Can You Manufacture Diversity?

This article is about African Americans leaving San Francisco, a city that takes great pride in its diversity. I am highly skeptical of attempts to try to manufacture diversity and culture...I think we all know great culture when we see it and the description of the Fillmore district in the 60s as being a West Coast Harlem with all the big jazz greats coming through is a pretty apt description...my parents lived in SF in the 60s and 70s and I get the impression the city bumped way back then...now it fits the description as becoming a place only for the upper middle class.

Despite good intentions, I doubt the attempt to manufacture diversity and culture will work. All that stuff take a lot of little factors to come together...we can assist it in the margins by both public and private actions, but to be honest, I don't sense San Francisco - at least in my experience there - is ripe for it. It is too rich, too enchanted with it's own beauty, and too detached from what's going on in the rest of America and the world to become a culturally influential place like it once was...or at least pretended to be. It's happy to be a tourist spot with great food. And believe me, it's a good life up there, but a good relaxed place devoid of the hustle and starvation that comes with people and artists really trying to do something.