Say Anything Blog

Apparently Money Magazine thinks so.  A reader emails this along:

Our local community made news this week when Lansing, KS showed up as 88th on Money Magazines list. Having just recently vacationed in North Dakota & South Dakota, I was very curious as to why none of the cities in the Northern Plains made the cut. Looking into it further, 9 cities from California were on the list, but none from ND, SD, WY, etc.
As it turns out, one of the filters used discriminated out the “homogeneous” states.  You can’t pick up on this from the article or list itself, you have to examine the methodology used to build the list.  This information was available on their website.
In the 2nd filter test, they rejected any cities that were more than 95% white.  Apparently diversity itself is a significant criteria to be considered a best place to live.  It must be, because Money and their consultants put diversity ABOVE other factors such as high education scores, low crime rates and employment statistics.  They did not check for those criteria until they had already eliminated the non-diverse communities.

Here’s the details about the methodology.  They’ve got a step-by-step rundown of how they narrow down the cities.  Racial makeup isn’t the first criteria (population size is) but it is the second criteria:

Working with data provider OnBoard and consultant Bert Sperling of BestPlaces.net, we set out to find the best towns in America. Here’s how:

2,876
Start with places that have populations above 7,500 and under 50,000.

974
Screen out retirement-oriented communities, places where income is less than 90% or more than 180% of the state median and towns that are more than 95% white.

I’m not understanding why a town with 95%+ white people in it would disqualify it as a “best place to live.”  What would the public’s reaction be if we were talking about excluding towns that were 95%+ black?

What’s more, this racial makeup wasn’t a feature of past “best places to live” rankings by Money Magazine.  The methodology for the 2006 rankings certainly didn’t include it.  On that 2006 list two of North Dakota’s cities, Bismarck and Fargo, made the list.  This year not one single city from ND made it.

This is a bit frustrating for someone who comes from a pretty racially homogeneous state.  We here in North Dakota are proud of our communities, and to exclude them from the “nicest places to live” list simply because our communities are predominantly of white descent is, well, pretty unfair.