New Orleans isn't in a Top 20 cities list for black people. You could in good faith argue it's a terrible city for black people...
His list is tongue-in-cheek and half-hearted, but when I've dome these lists before, I ask you guys to state your criteria for good cities for black people. It helps to state your criteria on what you think is good for black people...
Mine:
•consistently strong economy/stable jobs base. Because with a stable economy, you have more black people with means, and a lower percentage of blacks in poverty...
Black poverty does matter, people! The wealth to income ratio matters...
•large black community, but this point requires a more specific breakdown;
The larger a city is, the more people are in a place in volume, so the "percentage" of a community is less relevant (not "irrelevant", but less relevant than a smaller city's percentage). The perfect example of this, is Los Angeles, often derided for having a "low" black population...
But Los Angeles being "only" ~8% black, is still ~311,000 black people living in the city. That's more black people in LA than the entire city population of St Louis (~40%; ~113k black people) or Pittsburgh (~20%; ~60k black people), so the percentages of those cities matters more, because they are so much smaller:
Census data for Pittsburgh, PA (pop. 303,254), including age, race, sex, income, poverty, marital status, education and more.
censusreporter.org
Census data for St. Louis, MO (pop. 281,754), including age, race, sex, income, poverty, marital status, education and more.
censusreporter.org
Census data for Los Angeles, CA (pop. 3,820,963), including age, race, sex, income, poverty, marital status, education and more.
censusreporter.org
Being larger shares of the community in Pittsburgh and St Louis are relevant in that it could make for a more visible community, emphasis on the word "could" here. I've never been to StL, but I've been to Pgh and while I think it's a wonderful city for visitors, that 20% black is not very visible at all...
No good faith argument would tell you that a community with 311,000 in representation is somehow worse than the communities with 113,000 or 60,000 people. The size of the community alone is going to present distinct advantages somewhere much smaller doesn't have...
LA is still Top 10 in terms of black population, and also when I speak on size of community, it isn't relegated to just the city limits. LA has a massive suburban black population that seamlessly blends with the city limit, and for the record, so do Atlanta and DC, which are on his list. Those cities all have massive populations of black people that live on the outskirts of the actual city and in the burbs...
So when I say "large and stable community" it's both in the city and suburbs
•strong education base, meaning a city has diverse education options that benefit black people at every level
•said black community is very visible in representation of a city at multiple areas. Education, political representation (think city and county government), business ownership, home ownership, civil services (think police, fire, utilities, etc), entertainment, on and on...
The visibility of a city's blackness contribute directly to just how good a city is for us!
•entertainment representation does matter. What "things to do" are there for black people, and how varied are they to account for the unlimited personalities of black people? Are there black comic cons for the black nerds? Lounges and clubs and black owned businesses matter. Black wealth or equality workshops, all these things have a place!
•black safety matters people. Memphis has a ton of black people. It is one of the worst cities to be black in on this metric, and for the record, there are some cities who do well in other metrics but also fukking suck in others like poverty or safety. You'd be doing any list of best black cities a disservice if you don't account for the violent crime rate in said cities...
..............
These are the main points if criteria for me, the main 5. There are other, lesser points that I may consider to a secondary level, but these are the main points. Anyone telling you what makes a city good for black people should list their criteria as well...
Dallas
