Aaron Renn deserves credit for having the guts to point out what has been obvious to many of us for a long time: Despite their endless yammering about “diversity,” and the alacrity with which they apply the word “racist” to anyone who disagrees with them, American progressives tend to hide out in places where dark-skinned people are thin on the ground:
If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.
And, no matter how many excuses they make, no matter how much they talk about the Asians who live in their monochromatic towns, it’s not a coincidence that progressives gravitate to blindingly white places like Vermont, the Pacific Northwest, Montana, etc. They are attracted to these places precisely because they don’t have many people of color:
Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group … Why is it that progressivism in smaller metros is so often associated with low numbers of African Americans?
The answer is that progressivism in our era isn’t really about the things these people pretend to care about. It’s about fashion and middle class piety. So the proper number of bike paths and vegan restaurants is far more important than actual diversity. Like most progressive pieties, diversity can be handled with a little lip service or symbolism
This is, of course, why many soi disant progressives voted for Barack Obama last year without having any clear notion of what his true policy positions were on any of the serious issues facing the country. A vote for him assuaged the guilt they felt for hiding out in whitebread enclaves where the TV set is the only place they see people of color.
And, by the way, this lack of familiarity with actual people of color also affects the way they approach the health care debate. Progressives favor government-run health care not because it makes sense from the perspective of social justice, but because it highlights their right-thinking piety without requiring them to actually do anything.
Thus, progressives favor a tobacco tax to pay for SCHIP, even when it falls most heavily on the poor. Likewise, these people are utterly unmoved by the defunding of Medicare Advantage. That this disgraceful Democrat policy will hurt a lot of minority seniors has no meaning for them. Progressives don’t KNOW any minority seniors.
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