respect his admonition to resist dragging blacks into what is, at bottom, a political and aesthetic argument among whites. I’d prefer to live in a country that lets Denver be Denver, in his words. But let’s cut Renn some slack. There are still white people out there trying to reckon with America’s racial heritage as a story of black people living as ‘something apart, yet an integral part.’ He’s part of a tradition of well-meaning whites scolding one another for the gaps in their definition of “American.” Sometimes this comes off as tendentious, sanctimonious, and patronizing (remember Sasha Frere-Jones’ idiotic claim that Stephin Merritt was a bigot for not liking Outkast? ). Other times it’s just awkward (see “Mellencamp, John”). But a lot of white guys — especially Southern white guys — who had to read The Invisible Man in high school took it to heart and still feel under its authority. They try to thread the needle between self-segregation and PC condescension, and if they fail, I hope they try again.
So here ends my foray into writing about race. Now go read Renn’s roundup of crazy utopian homesteading in Detroit.
So Renn is wondering if you can claim the mantle of ‘progress’ without striving with and domesticating some poor indigenous black folk.
Progressivism: where the wan want to own you, where treating black people like ornamentation happens.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 26, 07:14 PM · #
KVS,
Yeah, that’s the ungenerous read. I’m proposing a more charitable take on his motivation.
— Matt Frost · Oct 26, 07:17 PM · #
Having grown up in Oakland and lived for decades in Seattle and now Madison, and been both a migrating ex-college student and a parent, in my experience young white people move to the most feasible “cool” city after college. So, if you are a young white ex-college student, I think you would want to move to some place that has stuff you like. I don’t think you ask yourself: “hmmm, will I be helping the cause of racial harmony by moving to Seattle? Maybe I should move to Detroit.” That would be pathologically ernest. I did know young white people that moved to oakland, but they didn’t move there to be part of the black experience, they moved there to be punk rock anarachists. And I moved to Seattle (from Montana where I was dabbling in college) becasue its was the nearest “cool” city where I knew people. Plus it had a an OK music scene. THEN….. Nirvana became popular and suddnely it was THE NEXt MUSIC SCENE and all kinds of young white people flooded into the city. And then people noticed this and started business that catered to all the young white people, thus making the city even more attractive and everyone emailed their friends and they all came too (which was one big reason why I left).
As a parent, however, when you think about moving some place you have to consider schools. And unfortuately, this means you have to—consciously or unconsciously—consider the city’s socio-economic make-up, which usually inclueds race. Because quality of school tracks pretty well with the socio-economic make-up of it’s students. You don’t actually have to even think about race or poverty and just look at some kind of rankings and say, “no thanks, I don’t think I will move to Flint.” But race/poverty and school are intertwined in the US.
So to answer Renn’s (where’s Stimpy?) question: progressivisim is associated with certain young whitish cities because young white people like progressivism so whereever they congragate, progressivism tends to spring up. And I don’t really think—in my experience at least—that many black people are that into progressivism. And the idea that you would “call” a city on it’s lack of black people as if something as complicated and dynamic as the racial composition of a city is something that can be manipulated by—politicians? Young white people? parents?, is silly.
— cw · Oct 26, 07:34 PM · #
You’re a better man than I, Frost — I can call you Frost, right? Reading Renn was almost enough to make me a self-loathing white guy. My takeaway (ventriloquizing Renn): “A sea of black dudes is the sine qua non of my lily white collectivist dreamscape.” And that’s even before I started thinking about the stupidity behind his “must all diversity look alike” anxiety.
Our new moral aesthetes are a bunch of hand-wringing nancies, no? Jesus Tap Dancing Christ. If I were a black dude, I’d tell Renn to go fuck his condescending self — which is basically what TNC did, which is why I love the guy.
Anywho, thanks for posting it. I hadn’t known anything about it, and most importantly, I cherish any opportunity to grandstand online with barely contained pique. Hey-oh!
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 26, 07:42 PM · #
I still don’t get this.
Minneapolis has a really large Somali population.
Last time I checked, isn’t the knee-jerk complaint that white urbanists gentrify urban neighborhoods from ethnic high-social-capital communities into a landscape of conspicuous consumption? From a corner in SF’s The Mission:
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-sf2p/v364/3/22/1949255/n1949255_45968507_7332.jpg
This is the exact opposite argument, that white people like living in cities for the lack of non-white people (which is not true of almost every major American city), no? That argument just strikes me as completely wrong except for a few cherry picked examples (Portland).
— Mike · Oct 26, 08:04 PM · #
As usual, Rortybomb is correct. And the use of “cherry-picking” is the only necessary argument against Renn: he’s manipulated the data so nakedly and distortingly that I’m amazed that anyone is taking it seriously at all. Yes, surprise surprise, if you except New York, Los Angeles, and Washington DC from your data, and make flatly untrue statements about the “progressivism” of cities like Atlanta, you can come up with crazy stuff! Amazing.
Progressivism: where the wan want to own you, where treating black people like ornamentation happens.
Not usually, no, but if it did, tokenism is still better than segregation. Conservatism: where fighting tooth and nail against improving the material conditions of minorities happens. Ah, but when liberals talk about race in broad, crude strokes, it’s playing the race card. When conservatives do it, it’s brave truth-telling, like how only the right is brave enough to insist that the only racism there is in this country is anti-white racism.
But let me guess, the fact that the black vote for Democrats is the most reliable in American politics, and that black people vote for Democrats in some of the largest percentages in American politics, is because, like, we’ve hoodwinked them, or something. For 40 years. Without exception or significant variation. Right.
— Freddie · Oct 26, 11:54 PM · #
Yeah, let me take another moment to — as the weasels say — “distance myself” from Renn’s shoddy thesis. I’m expressing a sentimental affinity, not empirical agreement.
— Matt Frost · Oct 27, 01:57 AM · #
Not to defend Aaron, he can do that himself, but he is writing this from a discussion of urban navel gazing that takes place in the Midwest (and to be honest, if you aren’t from a Midwest metro, this is a discussion that may be entirely foreign to you). This is a rust belt discussion, in which white flight, middle class flight, brain drain, and old white ethnic debates are still at play. It tends to revolve around issues like the building of streetcars and various comparative battles when Midwest metros try to show that they haven’t been left behind. At the center of lot of the metros narratives is the riot of the 60s (or for Cincy – 00s), which seemed to mark an unfixable break in the urban narrative. Boosters of these towns get tired of defending themselves from the coasts best represented by Portland, which may explain where Aaron is coming from.
— David Merkowitz · Oct 27, 03:37 AM · #
Freddie, haven’t you noticed yet that I’m not a conservative?
It’s like, I slap a bitch, and to get even the bitch slaps some random guy’s sister. That’s cool with me, but not terribly effective for the bitch.
Plus, some of my best friends are bitches.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 27, 03:42 AM · #
David Merkowitz,
I’m a midwestern transplanted, and nothing makes me roll my eyes more than listening to people in San Francisco talk about how much nicer Portland is.
That said, St. Louis is gentrifying something intense. I can double check what neighborhoods I’ve visited where I have (mostly white) friends who bought amazing condos really cheap (Benton Park?) and where bars/restaurants/nightlife has moved in, but St. Louis has had a major influx of whites into minority neighborhoods, even African-American ones. And in Chicago, Logan Square/Humboldt Park/Pilsen has had major influxes of whites into those hispanic neighborhoods.
There are a lot of cities, and I’m sure some are still experienced white flight or haven’t seen a new influx of whites into minority urban cores – I don’t know the rust belt cities very well – but I don’t think that’s representative for many places.
— Mike · Oct 27, 08:40 AM · #
Affluent black people gentrify too.
— Freddie · Oct 27, 12:56 PM · #
“Not usually, no, but if it did, tokenism is still better than segregation.”
Honky bullshit at its finest.If I was a black person I’d have more respect for a white person who wants to avoid me than one who pretends to think I’m equal and worthy.
— mike farmer · Oct 27, 01:55 PM · #
mike,
If you were a black person I bet you’d also have some thoughts on white people who claim to know how they’d think, if they were black, about other white people.
— Matt Frost · Oct 27, 02:16 PM · #
No, Matt, I only know how I’d think if I was a black person, based on what many blacks have told me about phony white people. I assume I would think like them, because it makes sense to me.
— mike farmer · Oct 27, 05:05 PM · #
Mike, forget about whether you’d be black or white. Just ask for yourself: which you rather be occasionally included in professional or social situations in which you would otherwise not be if not for your race, or would you rather have a systematic and totalizing regime of oppressions prevent you from achieving a whole host of aspects of human flourishing?
— Freddie · Oct 27, 05:07 PM · #
You have to understand I live in a city which is 60% black and my neighborhood is 80% black. Most every black person I know has told me they prefer honesty. Big surprise, huh? Honesty — who would have thought it?
— mike farmer · Oct 27, 05:08 PM · #
Pick me, pick me.
Okay, here’s my answer. I’d rather kill a man than be his uncle tom. I’d rather fight the system until it collapsed, or I died, than wait around like some grateful bitch for my master’s scraps from the table.
Seriously. I’ll include myself or I won’t, but I’ll be damned if I’ll allow myself to ‘be included’ by some lesser being’s pity. If it’s between that and exclusion, I’ll take exclusion, a gun, a book, and a cause.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 27, 05:28 PM · #
If I am allowed to assume that men from other races have mind and spirit and virtue and quality, then I would expect them to answer the same way. If not, then not.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 27, 05:39 PM · #
freddie, somehow playing this game where you frame the alternatives seems a little rigged — forgive me for my suspicion. Would you rather a group of well-meaning aliens anal-probe you with good intentions, or would you rather have a pack of wildebeest tear the flesh off your bones? Huh? Huh? Answer THAT, big shot?
— mike farmer · Oct 27, 06:13 PM · #
I’m not sure what Sargent is saying but it seems he is saying that were he black, he’d prefer segregation to our status quo. Because, I guess, it’s worse for someone to be on the company flier because he’s black than it is for him to be forbidden from working there in the first place because he’s black. It takes a really breathtaking kind of privilege, I mean a really massive sense of entitlement, to think that way, to pretend that you’d rather be at risk of lynching than be at risk of an unearned promotion. I’m wondering if perhaps I’m meant to think that the people who had struggle for decades for equal rights should have said “No thanks” to the Voting Rights Act because, like, some white people were being a little too nice about it all. Or something.
It is, of course, only possible for people who have had the great fortune to not live under systematic oppression and denigration who could think to romanticize it.
Now you can gussy it up with all this talk of being a soldier for a cause and other self-felating narratives all you want, but these are the salient facts: the white power structure of the United States was forced to make a choice. It was forced by people, black and white, who had through a series of breathtaking hardships and at great personal risk insisted again and again that the country’s people look at the nation’s history from the end of the Civil War on, a history that constituted horrific oppression in the best of times and active genocide at the worst. And that white American power structure eventually voted to try and end this horrific and criminal situation. This decision was fought, tooth and nail, by conservatives, but eventually the day was won.
In the prosecution of this seachange in the way than an entire country treated a whole race of people, we have had lots of failures, lots of half-measures and lots of missteps. And sometimes, the attempt to end racial discrimination has resulted in some distasteful and self-defeating attempts to include black people. Racial tokenism is distasteful. It should be avoided. To suggest that it is anything like as awful and destructive as the endemic racism that this country was once host to demonstrates an absurd lack of moral imagination.
The suggestion was made upthread that it’s liberals who are guilty of tokenism. I actually find this to be a cross-ideological spectrum, and you can look at the Republican party website and Michael Steele’s hamhanded efforts to court black voters for evidence. Again, I’m uncomfortable with it. But these people don’t fail because they don’t care about racial minorities. They fail because they do. Yes, you can draw out your absurd analogies and pretend that someone wanting to live in a more diverse neighborhood is the equivalent of asking racial minorities to be “bitches at the table.” But that’s just tough, empty talk from someone who has never had to live under the yoke of genuine racial oppression. In a perfect world we’d have both racial equity and racial reconciliation, without pandering or condescending to anyone. American politics doesn’t do perfect, though, so we make do as we can, and yes, unfortunately, sometimes that leads to tokenism. But if the alternatives are that or the world of Emmett Till, segregated schools and “We Charge Genocide”, I’ll take the former, and gladly.
— Freddie · Oct 27, 06:24 PM · #
Objections to what farmer and Sargent are saying seem a bit strange — it’s not like we don’t know that minorities very often self-segregate anyway, so at least empirically you have to back them on the “segregation over tokenism” argument (and personally I’d go that way too).
But what I’m not liking is the way they argue it relies on what attitude they’d rather deal with from The Man, and I think that’s not entirely, or even predominantly, it. This kind of discussion tends to elide the fact that the minority is in fact culturally distinct and that’s not just some kind of deficiency (and, it sure as hell isn’t from the minority’s perspective). So opting for segregation in that case isn’t a negative (screw them guys) thing but a positive one: you end up in cities with a lot of blacks/Koreans/Indians/whatever you are because it enables you to continue to access certain cultural commonalities to which you want access: music, ethnic groceries, language, whatever. The token minority has a hard time keeping connected to that.
That’s also the issue with the idea that in one case the system is keeping you down: yeah, but in the other it’s making it difficult to gauge the validity of what you have accomplished. Meanwhile it’s hard to “flourish” in some of the particular areas that might be important to your ethnic community and you personally. It’s kind of a wash.
Some ass will read this comment as a defense of segregation, of course.
Hm. Freddie thinks Renn is misusing an ethnic trope to make a point. I think I’ve seen that somewhere recently.
— Sanjay · Oct 27, 06:28 PM · #
Are you all really getting your panties in a bunch over a guy who said people get “urban cache” living in Portland fucking Oregon?
— Tony Comstock · Oct 27, 06:28 PM · #
I think it’s obvious, though, that Freddie is absolutely right. There’s nothing more to discuss on this topic,so, please turn to Chapter 5 and let’s being our next discussion.
— mike farmer · Oct 27, 06:39 PM · #
It takes … something … to say that Sargent is saying he’d prefer segregation to the status quo.
— Sanjay · Oct 27, 06:45 PM · #
Nah. Make jokes about it, maybe. But romanticize a cause, find meaning in a struggle? Hell, even humans do that.
@Sanjay
I can see how you would interpret me that way, but that’s not what I was saying. The Don might be a nice well-meaning guy, but I won’t take his charity, and I won’t be Bonasera with his hat in his hand.
The Man can pity me all he wants, I’m just not going to cash in. Insofar as he stands in my way, I’ll fight. Insofar as he holds all the cards, I won’t play his game. And insofar as I can, I’ll forget about Him entirely and carve out my own existential realm, where I can serve and protect me and mine, with nary a thought for what other people think.
Which, of course, the hunchback hairdresser says makes me a self-fellating scion of uberwhite privilege. And a romantic!
What a funny little man, no? Like a drivetime vagina prophet with ED.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 27, 09:58 PM · #
I guess, to update Rawls, my irrationality at turning down charity would be considered an existentialist’s primary good, if, ahem, we’re allowed to don an existenzphilosophie before we retreat behind the veil.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 27, 10:20 PM · #
Tony attempting to dismiss Freddie by unrelated trivialities: check.
Sanjay’s argument by assertion (and feigned authority): check.
Sarcastic dismissal by Mike Farmer: check.
Actually addressing Freddie’s argument in an intellectually honest way: unobserved.
Yes, it’s another thread at the American Scene, home of the internet’s most intellectual conservatives!
— Chet · Oct 28, 01:43 AM · #
Stupidest commenter arrives … check.
Still no take on that $5K bet, Chet? Because if you really think I make up authority, well, you can prove it. Or maybe you’re proving that you’re full of it.
C’mon, Chet. Expose my fakery and win big money.
— Sanjay · Oct 28, 03:17 AM · #
Although calling for an “intellectually honest” discussion of Freddie’s comments which start with the idea that Sargent is praising the virtues of segregation over the status quo, is dumb even for you, Chet. Congratulations!
— Sanjay · Oct 28, 03:29 AM · #
OMG! He copied my post…and turned it back around on me! That’s so amazingly funny and witty and original! ZOMG! How clever and smart you must be!
Sanjay, there’s no way in hell a barista has that kind of money to lose, and I wouldn’t want you to have to sell off your action figures. But, you know, keep talking about it like it proves something, Internet Tough Guy. I appreciate that this is the only forum you have to pretend you’re better than anybody.
— Chet · Oct 28, 04:54 AM · #
Chet, why is it that Sanjay can understand that my barb was aimed at him, but you think it was aimed at Freddie.
One answer pops to mind (that Sanjay is smart and you are stupid,) but there may be other explanations.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 29, 01:08 AM · #
I guess I don’t understand, Tony. How smart do you think you have to be to recognize your own words? I’m sure Sanjay was able to successfully put pants on this morning, as well. Is that to be taken as further evidence of his apparently expansive intellect? Seems like you’re setting the bar a little low.
— Chet · Oct 29, 06:42 AM · #