This influx of affluent whites has pushed the earlier black and Hispanic groups out into the suburbs. How are white suburbanites responding, if they aren't part of the movement back into cities? They're moving further and further out into the exurbs.
But why? It's not like the earlier white flight, given how low crime is these days. Sure, it's still higher among their new neighbors, and moving further out would bring them into lower-crime areas. But it's not the huge gain that it would've been 30-40 years ago. Particularly if the newcomers are Mexicans, whose crime rates are not even at black levels to begin with.
What about the newcomers' kids fucking up the local schools? That would certainly worry the parents of school-aged children, but would probably not get picked up by the radar of everyone else. It should only be the former group moving out, whereas it seems like everybody is packing up.
Fleeing diversity and its fragmenting effects on trust, in search of greater similarity and cohesion? That's more like it, but why is it the resident whites who are leaving, rather than the non-white newcomers? Is the white suburbanites' homogeneity that easy to perturb toward disintegration?
You wouldn't see that in the other direction, with suburban whites invading and driving out suburban Mexicans — other than by paying more money for rents, goods, and services. The Mexicans aren't going to move out just because they sense a creeping up-tick in the level of diversity with all these white newcomers. They're going to make it known that they aren't going anywhere, and that whites aren't welcome.
And not necessarily in a violent or confrontational way. All it takes is them refusing to learn or speak English, refusing to participate in mainstream American culture, refusing to display American cultural symbols, etc. And then proudly displaying their own.
Whites are a lot more wimpy about asserting their ethnic or cultural identity. I don't mean in some cosplay Nazi style, but in something as simple as playing rock music out of their car windows or on their front porch, walking around the neighborhood, and hanging out in its public spaces — particularly in groups. That would give them a group-y physical presence that would not feel palpable if they kept to themselves indoors most of the time, occasionally going out for a jog alone or walking the dog alone.
To the outgoing go the spoils. If you look around a diverse area today, you'll see that Mexican parents are more willing to let their kids hang out on their own, and that the grown-ups are more likely to be hanging out in the public areas of a shopping center instead of pulling right up in front of their destination, darting in and out, and taking off back home. Even where they may be a numerical minority of private residents, their public physical presence can be much greater.
This line of thinking may also explain why some white suburbs haven't been so thoroughly affected as others. The introverted Scandinavian weenies in Minnesota and Wisconsin have gotten slammed a lot harder by all the black newcomers from the Chicago area over the past 20 years. They're just going to keep moving further and further out.
The working-class suburbs of Boston and New York (who can't just out-bid the non-whites) have fared much better, compared to the rest of the country. You can always rely on the garrulous
Public life is part of the pastoralist culture of honor that the capable defenders are adapted to, whereas retreating into the private domain of the family is more what large-scale agriculture selects for, outside of urban dwellers (and you let the culture of law deal with any problems that may arise). Naturally the Nords are going to have a tougher time driving outsiders back out, compared to the Celts.
Blacks and mexicans cocooned just as much. I think its more that, as you said, during low-crime times misanthropes(not necessarily minorities) take over public spaces. When you do go out in public spaces nowadays, it can be depressing.
ReplyDeleteThe minorities want to be near us...that's why every place we go, they are just behind by a few years. We're supposedly racist, but they will take advantage of everything we've got. Like Curtis said, I think cocooning has affected everyone, with whites even more so.
ReplyDeleteOne thing - white people don't listen to rock music anymore, so they're not going to blare it either out of their cars or on their tinny computer speakers at home.
ReplyDeleteThere are more mundane reasons for why immigrants spend time outdoors. It's because they appreciate the safety and good sidewalks and streets of this country. It's a pleasure for a Mexican or Indian immigrant to go for a walk outside in America. They're not necessarily trying to send a message.
Nordic Americanos seem to have less of an identity compared to the (British based) mainstream of White America than Boston Irish or Italians, who are more of a curiosity, so you'd kind of expect them to not band together as a community for that reason (small groups conscious of their difference have asabiyah).
ReplyDeleteIn terms of personality, based on personality surveys, the Midwest seems to self classify as extraverted, agreeable, self controlled and emotionally stable, while the Northeast classifies as disagreeable, introverted, uncontrolled and emotionally unstable. The emotional instability fits a bit with stereotypes of neurotic, anxious, excitable, indirect Meds and Celts, compared to calm, stoic, direct, stable Nords.
Being more anxious, impulsive, irritable and suspicious, thus being fight prone and having a sense of being in a unique community could help explain a greater community response. You wouldn't just let the fight go and move on.
"white people don't listen to rock music anymore"
ReplyDeleteMaybe the dorky Millennials don't, but Gen X and Boomers do. They're the ones who own homes and make up most renters.
"They're not necessarily trying to send a message."
Aren't trying, but still are. The wimpy white who runs away from them doesn't care what the motivation is -- a bunch of Mexicans hanging out at the shopping center is reason enough to pack up and not look back.
On the whole, you make valid and interesting points. But one thing missed is that the current generation of black youths is less violent and criminal than the prior two generations were. Also, Hispanics are more integrated into popular culture than they were 20 years ago. That's far more pronounced in some areas (Florida, for example) than in otherse.
ReplyDelete"so they're not going to blare it either out of their cars or on their tinny computer speakers at home."
ReplyDeleteI didn't say "blare" I said "playing," along with other "simple" "displays" of their group identity. You're trying to make it sound like whites would need some apocalyptic uprising and in-your-face intensity to make outsiders feel unwelcome. I.e. the "cosplay Nazi style" that I also clearly said was not needed.
"Aren't trying, but still are. The wimpy white who runs away from them doesn't care what the motivation is -- a bunch of Mexicans hanging out at the shopping center is reason enough to pack up and not look back."
ReplyDeleteWhite people are just assortatively collecting into like-minded groups. Middle class folks moving to the exurbs is part of the same trend of liberal and conservative minded people concentrating together or people of the same income quintiles living in proximity. Call it cocooning, call it evidence of white America "Coming Apart" or whatever, but this is just one piece of that larger trend.
By the way, why would middle aged X'ers and Boomers be playing their radios loud with the windows down to begin with? Isn't that something that young people did back in the day or that young blacks in the inner city still do now?
Finally, the major immigrant groups today are pretty inoffensive, and that's part of the reason why the white backlash has been so weak outside of areas like the Southeast. Mexicans don't commit violent crime at high rates and mostly keep to their own. Hispanics are not politically active, vote at low rates, and aren't forming radical political groups like Eastern Europeans did a century ago. South and East Asians commit crime at lower rates than whites and likewise are politically disengaged. If we had a wave of Mexican riots in this country like Watts and other incidents in the 60's, it'd be a different picture.
"White people are just assortatively collecting into like-minded groups."
ReplyDeleteIn reality, this is what was happening during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, when the crime rate was rising and people were frequenting public spaces. the 60s was not a social collapse, as many believe, but the creation of new social groups and institutions; the collapse happened decades earlier in the 30s.
Another social collapse happened in the 90s.
When I think "exurbs", I don't think Minnesota/Wisconsin. But perhaps that's just me. I decided to some googling and found a page with data on exurban growth in the 2000s here.
ReplyDelete"You wouldn't see that in the other direction, with suburban whites invading and driving out suburban Mexicans — other than by paying more money for rents, goods, and services"
As the second half of your sentence acknowledges, one group of people tends to drive up property values. White flight goes hand-in-hand with declining property values. You generally don't flee as your neighborhood gets more desirable to live in.
There were some Mennonites living near my neighborhood for some time (at least I think they were Mennonites). The women would go out jogging in a group wearing three quarters length jean skirts and polo shirts. Sometimes one of their men would join them, and he would wear full length pants and a full sleeved button down shirt.
ReplyDeleteIt made quite an impression on me as I was walking alone with my dog or when I driving by.
I grew up in Upper Darby, a suburb of Philadelphia. In 1980 Upper Darby was 99% white. by 1990 it was 93% white and 4% Black , 3% Asian.
ReplyDeleteToday it is 57% white, 27% Black, 11% Asian and 4% hispanic. Amazing how fast it changed after 1999. Among school age children the demographics are now just 50% white.
in 1970 Upper Darby high School was among the top 10 high schools in Pennsylvania, Today the school ranks in the bottom 10% of Pennsylvania schools. Tina Fay and Jamie Kennedy were born and raised in Upper Darby.
while property taxes in Upper Darby have soared along with the crime rate, property value have collapsed with the changing demographics. Unfortunately my mother still lives there, and has watched as the value of her home falls every year. They never even had the property boom seen across America a dozen years ago. Property values have been falling since 1990.
It was different from the white flight of the 50s, whites did not flee Upper Darby, but they stopped moving to Upper Darby. Most of the whites who remain are over the age of 55 and their children having moved away. Those with children have moved to nearby suburbs where the taxes are lower and the schools are better. Many of the boomers are stuck there, as their home values are below 1990 levels.
The bottom line is that America is changing every day. This is no longer a white country. People of all races commit crimes. Upper Darby had a high inflow of Mexicans, Indians, and Latinos in the past 3 years. They litter, don't cut the grass, and hang clothes in front of the house to dry. The Latinas and Mexicans are taking over this country. They will be the majority in 20 years making it impossible for us to flee anywhere...
Deletehttp://www.phlmetropolis.com/2011/10/black-exodus-part-three.php
ReplyDeleteThe history of Upper Darby's race relations is a delicate subject. George Burell, who moved to Upper Darby 10 years ago, recounts "Upper Darby used to be one of the most prejudiced places ever: if you were a black guy who walked through there, the white guys would kick your butt!"
funny, but true. Upper Darby had a lot of Biker Gang activity , the Warlocks, during the 70s and 80s. They would intimidate outsiders. But most of the Biker kids ended up in prison for drug offenses, another reason for the change in demographics. The enforces were put in jail.
While Upper Darby borders West Philly, which was 100% black when I was growing up, it always surprised me how white it was in the 70s, since it was 100% Black 1/4 mile away in West Philly. I asked my dad why they never came into our neighborhood, he told me they had warned them not to be in our town after dusk. And the men back then were not afraid to back up their warnings with action.
@Jova, Yep. It's gotten to the point that I don't want my wife going to Upper Darby without me and my Glock, even in broad daylight.
ReplyDeleteMore generally, it's become wired into the culture that the Scandahoovian Is Always Wrong and Usually Nazi in a conflict with a vibrant. Just last week, I got into it with some black thuglet wandering up and down my cul-de-sac with his pants around his knees. I had never seen him before and knew he didn't live there. He didn't like me watching him, so he started running his mouth and making ghetto chest-puffing gestures. I told him to get lost before I called the cops and after some more posturing he did. Ten minutes later, one of my neighbors, the nicest churchgoing German-American grandmother you could want to meet, came down to see me. Turns out Master Thuglet was her teenage grandson's friend, lived a couple of blocks away, had a "difficult" home life (as in, cops get called to the house every other week, no father to be found, very likely Section 8 although I didn't ask), and he was "hurt." Uh huh. The unspoken subtext was, "Don't be raciss." And if there's anything we northwestern Europeans are good at, it's conforming to social norms, no matter how stupid or counter-productive they are.
Just imagine that happening 30 years ago. This 15-year-old kid didn't like the 40-something homeowner watching him from his own front porch while his kids played in the front yard. (Talk about asserting your cultural dominance over your neighborhood...) So he decided to lip off and when that didn't get him a display of submission, he started making chimp threatening gestures to make me worry that he'd try to kick my ass. (I had probably 75 pounds on this kid.) If I'd done that to someone my dad's age when I was 15 (in the late 80s), I'd have gotten an ass-kicking from the guy I mouthed off to, and then another one from my dad. My neighbor completely got that if it had been her grandson that acted that way, he would have been the one in the wrong. But Master Thuglet was a magic Negro.
Multiply across every neighborhood in America (and see also Zimmerman, George, evil White Hispanic), and you can see why the Nordic types have concluded that, just as a barrel of sewage plus a bottle of wine is sewage, so a bottle of sewage plus a barrel of wine is still sewage.
Between the white heroin addicts and the crazy Chinese people serving us whatever foods. We all should take flight..
DeleteIt is surprising to see it occur in Upper Darby, which was dominated by the Irish for 100 years. When I visit my mother, it is hard to believe 20 years ago it was just 4% Black.
ReplyDeleteit is unfortunate that my parents and grandparents never moved out and still own homes there. I remember trying to get my parents to sell in the 90s, after me and my sister and moved away. My mother did not want to move, wanted to stay close to her parents and friends. That decision cost them plenty.
The problem with agnostics summary, the crime rate does in fact jump when they move in and the taxes go higher, and the school system declines quickly. So white flight remains the proper response. I suppose towns like Upper Darby can no longer exist in America, can't have a white suburb on the border of a large city anymore, unless they keep the average home price above $650,000 and thus keep out the middle class whites along with keeping out the blacks.
Scandinavians weren't large scale agriculturalists, they were fishermen and Vikings. Mexicans were on the other hand.
ReplyDeleteScandinavians weren't large scale agriculturalists. Mexicans were though.
ReplyDeleteWe could stay and fight but unfortunately your "army" wouldn't be large...at least until shit hits the proverbial fan in this country. But we're still too comfortable now. My girlfriend was actually in Upper Darby yesterday...small world. She pretty much echoes her fellow Philadelphians in this thread.
ReplyDeleteThen there's this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/04/i-was-racially-profiled-in-my-own-driveway/360615/
Flip the relative socio-economic status, same problem: How dare this cracker cop think I might be the guy he's looking for? (See also Henry Gates of beer summit fame, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, the list goes on.)
80s revival in commercials:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/04/the-commecial-allure-of-the-eighties.html
http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/Swedish%20Farmers%202.jpg
ReplyDelete"why would middle aged X'ers and Boomers be playing their radios loud with the windows down to begin with? "
ReplyDeleteRead the comment just above what you wrote, moron. I skip over comments from people who routinely flunk reading comprehension.
"And if there's anything we northwestern Europeans are good at, it's conforming to social norms, no matter how stupid or counter-productive they are."
ReplyDeleteI think conforming to social norms isn't the problem, but whether those norms come from a culture of law vs. a culture of honor. The law easily scales up infinitely high, whereas honor tends to remain rooted at the local level, and is hard to budge it up to the regional, national, and international level.
So, when the elite / removed / abstract norms go in a way that doesn't make sense at the local level, people who are more law-minded will go along with it -- counter-productively.
Honor-minded folks will regard those norms as out-of-touch, and keep right on with their honor-based norms, which will tend to be local. That would seem to be why the Irish around Boston and the Italians around New York are faring better with blacks moving out into the 'burbs, compared to the Nordics in the Upper Midwest.
Nordics are also way more likely to *invite* further immigration from those groups.
Places like Boston , New York , San Fran will fare better because the property values are significantly higher than in Philadelphia, making it near impossible for even upper middle class Blacks to move into white areas.
ReplyDeleteIn Upper Darby it started with middle class blacks, but although Upper Darby was more Irish than Boston , they are fleeing, Just as they left West Philly when the blacks took over in the 1950s.
The demographics are tougher in Philly, which became 50% Black in the 80s , while in Boston Blacks never exceeded 25% of the population. The Irish in Boston would be leaving if the black population started to approach 50%, but the high cost of property will prevent this from occurring in Boston.
Interesting that more people have been murdered in Philly over the last 10 years than during the decade of the 70s or 80s. More people killed in Philly than New York City over the last decade also. It is not a coincidence that Philly had almost 0 immigration from Latin America , while NY has had significant immigration of Latinos
Of course there were Swedish farmers, but there were even more Italian farmers. And the Irish didn't herd potatoes.
ReplyDeletePlease please please stop referring to nonwhites/darkies/ethnics/aliens as 'minorities'! You're playing right into the hands of the hostile elite. Also a horrible word. Whires are a minority of the world population.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the social norms that lead to letting Diversity kick Whites out come from an alien group in charge of the housing laws and the media?
ReplyDelete