In any of the comments for Yahoo articles that have anything to do with black people, I always see the inevitable remarks that look like this: “How many cities that are mostly black are prosperous? How many are peaceful? How many have low crime? NONE NONE NONE rawr”
That got me thinking…what ARE the most economically successful, prosperous, peaceful and low-crime, black-dominated cities or regions in the USA?
Prince George’s County in Maryland, a suburb of DC, is majority-black and has some nice areas and some not as nice areas, but overall it’s pretty civilized. It’s definitely not “the hood”. I’ll specifically nominate Upper Marlboro, Maryland as a good example of the “nice” black areas of PGC. I’d go back there anytime, or even live there. It’s got a nice small town-y atmosphere with a nice historic downtown, and isn’t run down. It used to be a major tobacco growing and shipping area, and managed to stay afloat after that went into decline.
You beat me to it. PG County stands out in all the land as the national capital of black middle class. I’m particularly found of Mount Rainier on the border of DC, which is majority black and is home to a great little gay/arts/leftist community. I used to go there a lot for dance classes and stuff.
Trivia fun fact: Mount Rainier in Washington state gave its name to three places on the border of DC: the aforementioned Mount Rainier MD, Takoma in northern DC, and Takoma Park at the tri-point of DC, Montgomery County MD, and PG County. Takoma being the original Salishan name of the mountain.
Pasadena Hills, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis. 68% African American, median household income $83,438, and a crime rate that’s one of the lowest in Missouri. Directly across the road from it is Glen Echo Park, an even tinier enclave with similar characteristics.
Well, it’s relative. I lived in PG for years and it’s not bad, but it’s one of the crappier Md. counties. With the exception of the city of Baltimore itself, it has higher violent crime rates than any other county in Md.
5 year homicide avg of Baltimore was 222. PG was 80. The next highest avgs were Baltimore County (25), AACo. (15), and MoCo (13). The rest of the counties are single digits. With further scrolling, it’s behind only Baltimore in rapes, robberies, but only third in aggravated assaults (yay!). I never had kids in PG public schools, but I’m under the impression they’re not the best performers in the state.
However, crime rates can be deceptive. A lot of areas are classified as “high crime” due to endemic gang warfare and/or drug smuggling activities that leads to a lot of assaults against “enemies”, “traitors”, and smugglers who didn’t perform or otherwise pissed of The Boss (e.g. like Han Solo in Star Wars dumping Jabba’s wares). The amount of violent assaults against random people is often quite low. A lot of Latin America is like this. Yes, you’re in a “high crime” area, but they will usually leave you alone if you don’t interfere with their cocaine shipping operations. There’s nothing to see here, it’s just an old warehouse, move along. They make millions every month moving their stuff, drawing police attention by hitting some random tourist for $200 just isn’t cost-effective for them.
Now, some areas do have a lot of hits against random people. It’s important to determine which areas are which.
Atlanta’s crime figures seem broadly comparable to those of any other similar-sized city. I mean, sure, it’s more dangerous than Albuquerque, but that’s just a function of its large population.
#1 The crime rates listed in your site are per capita, so the population size is already accounted for.
#2 From your site, the correlation coefficient between the population size and the crime rate for each of the listed categories was actually slightly negative.
#2 I calculated the correlation coefficient between the population size and the per capita crime rate listed in the “Crime rates per 100,000 people (2012)” table that you linked to above. The association between the crime rate and the population size is slightly negative (n=74).
I would say Atlanta is prosperous and peaceful. We do have issues with crime.
However, these days Atlanta is just barely a “black city” (54% as of 2010) and may no longer be majority black by the time the next census rolls around. White kids from the suburbs are moving into the city in droves.
Given that blacks make up only 13% of the US population, why would an area be majority black?
Given the history, it is likely because that area was considered undesirable, or was an area of former slavery etc.
So then we need that area to now have significantly less crime than average (which is basically synonymous with significantly greater prosperity than average), but without attracting too many of those pesky 72% of whites into the area (or indeed, non-black minorities).
I would not expect there to be many clear-cut examples of this.
Or, it could be due to migratory patterns. For example, there are places in Pennsylvania that are majority ethnic German, and places in New York that are majority Jewish. Also there are likely a few majority French Canadian areas in Maine. Most of those areas are not particularly undesirable. We don’t think about those places as much because they are, uhh, “white”. But they still count, in a way, as majority-minority areas.
IME, crime is a function of poverty, not race. I think you will find crime stats in the poor white areas of Appalachia comparable to those in poor black urban areas.
#3 From your Wikipedia site, Atlanta’s population of 437,041 is quite similar to Virginia Beach’s population of 447,588, but Atlanta’s violent crime rate is over 8X as high as Virginia Beach’s, its robbery rate is over 7X as high, and its aggravated assault rate is over 10X as high.
Obviously Atlanta’s crime rate is not “comparable to those of any other similar-sized city.”
I seriously doubt it. West Virginia doesn’t have a particularly high murder rate. Louisiana and Alabama have rates over twice that of WV, and those places have far greater percentages of black people than WV, and also tend to be poor. I’ve also traveled quite a bit in “poor white areas of Appalachia” and never encountered a serious or violent criminal or even felt meaningfully scared of becoming a victim of crime there. Maybe there’s some bias there from being white, but I don’t think that’s all of it. I’ve also traveled in Atlantic Canada where there is a lot of rural white poverty and almost no violent crime.