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The most livable city in the U.S. is also … the whitest
Dan T. writes:
For several years running now, Pittsburgh has been rated by Forbes Magazine and/or the Economist as the most livable city in the United States. Over the past 30 years it has experienced an impressive renaissance in commerce and industry, and, in addition to its low cost of living and cultural opportunities, it enjoys some of the finest post-secondary institutions in the country.
Therefore I find this recent Post-Gazette article, “Pittsburgh metro area named one of nation’s least diverse,” to be rather illuminating.
But don’t worry, liberals and “conservatives”! The article Dan sent makes it plain that the Pittsburgh area will inevitably become diverse like the rest of the country. And why will it inevitably become diverse? The article doesn’t say, but the reason is the legal non-Western immigration which has poured into this country since 1965 and continues to pour in, which has turned us from an 89 percent white country in 1960 to a 65 percent white country today, and, if nothing is done, will soon turn us into a nonwhite majority country with a white minority that will keep getting relatively smaller until it equals the one-fifth white minority in South Africa. These facts are never remotely broached among “conservatives.” Discussing “immigration” means discussing illegal immigration. Legal immigration is not a topic, and has not been one for the last 46 years. The greatest transformation of a society in history, the relegation of whites to minority status in their own country, and no one talks about it, let alone opposes it.
Here’s the article:
Pittsburgh metro area named one of nation’s least diverse
Monday, September 05, 2011
By Gary Rotstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It would be hard for any metropolitan area to be whiter than Pittsburgh.
It’s so hard, in fact, that of the 100 largest metro areas in the United States, only one has a smaller share of blacks, Hispanics and Asians—the Scranton-Wilkes Barre region of northeastern Pennsylvania.
A new Brookings Institution report released last week, examining 2010 census data on how Americans identified race and ethnicity, found that southwestern Pennsylvania is whiter even than the Amish country around Lancaster, the Mormon population center of Salt Lake City, Midwest agrarian capitals such as Des Moines, Iowa, and far more isolated places like Boise, Idaho.
It is not stunningly new data for this former melting pot—findings from the 2000 census were much the same—but what might be eye-opening is that the pace of change toward greater diversity is even slower here than for all those places above, as well as the rest of America.
The report called “The New Metro Minority Map,” by demographer William Frey, found that the 87 percent white population of greater Pittsburgh—Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties—is exceeded only by Scranton’s 89 percent. The report noted 8 percent of metro Pittsburgh’s population identified themselves as black, 2 percent as Asian and 1 percent as Hispanic.
Pittsburgh nudged down only slightly during the decade from its 89 percent white share in 2000, whereas the smaller Scranton area shifted more dramatically from a 96 percent white population 10 years earlier.
Among similarly sized cities to which Pittsburgh is frequently compared, Cincinnati went from 85 percent white to 82, Cleveland from 75 percent to 72, Milwaukee from 74 percent to 69, and Baltimore from 66 percent to 60.
For those who might wonder why any of this would matter, the Pittsburgh region has continued to lose population while growth in virtually every other city has been fueled by the influx and birth rates of immigrants and other minorities.
The report found that non-whites and Hispanics (who can count themselves as either black or white on the census form) accounted for 98 percent of population growth in the 100 metro areas from 2000 to 2010. In 65 of those, whites’ share of the overall population declined by at least 5 percentage points.
Mr. Frey said in an interview that Pittsburgh is bound to change like everyplace else—it’s just taking longer to get here.
“This is the wave of our demographic future in this country, and it’s absolutely going to happen in Pittsburgh,” he said. “The one thing Pittsburgh has the luxury of is knowing it can see this minority change is coming along, whereas in some places it’s come very rapidly—maybe too rapidly for populations to accept and assimilate. A place like Pittsburgh can prepare.”
The migration responsible for such growth is typically fueled by job opportunities, particularly for people in their 20s and 30s who are the most mobile. While the Pittsburgh region’s economy has done better than the rest of the country in the past few years, that was not the case for most of the 2000-10 period, or for prior decades since the steel industry’s collapse began.
The lack of jobs to lure newcomers has given little chance to create the kind of base of migrants that would help attract others to follow in their wake. Even in Allegheny County, easily the most diverse of the metropolitan area’s counties, Hispanics are still just 1.6 percent of the population despite 71 percent growth during the decade.
Larry Davis, dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, said one downside is the inertia that can come from such a stagnant population.
“It’s the interface of cultures that creates energy and synergism for new ideas,” he said. “If you value diversity, you realize that those places that have it have become more vibrant.”
On the other hand, he said, the stability of Pittsburgh’s population has been a strength in creating a bond between people and their communities. Newcomers might not have the same sense of pride and attachment.
Most migration to cities has come from outsiders sensing opportunities there, rather than locally organized efforts to attract them. Nonetheless, Pittsburgh community leaders created a private, nonprofit group, Vibrant Pittsburgh, which has worked on marketing the region for the past few years with a welcome message to the underrepresented, diverse populations.
Melanie Harrington, the organization’s CEO, said the Brookings Institution report would not reflect the strides southwestern Pennsylvania has made in attracting migrants in the past few years.
“We have so many decades to overcome when we had significant out-migration of talent across all ethnic and racial groups,” she said. “Once we put on the map the fact that opportunities are here … then people will take another look, and we’ll continue to see migration pick up. We just need to continue to hit it hard.”
The full report, “The New Metro Minority Map,” can be found at brookings.edu.
Gary Rotstein: grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.
First published on September 5, 2011 at 12:00 am
- end of initial entry -
September 6
D. Edwards writes:
An interesting aspect to this story is the race this November for Allegheny county executive. It pits an old time Irish Democrat against an Indian immigrant as the Republican candidate.
John McNeil writes:
It doesn’t surprise me that Pittsburgh is being targeted for being too white, that seems to be the fate of any white-controlled territory that has a high standard of living.
This isn’t an easy pill to swallow, but I think that the only way for us whites to have some sort of environment for ourselves (be it a neighborhood, township, or city—not necessarily a breakaway country) is to embrace some sort of simpler lifestyle. Now this isn’t a call to adopting a neo-Luddite worldview, but I think it’s fairly manifest that we whites are not allowed to have nice things, to put it simply. Any white community that is too nice, too wealthy, too livable, will become a target for “enrichment,” and no amount of rightwing political activism is going to reverse that.
I think some sort of adoption of a simpler lifestyle may help in making our communities less desirable for immigration and Section 8 Housing. After all, if we aren’t wealthy and considered “high civilization,” what do we have to offer to immigrants and minorities? Would they want to move to a land that doesn’t fit the neo-liberal paradigm?
This is not a call to become savages. It’s merely noting that living in a lifestyle similar to that of our recent ancestors may be a shield of sorts against white dissolution. Perhaps developing pastoral communities, with standards of living reflecting those of decades ago.
LA replies:
Very interesting.
Alan A. writes:
“This is the wave of our demographic future in this country, and it’s absolutely going to happen in Pittsburgh,” he said. “The one thing Pittsburgh has the luxury of is knowing it can see this minority change is coming along, whereas in some places it’s come very rapidly—maybe too rapidly for populations to accept and assimilate. A place like Pittsburgh can prepare.”
Reading that infuriating statement by William Frey I wondered, prepare, how so? To me, absent an elaboration by the author, “preparing” can only be equated with the advice given to the condemned.
Mr. Frey is not an unbiased source sharing his technician’s disinterested view of a specialized subject. He’s a ringer, like virtually all the “experts” the MSM trots out either to defend or trivialize the destruction of white America.
Below is example of his disingenuousness. Note the response to the question, “What started this trend?” No mention of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. And he’s supposed to be an expert on the subject of U.S. demographics, huh? Hilarious. And infuriating.
For people who don’t sift through the news and read it only in a cursory manner, which is the vast majority of people, such black-hearted blather is accepted as the unavoidable gospel, infallible truth, told by an “expert.”
And oh, yes. I’m sure the questions were posed by button-eyed random readers of the Washington Post.
How minorities are becoming majorities in U.S. cities
Demographer Bill Frey discussed how minority populations in eight major U.S. cities became the majorities, and what to expect from this trend. Ask questions now!
Read: Minorities become a majority in Washington region
William Frey :
Hello this is Bill Frey. Thank you for joining us today
— August 31, 2011 1:29 PM
Q. Non-hispanic whites
What does “non-hispanic whites” even mean? Is that a legit category on the census?
A. William Frey :
Well, it’s a little complicated. The Census bureau has two classifications of people. One is by race and another is by Hispanic status. So it’s possible for someone of any race to be Hispanic or non-Hispanic. In other words, there are both Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic whites. Typically, when people think of the “white majority” they are referring to non-Hispanic whites—generally whites of Euopean ancestry, since Hispanics are often thought of as a minority group. So, as a shorthand, many people in the media and in the general public think of non-Hispanic whites as “whites.”
Q. Expected?
Were these census findings expected? Did you see this coming?
A. William Frey :
Well, the general thrust of the findings were expected. But, the large and quick dominance of minority contributions to large metropolitan growth surprised me. We found that 98% of the growth for large metro areas was due to non-whites. In fact, there were absolute white losses in 42 of the 100 largest metro areas. I think the reason this is so startling for many people is they don’t realize the fact that the aging of the white population and the fact that a smaller percentage of whites are in their childbearing years gives whites a much smaller presence in large metro areas than had been the case in earlier Census results.
Q. It’s all perspective
Back in the 70s, I attended many schools where non-hispanic white folks like me were in the minority. Since college, I have tended to live in cities and, more importantly, neighborhoods where folks like me are in the minority. To me, this story isn’t news. What I have noticed is that fewer and fewer people in and around the areas where I live put much value on ethnic background alone—though we’re always happy to see new and unusual restaurants!
A. William Frey :
Well, I think your experience is typical of people who live in large urban areas that have become increasingly diverse in the last several decades. However, it’s not the experience for people who live in large swaths of the country where the growth of new minorities is just beginning. So I would say that many will have your experience in the coming years.
Q. Why?
What started this trend?
A. William Frey :
The growth of minorities in big cities is really a large part of our nation’s history, especially at the turn of the previous century when “minorities” were thought of as Irish, Italians, and Eastern Europeans. Then we had somewhat of a lull between the 1940s and the 1960s when immigration was at a low point. Since then, and especially in the last two decades, the “new” minorities (Hispanics and Asians) have immigrated to the U.S. in larger numbers and tended to settle in our large metro areas. Now, at least for Hispanics, the major source of growth is natural increase, not immigration, increasing the size of these settlements.
Q. current political climate
What impact does this rapid change in demography have on current political battles?
A. William Frey :
I think the demographic shifts in this country will have enormous impacts on politics, perhaps as soon as the 2012 presidential election. The fact that “new minorities,” especially Hispanics, are becoming a larger part of the electorate of metro areas in swing states, like Nevada, Colorado, and Florida, means that their interests will need to be taken into account by state-wide and national candidates to an extent this hasn’t been the case before. Issues like the DREAM Act or the budget decisions we need to make regarding social services and education will be closely followed by this growing part of the electorate. If this doesn’t sway the next presidential election, it certainly will in 2016. Savvy politicians typically are also savvy demographers.
William Frey :
Thank you for joining us today, these were great questions. For more information on my latest report, The New Metro Minority Map, please click here.
James N. writes:
It’s not surprising that Pittsburgh, being so white, is also so livable. In fact, when you review any of the “Most” polls, whether you choose best SAT scores or safest town/state/city or best place to raise children or most livable—whatever—there is always a strong correlation with whiteness, unless the poll is giving points for “diversity,” which some of them do.
Alexis Zarkov writes:
Harvard professor Robert Putnam, author of the book Bowling Alone, conducted a study on the relationship between diversity and community trust. He found that the more diversity, the less the trust. To put succinctly, diversity is perversity. See his Wikipedia entry for a list of the negative consequences of diversity. VFR readers who wish to probe further can read his report, which provides all the details. Initially Putnam was shocked by his oh so politically incorrect findings. He almost suppressed his own work. He found that Los Angeles was the most diverse city in the U.S. and the one with the least trust between and among ethnic groups. Even people within the same group tended to “hunker down” and avoid interactions with their own group. Now we have the other end of the scale: Pittsburgh PA. Low diversity begets high social capital which leads to more prosperity.
The left is destroying America, and we have to stop them. The more they get exposed, the weaker they will become.
James P. writes:
In the article, an academic decries the lack of diversity in Pittsburgh:
Larry Davis, dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work, said one downside is the inertia that can come from such a stagnant population. “It’s the interface of cultures that creates energy and synergism for new ideas,” he said. “If you value diversity, you realize that those places that have it have become more vibrant.”
Ha, just ask the residents of London how they feel about energy, synergism, and vibrancy. That aside, any visitor to Pittsburgh immediately notices that the downtown area is quite “vibrant” (i.e., lots of shabby buildings and loitering bums begging for alms). More importantly, the idea that there is only one “white” culture in Pittsburgh is flatly wrong. But I guess when you have a lot of Irish, Poles, Ukrainians, Italians, and Germans living together, that’s not really “diversity”—it doesn’t create any vibrant synergy or lead to any new ideas. If only there were more blacks, all those boring whites would stop stagnating and start creating, or something!
What is the history of the last 500 years, after all, but the history of great ideas emerging from the intellectual powerhouse of Africa and providing vibrant energy to the stagnant backwater of Europe? [sarcasm off]
Meanwhile, I noted that the story linked to another story about American cities becoming white-minority, largely thanks to immigration, though the quote doesn’t mention immigration:
Minorities have become the majority in eight big-city metropolitan regions over the past decade, according to a new analysis of census data showing white population declines in many of the largest metro areas. The regions surrounding New York; San Diego; Las Vegas; Memphis; Washington, D.C.; Oxnard, Calif.; Modesto, Calif., and Jackson, Miss., have become majority-minority since 2000. Non-Hispanic whites are now a minority in 22 of the country’s 100-biggest urban areas. The white population shrank in raw numbers in 42 of those big-city regions. But every large metro area showed a decline in the percentage of whites. The shifts reflect the aging of the white population as more people get beyond their childbearing years and the relative youth of the Hispanic and Asian populations fueling most of the growth.
Alexis Zarkov writes:
Based on the 2010 Census, a new report from Brookings shows the decline in white population as summarized here. Between 1990 and 2010 the white population in the 100 largest metropolitan areas declined from 71 percent to 57 percent. Today non-whites and Hispanics (some of whom are white) have a majority in 22 of the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Whites are now the minority in New York City, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and San Diego to name a few. Hispanic immigration and its high fecundity serve as primary driver for this demographic shift. Nonwhites and Hispanics provide 98 percent of the population growth in those large cities over the last ten years. In short America is being colonized by the Third World, mostly Mexico. The minorities and their white allies are drooling over these shifts which increase their base. I watched a white guy who had some association with the NAACP on CSPAN last week discuss the emerging black and Hispanic majorities. He was grinning from ear to ear. These demographic shifts mean the eventual triumph of the Democrats in electoral politics.
John Hagan writes:
It’s always interesting to see where people like William Frey and Robert Putnam live. They both happen to live in southwest New Hampshire. The area is 98 percent white.
Thomas Bertonneau writes:
This is in response to the Pittsburgh story. A couple of years ago, based on lectures I had been giving for some semesters in one of my college courses, I published a two-part article on the archeological event that scholars refer to as “the Catastrophe.” That event occurred at the end of the Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean and entailed the brutal burning out of virtually every sizable town or city in a swath of geography stretching from Greece through Asia Minor and the Levant, stopping only at the Tigris and Euphrates river valley in the East and in Egypt in the south. The perpetrators were violent tribes whose motive was to loot the cities of their conspicuous portable wealth and to extract the maximum joy from murder and destruction. The marauders built nothing; their spree ushered in a dark age that lasted four hundred years in Greece. In my article I drew from the Catastrophe the following lesson (along with others), which I think resonates with John McNeil’s suggestion that the productive class might want, for reasons of self-protection, to change its conspicuous consumption-type behavior:
So that there might be order in the polity, Plato constantly argued, there must first be order in the individual soul. Restraint and askesis play essential roles in the orderliness of the soul—hence also in civic arrangements. Restraint acknowledges the sacredness of persons and property and askesis honors the wisdom not to flaunt affluence—not because one is not entitled to it either as the fruits of personal productivity or as inheritance, but because it is anthropologically foolhardy to do so. Ours is an age of fantastically inflated, pathologically ostentatious economies; quite without cosmic calamities it is also an age rapidly losing its historical memory and even its literacy. There is a voluntary relinquishment of intellectual and moral rigors for the sake of paltry divertissement. Too many modern people see in their electronic conveniences, in their false freedom from anxiety and care, what the guardians of Mycenae must have seen in their Cyclopean walls and defensive ditches: Untouchable superiority and immunity from annoyance.
LA replies:
I’m familiar with the idea that the Doric invasion, circa 1200 B.C., destroyed the earlier Greek civilization and ushered in a four-century long dark age. I had not heard of “The Catastrophe,” which places the Greek Dark Age in a much broader swath of civilizational destruction. Do historians still believe that it was Greek speakers from the north who brought about the Greek Dark Age, or do they now attribute the destruction to some other, unspecified group?
Also, were these attacks random?
LA continues:
I like Mr. McNeil’s and Mr. Bertonneau’s thinking on this. Clearly a major thing wrong with our civilization is a kind of mad excess of material possessions and material display, which in turn corresponds with an absence of ethical limits around the self and its desires. I’m not saying anything new when I point out that the spiritual greed that characterizes our society in so many areas is incompatible with the virtues on which self-government and even long-term civilizational survival depend. But in addition to the harm that our excessive wealth and our conspicuous flaunting of our wealth does to ourselves, it provokes, as Mr. McNeil emphasizes, the envy and hatred of others.
Karl D. writes:
This from the Frey Q&A:
“What I have noticed is that fewer and fewer people in and around the areas where I live put much value on ethnic background alone—though we’re always happy to see new and unusual restaurants!”
That says all you need to know about your typical urban liberals’ views on race replacement, doesn’t it? The ethnic cuisine is great! They could be sitting in the ninth circle of Hell and it would still come down to great BBQ and the fact that the weather is always warm.
Thomas Bertonneau writes:
The Dorians were one of the many disparate tribes whose loosely coordinated movements shortly after 1100 BC constitute the Catastrophe. In Anatolia, the Kaska were the active agents, taking the lead in burning out the Hittite civilization. Many Mediterranean peoples who make their appearance at the onset the historical, alphabetically literate societies, beginning around 900 BC, seem to stem from participants in the Catastrophe. In Egyptian records, for example, the “Sikels” and the “Turshi,” probably Sicilians and Etruscans, figure prominently. So do the “Ekwesh,” who are probably Achaeans. The Catastrophe had a snowballing effect. Some people among the dispossessed threw in their adventurous lot with the dispossessors.
An excellent recent source for the Catastrophe is Robert Drews’s End of the Bronze Age (1995). A classic study of the Catastrophe in Bronze Age Greece particularly is Leonard Palmer’s Mycenaeans and Minoans (1962).
The two parts of my article, for The Brussels Journal, may be accessed here and here.
P.S. Liberals would probably extol the Catastrophe because of its ethnic diversity.
Aaron S. writes (belatedly posted 11/18/11):
I’m reading this entry with interest, as I am a Pittsburgh-area native, and still have family there. Pittsburgh is indeed a wonderful place: low cost of living, a high degree of culture for a medium-sized city, good universities, and yes, liberals, some pretty good restaurants. There is a fierce loyalty to the place among the “diaspora,” if I may call it that. Though in light of a few of your other commenters’ remarks, some of its problems warrant a mention.
We can start with the fact that there is a “diaspora” in the first place. Speak at length with people from the region and you will note, along with great friendliness, just a little bit of edgy defensiveness. Most people with roots in the area know well that it was once a much more important and productive place than it is at present. I am by temperament a traditionalist, though I tend to think that growing up in Western PA played a role. Since economic recovery has happened so slowly, the area has for some time and (certainly during the whole of my lifetime) been suffused with ruins. Every corner seem to elicit the question “what once was this?” from a thoughtful observer. There is something both beautiful and sad about the region. Amidst deep green vegetation on hills and cliffs, there hang the remains of houses, garages, businesses … roads twist and turn for reasons sometimes topographic, and other times historical. It is often difficult to tell the difference.
The city government has long been in an iron Democratic party grip. Business (still) gets done through a system of incentives and favors rather than through efficient or uniform administration. What remains is not steel, metals, heavy machinery, but healthcare and universities. Regional leaders like to tout the growth of tech, but the hard fact of the matter is that the region and especially the city continue to hemorrhage population. It is not for nothing that Obama chose Pittsburgh for the G8—it is a city living on the conceit that healthcare is a good economic base, and that one can manage oneself into prosperity. (Never mind that its fine cultural institutions exist due to the overwhelming power and largesse of long-dead industries of the genuine sort.)
So I’ve often thought about the force of a point like the one Mr. McNeil so aptly voices here:
I think some sort of adoption of a simpler lifestyle may help in making our communities less desirable for immigration and Section 8 Housing. After all, if we aren’t wealthy and considered “high civilization,” what do we have to offer to immigrants and minorities? Would they want to move to a land that doesn’t fit the neo-liberal paradigm?
This is not a call to become savages. It’s merely noting that living in a lifestyle similar to that of our recent ancestors may be a shield of sorts against white dissolution. Perhaps developing pastoral communities, with standards of living reflecting those of decades ago.
My wife grew up in a Third World country, and from my observations overseas I think Mr. McNeil may be even more correct than he realizes. What attracts the current crop of immigrants to this country? Most are not from even remotely Westernized parts of the globe; it is not our political ideas. It is not our religions. It is not anything that matters. It is quite simply money, glamor, and toys. Pittsburgh—and perhaps also Cincinnati (where I now live), Indianapolis, Cleveland, Louisville, and a handful of other “rust belt” or “flyover” cities—have been saved by some combination of real economic stagnation and/or the perception that these are comparatively boring and backwards places.
It would not be inaccurate to say of Pittsburgh that it is in some ways a trapped-in-amber testament to the power and validity of the older, pan-European model of America. As James P. suggests, it it full of what used to be called “white ethnics”—Italian, Irish, Polish, Jewish—who very much see themselves as continuing what the French, English, and Scotts-Irish set forth in creating the place. But the problem is whether this now very “old-fashioned” ethnic balance can be sustained only with diminishing economic fortune. And if so, what is the lesson for the nation as a whole? Pittsburgh is pleasant because it is largely white. Those who think greater diversity brings economic growth are mistaking cause and effect. But if the converse is true—at least in terms of attracting non-assimilable people from outside (and I think it is), then unless we are committed to national penury and decline, there is no substitute for vigorous efforts at immigration control.
No amount of sackcloth and ashes on our part regarding our material excesses is going to register with people whose materialism far exceeds our own—not unless we make ourselves poorer than they are, and destroy Hollywood in the bargain. I don’t want a nation of only pastoral communities. We need cities, we need high culture.
Pittsburgh is beautiful. But is is not a model—it is a caution. We should not have to accept a choice between cultural well-being and economic strength. We’ll know this nation is on the right track when the first is again recognized as the true long-term source of the second.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 05, 2011 07:17 PM | Send
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