If you lived here, you'd be white by now

Deities be praised, CNNMoney has just released its annual summary of the "Best Places to Live" in the United States!

Not to generalize, but IMO, some of the Minneapolis suburbs that made the top 100 are a tad bit more conservative than many of those that didn't make the list. Even if I could afford it, I'd prefer not to live in some of those cities. But then I'm a queer lefty, so I don't usually read Money.

I did have a bit of fun over lunch. Would you believe that the top 10 cities are, according to the 2000 US census, a wee bit whiter than the US as a whole?

Here are some numbers* (and a Google Doc!):
White [sic, American**]: 84.3 (top 10) versus 75.1 (2000 US census)
Black or African American: 3.9 versus 12.3
Asian [sic, American]: 8.4 versus 3.6
Hispanic or Latino [sic, American] of any race: 6.8 versus 12.5

We could spend years talking about the ways that race correlates with measurements of standard of living, as well as what the related causes and effects are (e.g., I'm going to go out on a limb and say that government agencies tend not to prioritize funding for communities with large minority populations). In any case, the under representation of black people in the top 10 cities is striking.

I'm pretty sure that CNNMoney didn't actually use whiteness as a measurement of livability. I'm also pretty sure that CNNMoney didn't use diversity as a measure of livability. Based on my experience as a queer person, I'm more inclined to want to live in a place where folks like myself are reasonably common. Among other things, higher densities of folks like me, IME, loosely correlate with my being treated like a human being. While I'm not saying that racism is the same as homo/bi/queer/transphobia, I will say that the lily white suburb I lived in for a while displayed its share of racism.

I really, really dislike lists like this one. Part of the problem, is that the list is targeted towards a certain population. The statistics the list-makers examine specific data, and present very specific findings. Fine. All research does this. However, when the media starts presenting the results as applicable to all people (you should move to Eden Prairie, MN, you'll love it!), I see a massive problem.

--
*Thrown together over lunch, so yes... there are all sorts of things that I might have done differently. I'm interested in this "best small cities" business... how that might effect the CNNMoney's methodology, my null hypothesis, and perhaps most importantly, why CNNMoney decided that small cities are teh awesome.

**Edited in an attempt to address census race-fail, see comments