"The great political divide in America today is not red vs. blue, north vs. south, coastal vs. interior, or even rich vs. poor - it is now clearly black vs. white." This was the conclusion of the Bay Area Center For Voting Research upon the release of their report listing the 236 US cities with populations of 100,000 or more in order of how "liberal" or how "conservative" they are. Researchers at BACVR reached what is to us at BC an unsurprising conclusion:
"The nation’s remaining liberals are overwhelming African Americans."
"The BACVR study that ranks the political ideology of every major city in the country shows that cities with large black populations dominate the list of liberal communities. The research finds that Detroit is the most liberal city in the United States and has one of the highest concentrations of African American residents of any major city. Over 81% of the population in Detroit is African American, compared to the national average of 12.3%. In fact, the average percentage of African American residents in the 25 most liberal cities in the country is 40.3%, more than three times the national rate."
"The list of America's most liberal cities reads like a who's who of prominent African American communities. Gary, Washington D.C., Newark, Flint, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Birmingham have long had prominent black populations. While most black voters have consistently supported Democrats since the 1960s, it is the white liberals that have slowly withered away over the decades, leaving African Americans as the sole standard bearers for the left…."
"While there are some noteworthy pockets of liberals who are not African American, these places end up being the exceptions. College towns like Berkeley and Cambridge have modest black populations, but remain bastions of upper middle-class, white, intellectual liberalism. These liberal communities, however, are more reminiscent of penguins clustering together around a shrinking iceberg, than of a vibrant growing political movement."
