"Diverse" Suburbs (Minneapolis, Eden Prairie: buy, schools, gated)

[Joe3rdwash]

Originally Posted by kazoopilot

Many of the diverse suburbs are pretty undesirable areas, like the Brooklyns, Richfield and Crystal. Burnsville was 78% white in 2000, so I can see how it may have dropped to 65% in 2010. Bloomington is fairly diverse. Shakopee isn't diverse at all.

Brooklyn Park? Richfield? Undesirable?<<<I don't think so !!!
I agree with Bloomington-East that is

[City Data Guy]

Originally Posted by kazoopilot

Many of the diverse suburbs are pretty undesirable areas, like the Brooklyns, Richfield and Crystal. Burnsville was 78% white in 2000, so I can see how it may have dropped to 65% in 2010. Bloomington is fairly diverse. Shakopee isn't diverse at all.

Burnsville was 86.3% non-Hispanic whites in 2000, and it has dropped to 76% as of the 2007-2009 census stats I posted. Shakopee is about 75% Caucasian, 10% Asian, and 7% African American, so there is some racial diversity in that suburb.

[City Data Guy]

Originally Posted by tropolis

shakopee over 35 percent non white? no way
burnsville, no way.

richfield over 50 percent non white? dont know.

id like the non white numbers to be higher. im getting a little tired of the lily white mr. beaver stuff i see in the outer suburbs which are over 90 percent white. hopefully those numbers will change as well.

If you dislike Euro-Americans that much, why not just move your bigoted butt out of the state?

[City Data Guy]

Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist

Shakopee is more diverse than people give it credit for, although it's still definitely majority white. There's also a fairly significant Russian population out there which give it some added ethnic, although not racial, diversity.

Many people consider Richfield a very desirable area; it's only "undesirable" when compared to adjacent Edina or Southwest Minneapolis, both areas that come with more bragging rights but also a much higher price tag. I'm really not sure where the idea that Richfield is undesirable is coming from. Then again, it's one of my favorite suburbs. I haven't heard Crystal referred to as undesirable, either, although I don't live on that side of town and don't hear about it much. We have a storage unit over there, though, and think it's perfectly nice.

Thank God there is another person who knows there is a difference between racial and ethnic diversity.

A city that's 95% European is obviously not racially diverse, but it can still be ethnically diverse. For example, the said city could be 20% German, 15% Irish, 14.5% French, 13.5% Lithuanian, 11% Ukrainian, 9.5% English, 5.5% Welsh, 2.5% Estonian, 1.5% Spanish, 1.0% Swedish, 0.75% Russian, and 0.25% Italian...That's very ethnically diverse.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by Joe3rdwash

Brooklyn Park? Richfield? Undesirable?<<<I don't think so !!!
I agree with Bloomington-East that is

I lived in east Bloomington for almost 12 years (1989-2000), and it was just fine. That covers a lot of territory, of course, so it depends on the specific areas you're talking about.

[Camden Northsider]

Originally Posted by City Data Guy

Thank God there is another person who knows there is a difference between racial and ethnic diversity.

A city that's 95% European is obviously not racially diverse, but it can still be ethnically diverse. For example, the said city could be 20% German, 15% Irish, 14.5% French, 13.5% Lithuanian, 11% Ukrainian, 9.5% English, 5.5% Welsh, 2.5% Estonian, 1.5% Spanish, 1.0% Swedish, 0.75% Russian, and 0.25% Italian...That's very ethnically diverse.

I can sense you frothing at the mouth at the prospect of so many European ethnicities in one place, but I disagree/find this to be a moot point. Although there are cities and areas of the US where you'll find European-Americans that have some semblance of a connection to their ethnic heritage (enclaves of certain cities, some scandinavian midwesterners, etc.), as well as the potential for more recent migrants to the US from Europe (primarily Eastern Europeans), when you're talking about resident populations that are largely 2nd/3rd/4th generation in America, any semblence of a connection to the "old world" or any heritage is pretty wiped out/whitewashed for the most part. Not only has America been a great melting pot experiment, both ethnically and sometimes racially (how many 3rd generation people do you know that can say they are 100% x or y heritage?), but the privilege afforded to whites in America, whether known or not and at the expense of persons of color, has worked to create shared "white American" identities amongst a variety of European ethnic clans whom were and are still more likely to define the "other" as a person of color versus someone of Irish or Italian descent (and sure, when the Irish, Italian, various Jewish ethnicities, and many Eastern Europeans were new groups to the country, they were oftentimes outcast from mainstream white anglo society and viewed as 'different' years ago, some much more than others, but not a lot of that exists today unless someone is really new and/or lacks English fluency). Ethnic heritage for most white Americans, for better or worse, generally represents a novelty conception, simple talking point, or random statistic that I'm surprised the Census Bureau bothers to track anymore - it's not really "true" diversity when the only difference between the white (and/or socioeconomic) privilege of Joe Fitzgerald and Joe Gustafson of Edina are that one of their grandfathers had a quarter more Irish or Norweigan blood than the other's.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

Originally Posted by Camden Northsider

I can sense you frothing at the mouth at the prospect of so many European ethnicities in one place, but I disagree/find this to be a moot point. Although there are cities and areas of the US where you'll find European-Americans that have some semblance of a connection to their ethnic heritage (enclaves of certain cities, some scandinavian midwesterners, etc.), as well as the potential for more recent migrants to the US from Europe (primarily Eastern Europeans), when you're talking about resident populations that are largely 2nd/3rd/4th generation in America, any semblence of a connection to the "old world" or any heritage is pretty wiped out/whitewashed for the most part. Not only has America been a great melting pot experiment, both ethnically and sometimes racially (how many 3rd generation people do you know that can say they are 100% x or y heritage?), but the privilege afforded to whites in America, whether known or not and at the expense of persons of color, has worked to create shared "white American" identities amongst a variety of European ethnic clans whom were and are still more likely to define the "other" as a person of color versus someone of Irish or Italian descent (and sure, when the Irish, Italian, various Jewish ethnicities, and many Eastern Europeans were new groups to the country, they were oftentimes outcast from mainstream white anglo society and viewed as 'different' years ago, some much more than others, but not a lot of that exists today unless someone is really new and/or lacks English fluency). Ethnic heritage for most white Americans, for better or worse, generally represents a novelty conception, simple talking point, or random statistic that I'm surprised the Census Bureau bothers to track anymore - it's not really "true" diversity when the only difference between the white (and/or socioeconomic) privilege of Joe Fitzgerald and Joe Gustafson of Edina are that one of their grandfathers had a quarter more Irish or Norweigan blood than the other's.

Yes, this is an excellent point. My family came from a legitimate German neighborhood in New York City, most Germans coming there in the 1920'a and 30's straight from Germany. My dad went to a church in the 1960's that had services in the German language. My great grandparents talked German in their house when I was a little kid. My other great grandpa worked in a German butcher shop that served primarily German patrons.

The fact is that it's just not like that anymore - and it wasn't like that when we left the neighborhood. My parents don't know anything about Germany. I drill my Grandmother for information about my German heritage - she's a first generation American. But she doesn't know anything about Germany itself. She can tell me a lot of stuff about the people, culture, atmosphere, and churches of the German enclave in Queens, NY. But all of that stuff is lost on my dad - he basically knows a few phrases of German that are funny.

There are still people who are German who live in that neighborhood, but I don't think they pretend to be anything but American.

Even in the strongest European ethnic enclaves, the main thing that has lasted through are restaurants that are popular with *everybody* and some dying churches.

The fact of the matter is that I only see those sort of "ethnic" neighborhoods when I look at new immigrants. The Mexican, Somali, and Hmong neighborhoods in the Twin Cities look like the neighborhoods out of my Grandmother's stories.

[uptown_urbanist]

My previous neighborhood in San Francisco felt very Chinese and very Russian. We heard Russian on the streets, and shopped at Russian markets, etc.. Now that did feel truly "ethnic," as much as any Mexican, Somali, or Hmong neighborhood you find around here, and there was indeed -- as far as diversity in the neighborhood goes -- a different flavor added by our Russian and other Eastern European neighbors, and it would have been misleading to lump them into the same category as the American-born and raised white people. I think Shakopee's Russian population is also pretty recent, so assume that they really do add genuine ethnic diversity. But I agree that, as far as ethnic diversity goes, a bunch of people who are several generations away from wherever they came from don't really count as being ethnically "diverse." (in my SF neighborhood I added diversity as a white American person, but NOT because I was "Norwegian" or "Swiss", as those ancestors came over a long time ago!)

[uptown_urbanist]

How does one make the jump that because one enjoys diversity in a neighborhood then one doesn't like or is "trashing on" white people?

[audadvnc]

Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist

How does one make the jump that because one enjoys diversity in a neighborhood then one doesn't like or is "trashing on" white people?

It's racism lite, for people who can't admit their own folly.