There is more to this story.......first Seattle had a black mayor from 1989 to 1997. Oddly enough, it was during this time that white flight began to abate and the city and its white population started to grow again. Minorities here are much like minorities in MPLS........and not like those I have seen in other American cities. They are better educated and they assimilate much faster than minorities in other cities. Not just Asians but blacks and Latinos too. And that's because they are encouraged to do so. There is racism and discrimination here but at a lower level than other American cities........certainly much lower than LA.
An example is Garfield high. Its where I heard Obama first speak. Its located in the black community. It has been a minority majority school since the 1930s and at one point was 90% minority. Today, it is 62% minority. It draws white kids from my neighborhood even though they have to ride 3 buses to get to school. Why? Its facilities are state of the art. It has some of the best AP courses and best teachers in the city. And this is despite the fact that the Seattle school system has been fraught with problems during the past 10 years.
It took Seattle a lot of hard work to get to this point and the city continues to work hard at it. And its not there yet........blacks are still not reading at the state level overall. Poverty levels are still higher in the black and Latino communities. Gangs are a problem. We have had racial problems with the SPD. Nonetheless, the city continues to seed the minority neighborhoods with projects and improvements For an example the first leg of Seattle's light rail went right through the commercial area of the black community. All kinds of public funding went to improve that neighborhood. Of course, these improvements are leading to another problem..........gentrification and displacement of the poor.
But the positives keep rolling in........public school enrolment which had been plummeting for decades started to reverse in 2006. At its present growth rate, it is expected in two years to be at its highest enrolment ever. More and more white families have stopped moving to the suburbs when their kids get to be school age. Schools that had been mothballed just 5-10 years ago are getting put back into service. These days in Seattle there are too many students for too few schools.
And that makes for a booming economy.......major company after major company is either opening up a branch office or is moving their headquarters from the suburbs to the city. Employment growth is over 3% YOY.
And its not just Seattle......MPLS, Madison, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Portland, Des Moines, Grand Rapids, Cincy, Columbus, DC, etc......all liberal cities........are experiencing a significant renaissance. Even major disasters like Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland are starting to see their urban cores revive. A city like Baltimore is more the exception rather than the rule and speaks to a tradition of corruption and indifferent leadership. While I don't know much about Baltimore, the current mayor, a black woman, has not impressed throughout this Freddie Gray mess. And what I do know is that a police force that willingly severs the spinal cord of a black man in their charge needs a major overhaul.
As VDARE.com has repeatedly explained, liberal policies cannot and do not explain the riots. Let’s look at Seattle, Wash., ground zero for 21st-century moonbat leftism. Explains Wikipedia:
Seattle’s political culture is very liberal and progressive for the United States, with over 80% of the population voting for the Democratic Party. All precincts in Seattle voted for Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election. [196] In partisan elections for the Washington State Legislature and United States Congress, nearly all elections are won by Democrats. Seattle is considered the first major American city to elect a female mayor, Bertha Knight Landes. [197] It has also elected an openly gay mayor, Ed Murray, [198] and a socialist councillor, Kshama Sawant. [199]
Seattle is widely considered one of the most liberal cities in the United States, even surpassing its neighbor, Portland, Oregon. [200] Support for issues such as same-sex marriage and reproductive rights are largely taken for granted in local politics. In the 2012 U.S. general election, an overwhelming majority of Seattleites voted to approve Referendum 74 and legalize gay marriage in Washington state. [201] In the same election, an overwhelming majority of Seattleites also voted to approve the legalization of the recreational use of cannabis in the state. [202] Like much of the Pacific Northwest (which has the lowest rate of church attendance in the United States and consistently reports the highest percentage of atheism [203] [204]), church attendance, religious belief, and political influence of religious leaders are much lower than in other parts of America. [205]
Seattle also has a thriving alternative press, with the Web-based daily Seattle Post-Intelligencer, several other online dailies (including Publicola and Crosscut), The Stranger(an alternative, left-leaning weekly), Seattle Weekly, and a number of issue-focused publications, including the nation’s two largest online environmental magazines,Worldchanging and Grist.org.
In July 2012, Seattle became the largest city in Washington state to ban plastic shopping bags. [206] In June 2014 the city passed a local ordinance to increase the minimum wageto $15 an hour on a staged basis from 2015 to 2021. When fully implemented the $15 hourly rate will be the highest minimum wage in the nation. [207] In October 2014, Seattle officially replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, honoring Seattle’s Native American community.
So politically, Seattle is just like Charm City, and might be even more ardently leftist on the social issues. Yet other than the brief lapse into chaos during the Occupy protests (which spanned across the country) it seems strangely immune to the criminal insanity in such places as Baltimore and Detroit.
Seattle is also “predominantly white,” at about 70 percent of the population, with Asians at 14 percent. Whites also run the city. Baltimore is, again, about 65 percent black and only about 30 percent white. Blacks run Baltimore.
If liberal Democrats are the problem in Baltimore, as Perazzo and others in Conservatism, Inc., suggest, why aren’t other cities under their control plunging into violent chaos?
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