For the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King riot, newspapers are running stories on the Mean Streets where the rioters lived. (The above picture is from today's L.A. Times.) A decade ago, I wrote the same article for the 10th anniversary of the riot and ran into same conundrum: the residential streets around the notorious corner of Florence and Normandie in South-Central L.A. look fine.
But the business streets look awful.
This isn't a new phenomenon, either. On July 4, 1977, I drove around Watts, a dozen years after the Watts riot. The side streets of Watts looked nice. The main streets looked bad.
In theory, South-Central L.A., or as it's been officially rebranded "South L.A.," could represent the world's largest gentrification opportunity. The weather is phenomenally mild and this sprawling region is freeway close to lots of jobs. South-Central is one of the few neighborhoods in the world to host the Opening Ceremony of two Summer Olympics, and is home to most famous film school in the world.
But, white people in L.A. find flat land unnerving. They mostly want to gentrify hilly neighborhoods, which, deep down, they find psychologically reassuring. Hills look more tactically defensible for when the hammer finally comes down and the long-awaited L.A. Apocalypse is at hand.
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LA and Cali need to relearn to be business friendly again... This would solve most of the issue that haunts them.
South Central almost formerly black, becoming another hispanic barrio.
"LA and Cali need to relearn to be business friendly again... This would solve most of the issue that haunts them."
The democrats aren't going to willingly give up power, but then neither would republicans.
I honestly can't tell if you're being facetious about why white people like hilly neighborhoods.
White people in LA don't find flat land unnerving so much as we find it boring, even depressing. It reminds us of the topographically dull and economically dying parts of the country from which so many of us moved here.
Most Angelinos who are racial minorities, meanwhile, are from here. They were born and raised here. Jagged horizons and meandering switchbacks don't have the same novelty or exoticism to them.
Rodney King is getting married to one of the jurors from the civil trial.
Flat land isn't unappealing so long as there are trees - lots and lots of trees, as there are east of the Mississippi. Avoiding the flatness is a western thing.
"the residential streets look fine but the business streets look awful."
Los Angeles/California in a nuthshell.
If white people hate or fear flat land and prefer hills, then, um, why did they build South Central LA?
They're almost certainly the ones who originally built. Look at the archetectural style of those houses, it's the same sort of thing you see in Pasadena, isn't it?
So when did all the blacks come to Los Angeles? Did they originally have jobs in defense plants? I can see why they went to St. Louis and Chicago from Mississippi but LA is a long way from Mississippi.
I was in London during the RK riots and I recall they had pictures of these nice South Central houses in the papers. I overheard a lot of British people going like, "Blimey! Those houses are nicer than mine! What are they so angry about?"
Well, they didn't actually say blimey, I made that part up.
Those streets look tidier and nicer than small city Australia; and we are notoriously boring and house proud.
Totally off topic, but it seems Sofia Coppola already has your idea for a movie about young blonde thieves in production:
http://www.awardsdaily.com/2012/04/emma-watson-as-a-teen-socialite-in-the-bling-ring/
However, this idea seems to come from the young girls who stole from the homes of movie stars a few year ago and not the Brazilian girls who stole from rich women at the mall.
Most visitors from back east are surprised how nice the ghetto looks in LA. I mean, they use palms as street trees. How bad can it be?
"Did they originally have jobs in defense plants?"
Yes, or ancillary work. There was a massive influx of both poor white and black from the south, according to histories of the music scene there. It caused a boom both in the nascent country western and jazz genres, with lots of action on Central Ave. and huge western dance halls not far away.
Good times, I hear.
"Most visitors from back east are surprised how nice the ghetto looks in LA. I mean, they use palms as street trees. How bad can it be?"
You're so right. As a New Yorker, this is exactly how I felt when seeing South Central LA for the first time. I mean, South Central LA is supposed to be LA's "South Bronx", right? So why does it look nothing like it? Where are all the burned down buildings and piles of rubble? Here is what I mean - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtI-En92Xso&feature=related
Yes it is the South Bronx in the late 70s/early 80s, not Berlin at the end of World War II. It gets really nasty at 3:00 and 6:45. I grew up not too far away, and remember being horrified as a child whenever we passed though. My parents didn't have to tell me these areas were dangerous, nothing could be more obvious.
Most of these areas look a lot better now, but violent crime, a very high illegitimacy rate and welfare dependency still make it unmistakably ghetto(with a few small areas of gentrification). It's not as bad as during the crack wars, but these areas are still very dangerous.
"LA and Cali need to relearn to be business friendly again... This would solve most of the issue that haunts them."
Would this magically turn the black and brown majority in that area into Swiss people?
If you want to know what real hard-bitten, run-down, decaying urban slums look like, you'd do no worse than walking the streets of London, just a few miles or so from the touristy bits, in inner-suburbs in which most of the buildings are 100+ years old and unsuitable for modern life, and where not a blade of grass is to be seen for miles.
Those shots of south LA look posiively bucolic in comparison, plus you've got the soul destroying English weather to deal with, which could be described as a 'decade without a summer', basically the weather's a variation on two themes 'wet and miserable' and wetter and more miserable'.
So, who 'ran' south LA before the blacks took it over? - and why is it always assumed to be a 'black' neighborhood whilst obviously someone else had it before?
Just how long have blacks run south LA?
As we all know LA is a 'new' city in that it only really gre after 1900, and California was never a slave state and is located as far as you can get from the old south.
Also, didn't an Italian tile-setter (and natural born artist) by the name of Rodia(?), build the Watts Towers?, was Watts mostly white when Rodia did his work.
This topic is very relevant these days. Al Sharpton who may be a surrogate for Barrack Obama seems to to be saying - "Do what I say or there will be riots". This threat of race riots gives him the power to compel the public to his agenda. Currently he seems to want to have George Zimmerman killed.
My response is "Bring it on".
My experience with the after effects of black riots is similar to yours but maybe even more pointed.
I went back to Washington DC to go to graduate school in urban planning. Our class was asked by the city government to study the effects of the Martin Luther King riots. We toured the areas and interviewed residents, community leaders and city officials.
It looked a little like Berlin after the Allied bombings. No one lived on the ground floor of the numerous garden apartments for security reasons. The first floor windows were all covered with sheets of plywood. Like Renaissance Florence street crime was so bad there were no street level windows.
But the biggest problem for the families that lived amongst the ruins was the inability to buy a carton of milk for the baby. Every neighborhood grocery had been burned out. All the grocers had left. A black mother would have to make a long bus ride to another area for simple daily necessities.
The same thing happened in Los Angeles. Everyone should read Lou Cannon's 800 page book on the riots. After the Watts riots the Jewish grocers sold to Koreans. So it was Koreans with rifles on the roofs when the next round of race riots came in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. BTW you probably don't know the real reason for that verdict.
By a strange coincidence the Rodney King riots caused 63 deaths and each year in America 63 people die of bee stings. Hollywood gets us all upset over Great White Sharks on the east coast whereas shark attacks are are really only serious here on the West Coast or Australia. In America we only occasionally have a shark attack and death anywhere. The real threat is Bambi. There are 130 fatalities each year from collisions with deer.
My point is that the Rodney King riot was the worst of modern times but it killed almost no one. The major bad consequence of race riots is the loss of neighborhood grocers and then that is only in those black neighborhoods where there were rioters in the street. The vast majority of Americans will only know of the Trayvon Martin race riot with which we are being blackmailed from their TVs. Couch potatoes will be alarmed (and entertained).
We should call Sharpton's bluff.
Albertosaurus
I have noticed that CA houses are very pretty on the outside, but very dumpy on the inside (original tile, walls, kitchens, bathrooms, etc in their 50 y.o. homes). This struck me as quite different from AZ, where the house may look old and unimpressive from the outside, but the insides are all updated.
Looking around using Google Streetview, it doesn't look so great. South of Florence looks better, especially west of Normandie (Brighton Avenue, for example). North of Florence I see a lot of front-yard chainlink fences, bad lawns, cracked driveways.
You mean the "Hammer" as in Lucifer's Hammer, right?
This isn't a ghetto! From this I take that the LA blacks are real, normal human beings, like the black people I knew growing up.
My local ghetto dwellers are psychologically incapable of keeping their garbage off the streets, let alone keeping their lawns perfectly manicured. I mean, come on! Those shrubs are sculpted into shapes! Perhaps the rioters were bussed it from a more authentic neighborhood with, at least, a few roofs with holes in them?
This is an interesting observation that tracks with a lot of the population movements in greater LA during the past 25 years, namely the flat central stretch of the San Fernando Valley becoming largely Hispanic while the hilly north and south sides remain mostly white, and white hipsters pushing eastward into hilly, formerly distressed neighborhoods like Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock, and even slummy areas like Highland Park, Glassell Park and Echo Park.
But while whites have never shown much interest in South-Central, weren't blacks convinced in the early 90s that Koreans were coming to force them all out? I remember a whole anti-Korean conspiracy thread running through "Boys in the Hood," and you had Ice Cube songs like "Black Korea" during the period as well.
How low can the media sink?
Just when it appears the Zimmerman-Martin thing is calming down a bit because people are starting to realize all is not what the media first reported, USA Today has a huge spread about the "anniversary," and I suspect all the morning shows will or have been covering it although since I don't watch them, I don't know.
I've become a conspiracy theorist, sad to say. I do believe that if Obama's re-election continues to look in doubt, the media will feed the country with not-so-subtle messages that, "If you throw him out of office, there'll be riots." and it won't be OUR fault." Of course, far left supporters will say, "And it won't be OUR fault" but the fault of all you racissssts."
In fact, I do believe I've already heard the beginnings of such a message--not a loud drumbeat yet, no, but a tap, tap, tap.
Up until the early 1960s, most of the region was predominantly white ... In the 2000 census, the designate area of South Los Angeles had a population of 520,461. Roughly 55% of the residents were Hispanic or Latino, while 40% were African American.
IOW, it doesn't look like America there anymore. And hasn't for some time. Whatever else it may or may not look like. And I don't think much of it looks like the foto you show.
Rodney King is getting married to one of the jurors from the civil trial.
I guess she hadn't forgotten about that $3.8m. I don't recall hearing anything about this when it was, err, more current. Buried by the media I guess. Too unseemly.
There is one feeling that I don't know if you can experience in a perennially warm climate, and that is cozy.
If you ever spend time in a northeast college town and it snows enough to prevent you from traveling beyond the local tavern, and you and your immediate neighbors hunker together against the elements to have some Irish Coffees, that's cozy. I never felt cozy in a warm climate like Florida or Southern California. Diversity inhibits the cozy feeling - it has to feel like an extended family reunion. It's not just the climate - try to imagine a cozy Detroit restaurant. It is a great feeling/emotion- the only real emotional benefit of winter.
That is a very scenic place indeed.
Flat land isn't unappealing so long as there are trees - lots and lots of trees, as there are east of the Mississippi. Avoiding the flatness is a western thing.
That's not entirely true. Along the East Coast, the richer suburbs tend to be on the northern and westerns sides of the big cities, which are also the hillier sides. A long time ago, people who could afford to do so moved to higher ground to avoid disease and the humid stench of 19th century cities in summer. I don't know whether we internalized this preference or whether its just human nature to find hills more esthetically pleasing than flatland, but it remains true that the best neighborhoods in the Eastern half of the country also tend to be the hillier neighborhoods.
Most visitors from back east are surprised how nice the ghetto looks in LA. I mean, they use palms as street trees. How bad can it be?
You don't even have to be a visitor. One of my favorite TV shows is Southland, which is about LAPD cops and shot on location in some of the city's worst areas. I'm always surprised at how nice the ghettos and barrios look. The poor neighborhoods here in the East LOOK poor, maybe not compared to third-world cities (if only because they are so much less crowded), but compared to any other Western country. The poor neighborhoods in LA look working class to Eastern eyes. It's hard to imagine the terrible things happening there that I know do happen ... it all looks so pleasant.
Another shocking thing to an Easterner: Poor LA neighborhoods are full of single-family houses. Assuming that most of them are not owner-occupied, who owns them? Who are slumlords of Los Angeles?
Actually, the value of living at higher elevations is confirmed by crime maps of the SF Bay Area. Property crime levels tend to follow elevation contours, with less crime at higher elevations. Also, streets with steep elevation gradients have less property crime. This finding is especially true in majority white/asian areas where most of the crime is committed by non-residents. A big boost to property crime is the presence of a regional high school or middle school. For instance, in the City of El Cerrito, with enough statistics you can see clear ant trails of petty theft connecting the high school to the Richmond Iron Triangle where many of the students live.
white people in L.A. find flat land unnnerving.
They didn't before the mid-80's. And what's with Nathaniel West trashing every one of those arch. styles? He must have just been a crank, maybe the original Felix Unger.
Yeah, the most ghetto neighborhoods in LA look pretty nice, aside from the bars on the windows and doors. Tree-lined streets with middle class single family houses.
By comparison, the streets in New York LOOK really mean, even if they're inhabited by white yuppies paying $3000/mo in rent.
"If white people hate or fear flat land and prefer hills, then, um, why did they build South Central LA?"
Exactly, and they populated the North OC Santa Ana River flood plain after being burned out of South Central LA and near suburbs.
From this educational film, you'll notice that Inglewood of 1961 (not far from South Central, and just as flat) was pretty white.
I drove through Watts in the summer of 72. I too, was amazed how nice it was-my parents as well. We had been living in New York when the Watts riots occurred, and expected Harlem. AS I had just been in India, Pakistan, Iran, etc. seeing Watts after all the talk about what a slum it was made me realize how full of crap the media was. When I moved to Miami three years later, many houses- even in extremely wealthy neighborhoods- were not significantly nicer than houses in Watts, although they tended to be bigger. Poverty causes crime, yeah, right. Horrible slums, yeah, right. All B.S.
The internet suggests that there was a small wave of black migration after WWI but that yes, the big push came post-WW2 and that South Central LA was not majority black for much of its existence, only a couple of decades in fact.
"white people in L.A. find flat land unnerving."
This maybe a stretch - but given European geography it may be plausible that people of European descent really do feel this way. Most of Western and Central Europe is hilly, mountainous and/or tree covered. The flat steppes to the East are traditionally where danger (Scythians, Huns, Turks) has ridden in from.
There are major advantages to living on flat land, such as on-street parking and sidewalks, corner stores, bicycle riding is easy, and so forth. The celebrities traditionally lived in the Hollywood Hills, but unless privacy is your foremost need, it can be a nightmarish way to live. You have to get in your car to get to the nearest store, you might have to back out of your driveway into traffic, there are typically no sidewalks for walking your dog. I live on a culdesac in the flatlands of the Valley a couple of block from a library, liquor store, coffee shop, and park, and, if you like walking, it's much better than living on Mulholland. But, it's not fashionable because celebrities have always lived in the hills.
Except in LA, the hills are also dangerous. Brush fires, mudslides, narrow access in and out for emergency vehicles, far from freeways, etc. Not to mention bears, coyotes, and rattlesnakes.
It was the influx of masses of non-Whites, first Blacks, then Mexicans, that pushed Whites out of the old original settlement areas into more expensive (harder and more costly to build in the hills) areas. After all, Newport Beach, Marina Del Rey, Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, and Torrance are all pretty flat, as is Hermosa Beach and Venice. No one minds paying lots of money to live there. While Playa Del Rey underneath the LAX flightpath and next to the Hyperion sewage treatment plant is dirt cheap, comparatively speaking.
High prices due to land scarcity, high building costs, etc. keep out masses of poor non-Whites. That's why flat Newport Beach is so pricey, and so very, very White. While more hilly Costa Mesa has many neighborhoods that are majority Hispanic.
This picture is of a particularly nice street, and yes there are lots of crummy apartment buildings in South Central. And the Florence-Normandie neighborhood where the riot broke out and where Reginald Denny was attacked has particularly nice residential streets. But, lots of the 'hood in LA look kind of like this, which is worth trying to wrap your head around.
The black homeowners in South-Central are often civil servants, and, as I've mentioned before, civil servants tend to make good neighbors: they have to pass tests to get their jobs, they get paid enough, they can't move elsewhere, they don't have to work super long hours so they can work on their lawns, and so forth. The commercial streets, however, are terrible.
When the big earthquake hits LA (it's already overdue), people in flat areas will be better off (although looting may be an issue).
The hills in Southern California get hit more by natural disasters like fires and mud slides than the flat lands. The Hollywood Hills haven't burned since 1961, probably due to the density of water outlets now vs. then and laws requiring sage brush removal around homes, but more outlying hilly developments go up in smoke every so often.
Steve,
As you know, Expo line just opened this weekend, with a number of stations in South Central.
With crime rates hitting 40 year lows, it is quite possible that the areas around the Expo line stations will gentrify.
The money you can save by taking the train each day to a job downtown rather than driving is substantial
"The money you can save by taking the train each day to a job downtown rather than driving is substantial"
You save on parking. The problem is that you still have to own a car to live in L.A., so you can't avoid the big expenses of depreciation, insurance, and most maintenance.
I tried living in Chicago without a car. The funny thing was that I got through the winter standing on frozen corners waiting for the bus okay, but when spring came, I got desperate to get out of the city and play golf in the suburbs.
A couple can get by pretty well with just one car in Chicago, if dad takes public transportation downtown. But, modern life is set up in such a fashion that a mother can't get by without a car very easily at all anywhere other than NYC.
Yeah, if the Big One hits during the dry season and knocks out water mains, that could be very bad in terms of fires, especially in populated hills.
"Most visitors from back east are surprised how nice the ghetto looks in LA. I mean, they use palms as street trees. How bad can it be?"
That's the truth.
Coming from NY where I had had the experience of Bed-Stuy, Harlem and the South Bronx, when I first moved to LA I went to a friend's houseparty in Compton. We drove to a nice neighborhood that resembled a dingier version of the one in the picture. I asked my friend "I thought we were going to Compton, How far is it from here?"
He pulls over at the party and says to me; "This is Compton, fool!"
Steve why not do a thread that applies "the rent is too damn high" to your neighborhood.
Yglesias argues for very high density residential development around train stations. Most relevant to you would be development around the North Hollywood train station.
Would you be in favor of building a miniature Manhattan around that train station, so that 60 thousand people were within easy walking distance of the train?
"I live on a culdesac in the flatlands of the Valley a couple of block from a library, liquor store..."
Yo Stee, you use da lie-bury and da licka stowe?
I spend more time over in the "NoHo arts district" around the Valley terminus of the subway now that there is a Laemmle movie theatre that just opened there. (I would guess this will be the last movie theatre to ever open in L.A.) It's kind of a Chicago-seedy fun neighborhood for a few blocks on Lankershim, which is nice, especially as a change for the Valley. The subway means that people can drink without driving. The powers that be insisted on a Laemmele art house theater probably to attract non-teenagers to the area.
The real issue is whether you can get gentrifiers to stick around long enough to send their kids to the local public schools.
About 15 years ago the only time I was ever in L.A., I took a drive starting in the south at Yorbalinda and ending up what was if I remember right Malibu( after going through ? Santa Monica) eventually reaching a point where it seems you are leaving the sprawl along the coast. Again if I remember right, I passed along the coast at Long Beach and some other beaches( Huffington?) and then more or less departed from the coast and headed inland eventually hitting Beverly hills( Rodeo Drive) and passed through Hollywood on the main street before turning back towards the coast. Ventured up into some rather sharp hills with very nice homes; don´t remember exactly where. But interestingly enough, I had a map and also remember taking a main street through Compton and seem to think that I had gone through a part of Watts. I also remember skirting Santa Ana. On one of the main streets that I hit somewhere, maybe beyond Compton, went through a Mexican Street Market. To this day, I remember thinking even the ugliest parts of my paseo por Los Angeles looked nicer than most places.
LA Apocalypse?
Escape from LA
"Snake Plissken is once again called in by the United States government to recover a potential doomsday device from Los Angeles, now an autonomous island where undesirables are deported."
Get Off My Lawn! said - Who are slumlords of Los Angeles?
I believe that most Iranian immigrants who arrived fleeing Khomeini were quite well off, and many bought up houses in LA and lived off the rents. I don't know about the Armenians, but would expect they would also favor that sort of cash business. Heck, could easily be wealthy South Americans or even Chinese - like that Vietnamese who recently bought that town in Wyoming for $900,000.
Magic Johnson made a lot of money around 15 years ago by going into the most upscale black residential area in LA and putting up a Starbucks, a movie theater and other pleasant commercial amenities that had been sorely lacking.
@Steve Sailer:
But, lots of the 'hood in LA look kind of like this, which is worth trying to wrap your head around.
What understanding does one arrive at once one successfully wraps one's head around this?
I think this layout shown in the picture is a pretty good template for a compromise between suburban and urban living, you just need two story houses because most of these one story houses are around 1,000 sf. But small but not tiny lots with 2 story houses are a decent way to get enough population density to make the neighborhood both walkable and drivable.
(Of course, there's no place to walk to in South Central because the commercial streets are so dire, but this format works well in a white neighborhood. For example, Santa Monica and Manhattan Beach have a lot of tiny houses because before penicillin, people feared they'd get TB from living near the ocean, so rich people lived more inland, like Pasadena). The relatively high population density supports lots of restaurants and boutiques in the beach cities.
As for denser neighborhoods, I lived in a condo on the third floor in Chicago, but lugging groceries up two flights of stairs, along with looking for a parking place for the second car, was okay in my thirties but too much hassle for the long term.
After looking at a map, I remember that after Yorbalinda, I went to San Juan Capistrano and then started up the coast.
I have only ever been through New York City on Interstate 95, but hands down would choose living in Los Angeles over NYC by these experiences alone.
Hope to never live in either but L.A. looks preferable
Even parts of Detroit still have decent residential districts hidden behind the the apocalyptic main streets.
There are a lot of quality small homes that factory workers had built in the 50's-60's, and they retain a certain quality. Certainly people desire to keep them up on the outside.
I wouldn't like to live there, because of the crime, but there's some good, cheap home stock there.
Mexicans are taking over the flatlands, sometimes at gunpoint. It is only beginning to show in local government because so many can't vote, and many who can, don't bother.
Blacks are the biggest victims of unfettered immigration. Unfortunately, they don't realize it, and their pols--all Demns--have to live with the Jews, who have a sentimental attachment to liberal immigration policies.
" And the Florence-Normandie neighborhood where the riot broke out and where Reginald Denny was attacked has particularly nice residential streets. "
I took a google maps streetview tour of that exact area when you first posted this. I'd say that while not as bad as you'd expect, the area is pretty crappy. I 'turned' down a random street (71st I think it was) and just about 20% of the houses had those low, chain link fences around their yards. Some of the lawns were nice, others were brown or scraggly. A few (10% or so) had cars parked on them. Just a few of those nice trees -- nothing like one tree per lot that the times photo shows.
The photo reminds me of the good old days when my prosperous Uncle Al lived in Inglewood (now in the 'hood).
"Hilly" Costa Mesa? Those hills aren't very big. What about real hills in Villa Park, Anaheim Hills, Yorba Linda, Brea, Coyote Hills in Fullerton, the Lemon Heights section in Tustin, Cowan Heights, hills of north Orange, north Brea. All large hills, all upscale areas, all white/asian (and now persian in Anaheim Hills).
The nicest area in the South Bay is Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills, and Palos Verdes Estates - all hilly. Manhattan Beach real estate is pricier than Hermosa Beach and it's hillier, too.
If you can't afford the ocean view then you choose the next best thing, a hill view. In north Orange County a hill view can give you a mountain view, a distant ocean view, and a gorgeous city lights view.
The other thing about living in the hills and I can't speak for other areas besides mine but there is no mass transit bus up here. That helps keeps the undesirables in the lower-priced flat areas. Everything is residential, no commercial area to draw criminals either.
As for why LA homes are so awful on the inside it's because they're so expensive to buy. Once you're in you have no money to update.
Blacks are the biggest victims of unfettered immigration. Unfortunately, they don't realize it, and their pols--all Demns--have to live with the Jews, who have a sentimental attachment to liberal immigration policies.
Blacks have learned that Whites are their biggest threat - lynchings, draggings from the back of pickups. Survival comes before better job opportunities. As a result, destruction of Whites through immigration outweighs diminished economic opportunities caused by immigration.
"Costa Mesa? Those hills aren't very big."
Hence the name, Coast Tableland.
The really weird thing about this is that in South America (most famously Brazil), it is the poorer (and darker) who live on the hillsides and the richer and whiter who live in the flat city centers.
And sorry for posting pretty much the same thing as 'International Jew' did 8 hours earlier (i.e. the 'virtual tour' of South Central.)
Who are slumlords of Los Angeles?
Probably the same ethnic group that opens liquor stores on Indian reservations?
stari_momak said..."The really weird thing about this is that in South America (most famously Brazil), it is the poorer (and darker) who live on the hillsides and the richer and whiter who live in the flat city centers."
The Brazilian slums that are on the hillside have a nice view of the city, especially in Rio de Janeiro.
Blacks have learned that Whites are their biggest threat - lynchings, draggings from the back of pickups. Survival comes before better job opportunities. As a result, destruction of Whites through immigration outweighs diminished economic opportunities caused by immigration.
To the extent they think that far ahead, Blacks know better. They are far more afraid, physically of other blacks than they are of whites. They are sufficiently numerate to understand, even at their fourth or fifth grade level, the odds of being lynched or dragged or otherwise fatally running afoul of Whitey, independent of the legal system, are trivial next to being killed by another Black. Not one Black in five hundred thousand knows (knew) a Black that has been lynched or dragged in the last sixty or seventy ears. Four in five knew a Black killed by another Black, or know his or her immediate family.
Many of the Iranians in the United States are Jewish.
They are sufficiently numerate to understand, even at their fourth or fifth grade level, the odds of being lynched or dragged or otherwise fatally running afoul of Whitey, independent of the legal system, are trivial next to being killed by another Black.
No. The media is a key source of information and the media tells them that Whites are very dangerous and very violent: Klansmen, slavers, lynch mobs, even just pure racism. These media images are powerful and can compete with and overwhelm FBI crime statistics and even personal experience.
To the extent they think that far ahead, Blacks know better. They are far more afraid, physically of other blacks than they are of whites.
Then why aren't they joining with Whites, or even leading the charge, to oppose mass immigration? The most plausible explanations are: they fear Whites more than immigration; and/or they hate Whites, and the immediate personal sweetness of revenge is worth the price in vague, diminished job opps.
I don't see what the big suprise is. That's pretty much how South Central is portrayed in most rap videos.
"Yglesias argues for very high density residential development around train stations. Most relevant to you would be development around the North Hollywood train station. "
They did this the last 10 -15 years in the northwest suburbs of Chicago like Arlington Heights, Palatine so people could walk to catch the Metra train downtown. These condos and townhomes are pretty expensive though. Some costing 350,000 to 500,000 to over 1 mil which is more than some single family homes nearby. You are still going to need a car to drive in the suburbs.
You can still get some condos for 885 to 125,000.
http://chicago.condo.com/ForSale/United-States/Illinois/Arlington-Heights-Condos#view=list&price-min=300000&loc=37935
"..there is no place to walk to in south central because the commercial streets are so dire"
Because of high rates of crime, good businesses won't locate in black 'hoods'.
"Blacks have learned that whites are their biggest threats - from lynchings to being dragged behind pickup trucks"..
Are you serious? The last lynching was in 1968. And they had been declining dramatically since the 1930's anyways. As for the pickup truck that was one single incident. Against this there has been a tsunami of black on white crime. And black on black crime. Meanwhile Mexican gangs have been ethnically cleansing blacks from California's cities for decades.
I've become a conspiracy theorist, sad to say. I do believe that if Obama's re-election continues to look in doubt, the media will feed the country with not-so-subtle messages that, "If you throw him out of office, there'll be riots."
Why would anyone care? Just get your guns and protect yourself.
"Blacks have learned that whites are their biggest threats - from lynchings to being dragged behind pickup trucks"..
Are you serious? The last lynching was in 1968. And they had been declining dramatically since the 1930's anyways.
I am serious. Consider whom they learn from: Hollywood, mainstream media, university intellectuals. Genocide by Whites is always lurking.
Mississippi Burning them Fried Green Tomatoes.
Then why aren't they joining with Whites, or even leading the charge, to oppose mass immigration? The most plausible explanations are: they fear Whites more than immigration; and/or they hate Whites, and the immediate personal sweetness of revenge is worth the price in vague, diminished job opps.
Well, as odd as it sounds, Whitey hasn't asked them to.
We are not dealing with a high initiative bunch here, but they do have some sense of understanding of their own self interest. Indeed, the Jim Crow South worked for this very reason. If Whites made a coherent and reasonably consistent pitch to Blacks-here is what we want and here is what we offer-many would take the deal, if it made any sense. (Those that won't take the deal can take the jet-free first class one way to wherever will have them, but one way no matter what. But that's another topic.)
Blacks on average are like ten year old kids, but you can deal with a ten year old. You have to be the adult, and you have to be persistent and consistent. A ten year old has lower IQ (on an absolute scale) and a shorter time horizon than an adult, and can be pretty ill tempered, such that if ten year old males had buff athletic adult bodies they would be dangerous. That describes the black male. Rule by Blacks is like "Lord of the Flies". Need I say much more?
I will say that I know Blacks who oppose mass immigration and particularly that of Mexicans. And for exactly the factual reasons. They don't LIKE white people, but they respect them on a certain level if they are respectable.
When I was a ten year old I didn't LIKE my father, but I certainly respected him on a certain level-the level of my butt, which was getting a whipping if I shot my mouth off, disrespected my mother in front of him, or committed certain other specified offenses.
My father was a first rate philanderer and a drunk, but to the day we buried him I respected him on that level. Blacks respected Whites in just that way fifty years ago.
"Magic Johnson made a lot of money around 15 years ago by going into the most upscale black residential area in LA and putting up a Starbucks, a movie theater and other pleasant commercial amenities that had been sorely lacking."
Sounds good to me. From what I hear these places are pretty nice.
Hat's off to Magic for making LA a nicer place.
"Would this magically turn the black and brown majority in that area into Swiss people?"
No but it would undoubtedly bring back some swiss that fled.
"Then why aren't they joining with Whites, or even leading the charge, to oppose mass immigration? The most plausible explanations are: they fear Whites more than immigration; and/or they hate Whites, and the immediate personal sweetness of revenge is worth the price in vague, diminished job opps."
This, their plan is stick it to YT. and the media is of course fanning that sentiment at every turn.
"I don't see what the big suprise is. That's pretty much how South Central is portrayed in most rap videos."
I've only seen one or two rap videos in my life, and they weren't very memorable. Perhaps other surprised people around here don't watch rap videos either.
Photo represents a strictly Cali thing. Similar ghettos in places like Miami and Tampa are the Bronx with single-story houses and palm trees.
Why aren't the brothers joining the crackers to fight the invasion of the chicos? I would say because, as a group, black men haven't worked in 40 years and black women, like that cheerful and competent sista girl at the DMV we've all met, are taken care of by the state. When the Mexican horde takes more of these AA positions we'll see blacks beginning to care.
Maybe this is a reason that white people don't live on the flatlands anymore, despite the obvious advantages (for instance, I was able to ride my bike to school, about a mile away, starting with first grade, and to Little League also).
"A man [Stephenson Choi Kim-member of the model, cognitive elite minority!]] has been convicted of first-degree murder and other charges for fatally shooting a woman and injuring four others at a Cypress cafe seven years ago."
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/tag/stephenson-choi-kim/
For those of you not from SoCal, Cypress is (or was) middle class, 'white bread' bedroom community in North OC.
Most people don't pay much attention to politics--think of the recent thread where Steve linked to the Pew survey on political knowledge of the people. That is more true as you get less educated, less intelligent, and poorer people--and blacks are on average less educated, less intelligent, and poorer than whites. So even if you are right that blacks would benefit from pushing back on immigration, that doesn't mean that most blacks (or most whites) pay close enough attention to the big picture of policics and society and economy to recognize that fact.
One thing that is pretty easy to see is that Republicans are a good bit less friendly to blacks, overall, than Democrats. Probably the great majority of blacks who pay close attention to politics respond to that, and prefer the pro-affirmative action, pro-discrimination lawsuit party, since that party does plausibly represent their interests.
Now, long term, the Democratic party probably does about as lousy job representing blacks' interests as the Republican party does representing whites' interests. But how many voters are even paying enough attention to notice, especially since almost all big media are complely captured by the two big parties?
Seems like this is one more area where the media image of reality is 180 degrees off from reality.
This is important. Most of what we think we know about the world has been told to us by folks who don't bother to get even the most basic facts straight, who hammer the whole world into a small set of predefined narratives, and who will happily just ignore big, important things happenng if telling the story won't help their agenda.
The more I see stuff like this, the more I question everything I have absorbed from media consumption rather than seeing it for myself or studying it from high quality sources of data.
The danger of living in the flatlands (whether in the West Coast or East Coast) is its often in a flood zone. People who live on hills don't have to worry about flood insurance.
"We should call Sharpton's bluff."
Easy for me to say since I own no business nor work in FLA or Sanford, but I agree.
Of course, guns are viewed differently in FLA than in CA, so perhaps Floridians are already readying there ammo stashes. I hope so.
The blackmailing of city officials by Sharpton/Jackson and the black community itself is obvious.
"and white hipsters pushing eastward into hilly, formerly distressed neighborhoods like Los Feliz,"
I don't know much about LA, but in the 40s and 50s wasn't Los Feliz considered upscale and isn't it now considered upscale?
Honestly, don't any of you know any decent black people? I know some really good black people that i wouldn't mind sharing the proverbial desert island with (I'm white).
I get mad about the liberals downplaying of all the pathologies of the ghetto, but some of these comments go way too far in the other direction.
It's a mixed bag here in the East Bay. Some pleasant blocks, some run-down areas, in the Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond hoods. Generally the wealthier hills/poorer flats rule applies, but there are exceptions. One is the tiny town of Albany which is just north of northwest Berkeley. It's highly desirable because of the schools.
There are a fair amount of well-to-do blacks living in the Oakland hills.
Father Knows Best was cited as a TV white washing? It was conceived in the 1940s, on radio 1949-54 and on TV 1955-1960.
US Census 1950
White 89.5%
Black 10%
Native Indian 0.2%
Asian 0.2%
Other 0.1%
US Census 1960
White 88.6%
Black 10.5%
Indian/Alute 0.3%
Asian 0.5%
Other 0.1%
The cited "Wagon Train" ran on TV 1957-1965 and chronicled the stories of travels on the California Trail from Missouri west circa 1870.
US Census 1870 for the Western Region (Mountain and Pacific):
White 91.9%
Black 0.6%
Am Indian 1.1%
Asian 6.3%
Given that Asians immigrated from the East and Am Indians generally did not join large wagon trains overland to California, that means the overland wagon demographic was overwhelmingly 98-99% white.
I don't think the author knows the definition of "whitewashing".
anon 6.32
'If you want to know what real hard-bitten, run-down, decaying urban slums look like, you'd do no worse than walking the streets of London, just a few miles or so from the touristy bits, in inner-suburbs in which most of the buildings are 100+ years old and unsuitable for modern life, and where not a blade of grass is to be seen for miles.'
Not so. Inner london, or just London as it used to be known as, is full of parks large and small with huge amounts of decent public housing or new Housing Association blocks.
95% of london's problems are to do with Ethnic Minorities. See Andrew Gilligan's Daily Telegraph blog for some info.
London has approx 150-160 murders a year and nearly all, I'd say about 90% are committed by Minorities or foreigners. See Telegraph murder map for the grisly details.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/london/police-to-guard-voting-booths-at-tower-hamlets-7703158.html
See this link for catastrophe that is London politics.
"Honestly, don't any of you know any decent black people?"
I do. But of the two from my old neighborhood whom I miss most, one died at 50 (obesity) and the other is usually either in jail or on the street.
"I know some really good black people that i wouldn't mind sharing the proverbial desert island with (I'm white)."
I won't even suggest you try to develop a sense of self-preservation. With a POV like that, it's probably just as well you don't have one.
Los Feliz was never a distressed neighborhood ; it went from upscale to middle class back to upscale. However it is located near some bad neighborhoods like East Hollywood and Koreatown.
Cypress is now white-asian, some problems with asians but its not Westminster. Besides, its not the white areas that are growing sometimes, in fact, the OC Register mention Irvine topping the other cities in total number in Orange County. Irvine still nice but is now about 40 percent asian. Huntington Beach did the best for white cities around 2,100 people and Fullerton mixed white, hispanic, and asian around 2,000. Brea which is now a little on the mix side since hispanics are about 26 percent and asians around 18 percent in Brea it grew a whopping 2.0 percent but only 900 people since its only 40,000. Its hard to tell if white population is moving as much or asians or hispancis are growing from these ciites.
Anti-development will make the area browner faster why, because whites that like development will go somewhere else. The cities mention are growing because of some new housing developments. Irvine while a lot of asians buy has some areas that appeal to whites and still a very low hispanic population. Hispanics in both La and Orange live in the older ares which are very developed in fact La is growing slower than Orange and San Diego since its housing on average is older and there is no place to built. Hispanics were moving into the inland empire and once to Nv, Az, and Texas. Conservative whites think Texas is so great but hispanic and asian growth in the state went up much faster due to birthrates and Mexicans from Ca coming and Mexicans from Mexico.
Well, visit some of the worst barrios in La and they have more than one family to many in the east they are a shocker that low rise apartments and 1950's tract houses can sometimes housed 20 people. Santa Ana in Orange County resembles New york City in the 19th century granted the housing space is much better but sometimes in a 3 bedroom apartment in Santa Ana you can have over 10 people. The hispanic and asian parts of So Calif are known to have a much higher number of people per household. Santa Ana also has 4.5 people per household similar to east coast per households of 1920, granted the housing is much nicer in Santa Ana than New York in 1920 which has tiny apartments.
Im white and have lived in south la for over a year now. its the best weather and most affordable place to live currently in la i can get to the beach in about 20min no traffic 40 with. south la is near downtown, hollywood, usc, and I can blast gangster rap on my front porch.. i giggle to think about all the white people burning up in the valleys during the summer and having to drive 40+miles to do anything fun... if i was rich at this point would get at a monster size house in West Adams
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