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Comment by zem | Hacker News Reader

anecdata: my sister lives in los angeles, and her company once posted her to their seattle office for a few months. her impression was that it was an extremely white city; that might not be the sort of thing that strikes you if you're white yourself, but coming from california it would definitely reinforce the provincial impression.

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> that might not be the sort of thing that strikes you if you're white yourself

Oh, it struck this Midwestern white boy almost as soon as he got off the plane. I mean, I'd heard the phrase "white bread neighborhood" and always took it to mean there's only a few non-white people living there. No, in Seattle (and Redmond, where I live) entire neighborhoods can be comprised of nothing but white folk.

I notice because I grew up in and around Indianapolis (with brief stints in Detroit). 20% black population in Indy (I could be off by a bit) means 1 out of 5 people I work with, buy groceries from, pass on the street, whatever, are black (ratio of friends was a bit lower than 20%). Now drop me in Redmond/Seattle where I rarely see a black person, and it's just...weird. I mentioned this to natives, and they acted like it was the most racist thing they'd ever heard. What, you thought I wouldn't notice that Bellevue's black population is 0.9%?

Bellevue: "more than 40 percent of its population a minority race or ethnicity in 2010." (https://www.bellevuewa.gov/demographics.htm)

Redmond: 20% nonwhite (http://redmond.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm)

Blacks are certainly underrepresented, I'll give you that, but everybody's talking as if African Americans are the only minority that counts... because it is a convenient strawman for propping up their arguments about the "whiteness", I suppose.

I only use black because that's the only diversity one was likely to find in Indianapolis when I lived there. I'd believe the Bellevue stats, given the population around Crossroads Mall if nothing else. As for Redmond, maybe I need to get out more. Mentally touring my street and thinking of the race of the residents I know of, I'm coming up with only the Chinese family that lives across the street from us. I think the Indian family on the corner moved out a while ago. Granted, an anecdotal survey of my neighborhood and my general impression does not hard data make. But that's where I'm coming from.

Seattle is 16+% Asian and 70-% white, 8.4% black and 1% native. How is that very white? In contrast, LA is 50% white, 10% asian, 10% black, with a 50% Hispanic (many co-identifying as white or black).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Seattle

That 16% asian population mostly arrived in the last 20 years from SE asia. They and the black population is highly segregated compared to New York or the Bay Area. No one here is holding L.A. as a great example. Try Vancouver (from the OP), San Francisco, or New York.

http://www.metafilter.com/65711/Segregated-Seattle

https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/maps_2010.htm

Actually, Seattle's asian community is increasingly Chinese, while San Francisco took in more SE refuges than Seattle did (and are more asian for it, but increasingly Chinese also). Both Seattle and the Bay Area have strong Vietnamese and Korean communities also (seattle area has the largest outside of CA).

All those demographics are on wiki: Vancouver is 40 % asian (and like 25% Chinese) which we all know, San Francisco is 33% asian but only 6% black (not counting Oakland I guess, but we aren't counting Tacoma for Seattle either). New York is New York.

I have no idea where you get saying they are segregated, at least when it comes to asian. Black is more urban, but that's hardly surprising (unless we want to start talking about seatac and Tacoma, which are different cities).

eevilspock: Actually, most people in Seattle are recent arrivals, irrespective of national origin.

"Of the people living Seattle itself, only 37% were born in WA, 44% another state, and 19% another country according to the 2006 census." http://www.city-data.com/forum/seattle-area/281766-transplan...

http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/NPTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=1...

Ya, I was born in Portland myself, though my dad is from walla walla and my mom is from Ketchikan. Seattle is the capital of basically the entire northwest, from Prudhoe Bay to Grants Pass, all the way east into Idaho and Montana.

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