black = urban and other stereotypes

Over at the blog, The Black Urbanist, Kristen Jeffers called out the media last month for a bit of laziness in perpetuating stereotypes, fusing together development terms and race. As she puts it in her piece, Development Types are not an Euphemism for Race, "Urban development is one thing, but naming something or someone as urban, when they are really just black is a problem." I wondered whether we do the same thing here in Bermuda. As Jeffers notes, does black = urban and white = suburban?

image: the black urbanistLooking at the 2010 Census, the only obvious concentration of population that could be called 'urban' is to be found in Pembroke. There the population is 10,610 people, including the City of Hamilton. The other parishes have a population that ranges from 5,406 (Smith's) to 8,615 (Warwick). Is Pembroke black and, therefore, urban? Is Smith's white and surburban? It's hard to tell because the concentrations of population groups are not distinctive enough, in my opinion. I could be wrong. Read Jeffers article and think about it.