Copyright 2015 by John T. Reed
In a 4/25/15 column in the San Francisco Chronicle, C.W. Nevius wrote about “City’s diversity found to be dwindling.” You can probably read it online.
San Francisco is one of only 25 counties in the U.S. where the white population percentage is increasing. I asked, “Are they including Asian in white?” No. We’re talking plain old white people. In 1970, 13% of San Franciscans were black; 8% today; 5% in 2040 if present trends continue. Asians under 18 were 36% in 1990; 32% in 2007.
And I expect that 5% black in 2040 will not be the remnants of the blacks who are in SF now—except for black homeowners. Rather, they will be newly-arrived, affluent, educated, successful, law-abiding blacks. Good for them.
Whites are now 42% of SF; projected to be a majority in 2040. In contrast, the state of California became majority Latino a couple of years ago.
Why is this happening in SF? Rents and house prices have been skyrocketing because Silicon Valley in the most prosperous place in the country and Silicon Valley has lately decided they would rather live and work in the City than in the suburbs south of SF around Stanford University where it began.
We used to live in the City at 1000 Chestnut Street on the corner of Hyde and Chestnut right on the Hyde Street Cable Car Line which I took to go to work. But when we moved out in 1980, we were having to step over hypodermic needles on the sidewalks around our apartment.
The public schools in SF, except for Lowell HS which has merit-based admissions, are the typical, horrible, inner-city disasters. One couple we know who raised kids there sent them to Catholic school K-8 then Lowell for HS.
The issue is not skin color as Nevius implied. It is income, net worth, and criminal rap sheet. A lot of the local black pro athletes and other black professionals live out where I live. No one complains about their skin color.
I wrote a couple of years ago that SF could be one of the top cities in the world if they just ended the anti-business laws and treating poor blacks as endangered species to be preserved at all costs. Note that Nevius said nothing about the poor whites who are being forced out of SF by the high rents. Or about the poor whites and blacks who owned their homes and are making out like bandits as a result when they sell them.
What has apparently happened in SF, but not in Berkeley and Oakland across the Bay, is the City stealthily became more and more friendly to business and free market activities like allowing apartments to be built. That inevitably would make a world-class tourist destination like SF more expensive and more attractive to live in. Poor people have no more right to demand to live in a place like SF than they do to demand Rolls Royces and Rolex watches.
.
Oakland is getting a partial gentrification residentially, but because Berkeley and Oakland are essentially communist policy wise, they are not benefiting from the prosperity of Silicon Valley, in spite of being in Silicon Valley, A recent plan to divide CA into six new states had one called Silicon Valley. SF, Oakland, Berkeley, and where I live, east of Oakland, were all in that new state.
I expect SF will now become the shining city on the hill it could have long been because of—don’t tell anyone—allowing capitalism and free markets to take over.
I wonder about the public schools though. Poor people leave, affluent people move in and refuse to send their kids to the public schools. The entrenched teachers union will stay the same with the same people who long ago cynically accepted teaching in failing, ghetto schools. It will be the unstoppable force—affluent parents demanding quality education—against the immovable object—teachers union defending their sinecure. It could end with the public schools and the teachers union having hardly any students to teach and an explosion of private schools in the City. That would be great.
Berkeley and Oakland, having been hit with one of the greatest windfalls on earth today—finding themselves in Silicon Valley, are “successfully” fighting it off and preserving their grim status as high crime, bad school, “People’s Republics.”
Morons.
John T. Reed