City demographic stats that don't jive with outsiders' perceptions

[photoLith]

Talking about Chicago demographics, I was just there and drove all over the city. The Latino neighborhoods seemed pretty nice and I didn't feel any tension or anything walking around them. However, I went to some of the black hoods and I didn't walk around very long and got called racist slurs because I guess Im just a whitey. Its also fascinating to look at shooting maps of Chicago compared to the demographics map. The lines of where the vast majority of violence happens is only in the black neighborhoods. You talk to conservatives and think the entire city is a war zone, when that clearly isn't the case. Sadly, its mainly confined to only the black neighborhoods and unfortunately, this is the case in nearly every city in America.

chicago-1280x0-c-default
https://www.thetrace.org/2018/12/gun...ting-map-data/
Every shooting thats happened in the past ten years in Chicago

Dot_Density_County_Maps_15_1
http://andrewgaidus.com/Dot_Density_County_Maps/

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I would say that Detroit is the outlier. St. Louis is very much in line with Cleveland, demographically speaking. OTOH, very few central cities in the U.S. are more than 60% African American (almost none above 80%), and there is no other city in America that was ever above 1 million in population AND over 60% black at the same time. I think people are surprised that Detroit city is so overwhelmingly black.

yeah, nowhere else in the north was white flight more thorough, or more starkly drawn along municipal borders, than it was in metro detroit.

in all other major cities in the north, white flight was certainly a giant demographic shift as well, but it typically targeted specific sides or sections of a given city, not the whole city in its entirety.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Do visitors see Toronto as a "very white city"? I've only ever heard the opposite, which would make sense given that the residents of the downtown areas that they're likely to visit are fairly diverse, plus being that it's a city centre it draws from the (very diverse) regional population. Overall, Inner Toronto is about as white as Manhattan.

The few parts that are overwhelmingly white are pre-war, inner-ish but not-quite-core neighbourhoods like the Kingsway, Beaches, and Leaside, which don't otherwise see too many visitors.

In general though, while there are some pretty clear patterns of segregation it's still a bit different from most US cities. There isn't so much a "white" half of the city and a "non-white" half as there are mixed areas where white people live and mixed areas where white people generally don't live. I think that map also exaggerates dominant groups though - just from looking at it you wouldn't get the impression that Scarborough is still 25% white, for example.

Regarding Toronto as a city visitors see as "white"... I think that depends where those visitors are from.

I've found that some Americans find Toronto to quite "white" because they generally stick to downtown and while people from all over the metro area (and all over the world) are in downtown Toronto, "white" people seem to slightly predominate there. Keep in mind that in many American cities "downtown" is surrounded by a very large inner city African-American population and in many of them when you're walking around half or more of the people around you are often black. Not so in Toronto.

Downtown Toronto is definitely a United Nations type of place but I have to say as a Canadian from a metro area that's about half as racially diverse as Toronto is, the downtown of that city doesn't feel unfamiliar to me at all in terms of the types of people you see, and not to my kids either who are used to romping around downtown Ottawa and Montreal.

What we don't have in my area that Toronto does is reasonably large swathes of the city and metro (outside of downtown, and also in some suburbs) which are predominantly - if not exclusively - populated by people of specific visible minorities.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by photoLith

Its also fascinating to look at shooting maps of Chicago compared to the demographics map. The lines of where the vast majority of violence happens is only in the black neighborhoods. You talk to conservatives and think the entire city is a war zone, when that clearly isn't the case. Sadly, its mainly confined to only the black neighborhoods and unfortunately, this is the case in nearly every city in America.

yes, like many other US cities, chicago's street violence problem is overwhelmingly concentrated in the city's predominately black neighborhoods.

i can't find the source right now, but i remember reading in a newspaper article a while back that black males between the ages of 15 and 35 make up ~4% of the city's population, but account for over 60% of its homicide victims.

it's crazy imbalanced. and it's been like this for going on 6 decades now.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

yes, like many other US cities, chicago's street violence problem is overwhelmingly concentrated in the city's predominately black neighborhoods.

i can't find the source right now, but i remember reading in a newspaper article a while back that black males between the ages of 15 and 35 make up ~4% of the city's population, but account for over 60% of its homicide victims.

it's crazy imbalanced.

Sadly, things are similarly disproportionate in certain Canadian cities like Toronto and Ottawa. (Even if the stats don't obviously line up perfectly.)

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The West Coast is thought of as the Chinese mecca, but there are more Chinese in NYC metro than anywhere on the planet outside of Asia. NYC, overall, is more Asian than popularly perceived, and less Italian and African American than popularly perceived. Everyone knows about Flushing, but South Brooklyn, in particular, is becoming Asian plurality (or majority?) outside of the Jewish enclaves.

I would also add that Chinese in south Brooklyn are undercounted even if you look at the numbers, and even if they show the area is majority Chinese. A lot of them live in illegal basement apartments, or in illegal subdivisions, so I suspect they don't answer any official censuses or surveys. On the other hand, Italian-Americans are overcounted.
I'd be interested to look at my block on the 2020 census. There is only one Italian-American family left on the block, and I think on the last census it was still majority white. Now its a mix of Chinese, Jews, and Hispanics.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Do visitors see Toronto as a "very white city"? I've only ever heard the opposite, which would make sense given that the residents of the downtown areas that they're likely to visit are fairly diverse, plus being that it's a city centre it draws from the (very diverse) regional population.

Toronto's core is very white compared to major U.S. city centers, but probably not compared to major Canadian centers. Obviously in the U.S. blacks and Hispanics tend to live near the core. But it's probably more accurate to say Toronto's core is white-Asian (which in the U.S. cultural context basically means white).

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Overall, Inner Toronto is about as white as Manhattan.

I doubt that. Manhattan is majority nonwhite (albeit barely). The AA and Latino populations are higher than national averages. The former city of Toronto, especially the core parts along Yonge, are quite white, and WASP-leaning. The largest nonwhite groups are Asian.

And core NYC, unlike core Toronto, has a ton of subsidized housing mixed into luxury neighborhoods, so you have sizable poor and minority enclaves within the richest neighborhoods.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by photoLith

Sadly, its mainly confined to only the black neighborhoods and unfortunately, this is the case in nearly every city in America.

Kinda surprised someone from California would have this conclusion.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Gantz

I would also add that Chinese in south Brooklyn are undercounted even if you look at the numbers, and even if they show the area is majority Chinese. A lot of them live in illegal basement apartments, so I suspect they don't answer any official censuses or surveys. On the other hand, Italian-Americans are overcounted.

Well, yeah. I mean, anyone who has taken the N or D train recently knows the demographic changes in South Brooklyn. Of course there are still Italians, but the trains appear to be 80% Chinese folks.

Have you seen 18th Ave. or 86th Street lately? There are 10 Chinese businesses for every Italian one. A high proportion of the Italians are elderly.

[photoLith]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Kinda surprised someone from California would have this conclusion.

Huh? Im not from California.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by photoLith

Huh? Im not from California.

Oh ok, I thought Oakland referred to California.

[Crawford]

I should add that the Italian community seems to be trying to stabilize its presence. They just built a major community center in Bath Beach (south of Bensonhurst), and there are still tons of restaurants, bakeries, salumerias and the like.

But clearly they aren't the predominate ethnicity in South Brooklyn anymore, excepting Dyker Heights. If you look at the Streetview of the new community center, there's a Guatemalan restaurant across the street, on the other corner is a Russian wedding hall about to be demolished for condos by a Chinese developer, and on the last corner is an apparent Mexican party space called "El Padrino Eventos".

https://www.google.com/maps/place/18...3!4d-73.988993

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I doubt that. Manhattan is majority nonwhite (albeit barely). The AA and Latino populations are higher than national averages. The former city of Toronto, especially the core parts along Yonge, are quite white, and WASP-leaning. The largest nonwhite groups are Asian.

The innermost 7 wards which best approximate "core Toronto" (population 752,000) are 65.3% white. According the US census bureau, 64.4% of Manhattan's population is white (though 18% of those are white Hispanics).

And core NYC, unlike core Toronto, has a ton of subsidized housing mixed into luxury neighborhoods, so you have sizable poor and minority enclaves within the richest neighborhoods.

Did you really think NYC is the only city with subsidized housing? 164,000 people live in TCHC housing, while there are 400,000 in NYCHA + 235,000 in Section 8 housing.

Proportionate to population, those are pretty similar numbers. And while I don't know the exact breakdown of locations in either case, I don't see any reason to believe why New York would be alone in having subsidized housing in high-cost areas (I'm sure you'll find a reason though).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Proportionate to population, those are pretty similar numbers. And while I don't know the exact breakdown of locations in either case, I don't see any reason to believe why New York would be alone in having subsidized housing in high-cost areas (I'm sure you'll find a reason though).

NYC offers developers a credit if they dedicated a certain percentage of new buildings to affordable housing. I think this is unique to NYC, but it really only affects buildings built in the past couple decades.

Also, the "white" Hispanic population in NYC (and really most of the U.S.) uses a very generous definition of "white." It's not at all uncommon for people who look more like black American to identify as white Hispanic.

[memph]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

st. louis city white population is increasing proportionately so rapidly (compared to a crashing black population) that it will likely be a plurality at 2020. i think people presume st. louis is more like detroit with respect to white flight as a proportion of the population.

Maybe because St. Louis had a similar (or higher?) % population loss, so they assume the situation was similar.

But the similar population loss is just because St Louis has smaller city limits and was built out earlier whereas the outlying areas of Detroit proper were still building housing in the 40s/50s and experiencing increases in household sizes (and population) in the 50s/60s since the black households were generally bigger.

So outlying Detroit was growing while the core was declining. If Detroit's city limits were smaller, it would've probably peaked in population a decade earlier, and those more close in areas experienced much more severe population loss, so Detroit with St. Louis esque city limits would've gone from 1.2 million to 300k or something...

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

NYC offers developers a credit if they dedicated a certain percentage of new buildings to affordable housing. I think this is unique to NYC, but it really only affects buildings built in the past couple decades.

Also, the "white" Hispanic population in NYC (and really most of the U.S.) uses a very generous definition of "white." It's not at all uncommon for people who look more like black American to identify as white Hispanic.

Thats because "Hispanic" means nothing and has no racial component.

Us politicians have been trying for decades to make a "Hispanic" voting block like the "black" voting block but it doesn't work well as "Hispanics" do not have a unified unique history like the traditional American born black population does.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Obadno

Thats because "Hispanic" means nothing and has no racial component.

Us politicians have been trying for decades to make a "Hispanic" voting block like the "black" voting block but it doesn't work well as "Hispanics" do not have a unified unique history like the traditional American born black population does.

Basically none of this is true. Not gonna go through every line, but take the opposite of each sentence to get the truth.

The black community isn't uniform, the Latino/a community does view itself as a distinct, nonwhite, entity, the vast majority of U.S. Latinos have heavy nonwhite roots (whether Indigenous or African) and this all has zero to do with "politicians" or "voting blocs".

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Obadno

Thats because "Hispanic" means nothing and has no racial component.

Us politicians have been trying for decades to make a "Hispanic" voting block like the "black" voting block but it doesn't work well as "Hispanics" do not have a unified unique history like the traditional American born black population does.

That wouldn't explain why people who look similar to black Americans would identify themselves as "white."

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

That wouldn't explain why people who look similar to black Americans would identify themselves as "white."

It's pretty obvious he has no idea of the Latino community in NYC (and elsewhere), which has very obvious African or Indigenous roots.

A random person from Middle America would probably misidentify half the Hispanics in the Bronx as African American.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Basically none of this is true. Not gonna go through every line, but take the opposite of each sentence to get the truth.

The black community isn't uniform, the Latino/a community does view itself as a distinct, nonwhite, entity, the vast majority of U.S. Latinos have heavy nonwhite roots (whether Indigenous or African) and this all has zero to do with "politicians" or "voting blocs".

The American "black" community, not people from Africa or the Caribbean today have a unified history in America due to slavery.

Latinos aka Hispanics do not have a unified history or ethnicity, Hispanic is literally a political term that was invented and applied to all Spanish speaking subject in the new world.

How many Hispanics do you know crawford? Do you think Mexicans and Venezuelans and Argentinians identify with each other? They dont, but Black Americans in Georgia and Chicago certain can and do.

There are Mexicans who call themselves English, or Irish (and look the part) just like People in the Usa and Canada with primarily European Decent.

There are also Mexicans that Literally are Mayan's ethnically or the Cross Border native American Community of Tonoho' O'dham

Another example where you shine in your confidant ignorance of most things.