2012-05-02

The rise(?) of Whitopias

Author Rich Benjamin wrote a book called Searching for Whiopia, in which he writes about his travels to nearly all-white communities in America. Since America is still majority white and immigrants and minorities tend to cluster in cities, Whitopias seem inevitable just based on simple statistics. However, the premise of the book is that white people are choosing to move to Whitopias: small towns across America, in addition to cities such as Portland, Austin, Seattle, and to some extent San Francisco, which is a heavily white city in a diverse state.

Socionomic theory tells us that people will at least notice these differences more during negative social mood because people are in a mood to separate. This trend is colliding with another social mood trend though, the desire to get away from technology, modern life and large corporations. It is the same trend that showed up during the previous negative social mood wave in the late 1960s and 1970s. Here's a video advertisement for a sketch show, Portlandia, which describes people in Portland as living the dream......of the 1890s.

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