From the Austin American-Statesman:
Austin struggling to recruit, retain black professionals
By Laylan Copelin
American-Statesman Staff
Central Texas is a fixture on national lists as one of the best places to live, work, start a business or retire. The region, according to its press clippings, is attractive whether you are young and single, gay or straight, or a retired couple.
But not necessarily if you are black.
“We’re on all those lists, but I’m not aware of Austin being on a list for African-Americans,” said Ashton Cumberbatch Jr., chairman of the Capital City African-American Chamber of Commerce. “Austin has never been marketed to blacks.”
Austin is, traditionally, the most liberal metropolitan area in Texas, and has long been fashionable among the nicer sort of white people. When I was at Rice in Houston way back in the 1970s, for example, everybody at Rice thought Austin was much better than Houston. (Austin has some hills to provide scenery, there are some German-Americans to provide civic cooperativeness, and the huge UT supports popular music and a little bit of film culture: Terence Malick and Mike Judge live there. Idiocracy was made in Austin, which you can take one of two ways.)
In general, however, all else being equal, blacks seem to prefer the less liberal burghs, such as Houston (which is home to the biggest West African community). The Atlanta region in Republican Georgia has become particularly attractive to educated African-Americans. If you were a black college graduate and wanted to raise your children amidst other black college graduates, Atlanta would be near the top of your list, not Austin.
You can't be a SWPL around NAMs...
ReplyDeleteIt's because in terms of real-life behavior SWPL "liberals" are actually the most socially conservative, puritan, emotionally repressed Americans of all. No, I'm actually not kidding. I live amongst these people, and I can confirm it.
ReplyDeletethere are no jobs in these, uhh, precious swpl communities. there are enough rich white kids to populate a few artsy liberal metros but educated black people still need to find *work*, not just craft beers, indie music, and locavore cuisine.
ReplyDeletedon't get met wrong, i think austin, seattle, portland, denver, madison, whatever are cool places to live as a young adult. but i'm telling you to ask an ivy league law grad--someone with seven years of elite education--how many jobs are available in places like tht.
I would take Seattle off that list. I would imagine being corp in house at Microsoft, amazon, Starbucks, nintendo, Expedia would be nice jobs for elite lawyers with experience who want to get out of big law. I would also imagine quite a few v50 firm would have Seattle offices.
DeleteConservative metros tend to create more jobs and cheap housing due to low taxes and light regulation.
ReplyDeleteAustin has lots of Hispanics.
Austin struggling to recruit, retain black professionals
ReplyDeleteNot surprising. There aren't that many; not enough to go around, anyway. Trust me.
Austin has a lot of hispanics so does Dallas and Houston over 40 percent but both have a lot more blacks. Generifaction now is even coming to Mexican towns, La has a lot of hipsters buying up Silverlake area and sending second generation Mexicians to the Inland Empire. Santa Ana has had white businesses moved in the downntown area which were until 5 years ago all Mexician and Central American Business.
ReplyDeleteI'm from a north Austin suburb and I've lived in the area my entire life, save for a few years in Dallas, Houston and at A&M in College Station. I really like Austin, although I've wanted to punch more than a few SWPLs in black rimmed glasses.
ReplyDeleteSBPDL had a post on this the other day and a commenter pointed out that I35 basically splits the city and it used to serve as a NAM barrier: Hispanics (plenty of them) and blacks on the east, and whites and Asians (quite a few, of course) on the west. But the past few years they've started coming over to the downtown entertainment area more often and spreading the joys of diversity.
Austin isn't on the level of San Antonio in the Hispanic department, but it's on the way. Of course, the SWPLs with their fairy tale ideas are blind to the obvious fact that save for a few middle class blacks, blacks won't move to places that the Hispanics long ago laid claim to as the king NAM. Dallas and Houston are the opposite; the Mexicans are moving on them.
You are spot on: unlike Houston and Dallas blacks just have no real history in or connection to Austin, or to San Antonio and El Paso except for the military. Can you see the Hispanics in El Paso trying something like this? LOL you have to laugh at SWPLs sometimes to keep your sanity.
Harris County covers most of the Houston metropolitan-statistical area. It has about 4.1 million people (2010 census) and is the third largest county in the U.S. after L.A. and Cook county. It's approximate demographic breakdown is as follows: 40% Hispanic, 30% White, 20% Black, 10% Asian. I don't what the data is though for the entire Houston statistical area. It's worth noting that Austin is the 33rd largest statistical area. (Wedged between Las Vegas and Raleigh-Durham)
ReplyDeleteWasn't Office Space also filmed in Austin?
ReplyDeleteBlacks need more vertically integrated enterprises and government agencies to find a niche. Austin is all UT and high tech specialization.
ReplyDeleteMy comment is not white progressives wanting to moved to hispanic Texas or Florida but conservative. They complain about illegal immirgants in California but want to moved to Texas or Florida just because of lower taxes or cheap housing. There are other places with cheap housing or taxes. Oklahoma I think would be a better choice for a conservative.
ReplyDeleteWell, I think Houston and Atlanta vote for Democratics almost as much as Austin. Barrck won Houston and Atlanta its the burb or burb counties near them that vote Republician.
ReplyDeleteHarris County asian population is high for Texas and another sign that a red state might eventually go purple.
ReplyDelete"the Mexicans are moving on them."
ReplyDeleteWhat - moving in or moving out? I lived in Dallas 1979-1982 and I don't think I ever saw a Mexican there.
Wasn't Office Space also filmed in Austin?
ReplyDeleteDallas.
Blacks need more vertically integrated enterprises and government agencies to find a niche. Austin is all UT and high tech specialization.
ReplyDeleteAnd government agencies. It's the state capital!
And as soon as they can, many white Houstonians pack up and move to Austin (or other Hill Country towns) to escape the vibrancy of H-Town.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said:
ReplyDelete"there are no jobs in these, uhh, precious swpl communities. there are enough rich white kids to populate a few artsy liberal metros but educated black people still need to find *work*, not just craft beers, indie music, and locavore cuisine. don't get met wrong, i think austin, seattle, portland, denver, madison, whatever are cool places to live as a young adult. but i'm telling you to ask an ivy league law grad--someone with seven years of elite education--how many jobs are available in places like tht."
Yup, and that's a feature, not a bug. The whole point of SWPL cities is that they have pulled the ladder up. They're already rich enough that they don't need an influx of people.
The handwringing over how they can't get enough coloured people is like when they complain that the Ivy Leagues aren't racially "diverse" enough. They would rather gouge their eyeballs out than actually expose themselves or their families to coloured people. What they're really doing is showing to other SWPLs that they, like, totally appreciate diversity.
Well, 1982 is a long time ago there are alot more mexicans in Dallas now.
ReplyDeleteThey want arbitrage, not to live in a white city, nor a black city, but a city transitioning between the two. That will always be a temporary state of affairs at best.
ReplyDeleteFor the record:
ReplyDeleteThe African-American population of hyper-SWPL Burlington, Vermont increased 139% between the censuses of 2000 and 2010, and more than doubled as a share of the town's total population (from 1.8% to 3.9%).
The number of African-Americans in Blaine County, Idaho, home of John Kerry's fave ski resort of Sun Valley, nearly doubled in that decade, from about 30 to 60 (out of a total of 21,000).
Blacks increased by 30% in Malibu, from 115 to 148, and from 0.9% to 1.2%.
Who says African-Americans don't like whiterpeople havens?
SWPL cities are still functional enough that they do not need to lard up the social services with "special" programs for the "disadvantaged" which is where the Government / AA jobs are. Most of these towns have only small to mid-sized owner operated companies that do not need the padded hierarchies that you see in larger corporate publicly traded businesses. That means if you migrate there you have to actually add some type of value to the locals and not just get awarded a sinecure because of your diversity.
ReplyDeleteThat's true, blacks in strange places these days. In California in communities that have higher blacks like LA or Alaemda they decline so they go to places with hardy any blacks like Orange County increase 0f 2,800 to 47,000 blacks and San Diego probably around 100,000 or so blacks around 1,800 snd Santa Clara around the 45,000 mark increase also of1,800.
ReplyDeleteThen there's this:
ReplyDeleteWhy Young Black Professionals Are Wary of Dallas
Inspiring lengthy discussion on the always-fascinating City-Data message board:
D Magazine Story About Why Successful African-Americans Are Wary of Moving to Dallas
@Noah172
ReplyDeleteMoney attracts money?
One of my older cousins worked as a stockbroker from 1990-2000. His decision to retire was based on his laborious acquisition (his words) of over 1 million shares of various Internet stocks. He was hit incredibly hard by the failure of Pets.com, Lycos and Excite, but Yahoo made him a millionaire. His investment in Facebook put him over the $10,000,000 mark. His current travel itinerary/home scouting targets involves visits to Montana, Vermont and the US Virgin Islands, places where a nouveau riche man can live in near-anonymity (and without the subliminal requirement to "keep up with the Joneses", that plagues the Hamptons or Orange County.) His two sons are adults, his daughter is sitting on letters of intent from NYU and Rutgers. All he wants is a decent-sized house in a quiet area where he won't be surrounded by people with outstretched hands.
Anon 10:43:
ReplyDeleteThey want the sort of diversity most of us are comfortable with--the kind that Sidwell Friends gets by having the Obama kids going there, or that your neighborhood gets when a black cardiologist and a Chilean mathematician move onto the block.
The problem is that in order to keep the riffraff out, you have to make your community so expensive, hard to travel to, or hard to find work in that you exclude a huge number of perfectly decent people.
In looking at the numbers, the Houston/Austin dichotomy of this article doesn't stand up.
ReplyDeletefrom 11/1/12 9:47 PM link:
Why Young Black Professionals Are Wary of Dallas:
Annual Black Migration 2006-2010
Austin Round Rock San Marcos 3,603
Houston Sugarland Baytown 7,678
To get an idea of proportionality:
Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos MSA : 1.7 Million
Houston Sugarland Baytown MSA: 6.1 million.
Do the math.From the numbers, a proportionally higher number of blacks have migrated to the Austin MSA compared to the Houston MSA.
Ditch the hypothesis of the article.
What the numbers show is that Austin, having a higher proportion of Politically Correct SWPL than Houston, is more concerned about the issue than Houston.