As Sam’s BBQ goes, so goes East Austin and Austin’s African-American community: https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/5-million-sams-bbq-dilemma/

You were onto something in your brilliant piece in observation of Houston’s diversity. The Bayou City is, secretly, a hotbed of progressivism and is America’s most diverse city and the city which contains the most immigrants of any American city. Weird, because Texas. But still.

The late Anthony Bourdain got it when he did his Houston episode, focusing on the city’s diversity and the opportunities thousands of people of color have found there: https://www.chron.com/entertainment/article/These-are-the-things-we-learned-from-Houston-s-10423689.php

Now, I’m a white Hispanic who grew up in the suburb of Clear Lake. I went to UT-Austin for my freshman year of college, and transferred out of Texas as fast as I could. I don’t really feel a need to go back there, as long as the mega-church Randians are running the state. They need more Willie Nelson and less Joel Osteen in Texas these days. That and climate change is making the state even less livable than it was when I was there. But I digress.

Austin, like Portland, Berkeley, and Charlottesville, are “liberal,” but they are also havens of privilege. Of all sorts. It’s always different when you have to share space and perspectives with “others.” East Austin, as you correctly point out, was the historic community/ghetto for Black Austin, but like Harlem and so many other redlined areas, it is being discovered as a real estate “opportunity.” Historically, most Austinites haven’t spent a lot of time around people of color or East Austin, as that was considered a “scary” area until fairly recently.

Also, even though the city might be liberal, plenty of folks commute to the city from its lily-white suburbs like Round Rock, etc. Trump polled 27% in Travis County, but 51% just over the line in Wiliamson County.

Think of it this way. For over 100 years, the legacy of segregation was geographic separation. When I transferred from UT-Austin to a liberal-arts college in “liberal” California, I was treated to the spectacle of the 1992 Los Angeles riots/uprising my senior year. But the enraged Black people never marched up Indian Hill Boulevard from Pomona to Claremont — they never left Watts for Santa Monica or Bel Air. Everyone was geographically separated which left, and leaves, us unable to really speak to one another. So we in Claremont remained secure in our bubble — even though the Colleges boast some of the most racially and ethnically diverse campuses in America — we were still privileged.

We Americans need to see each other as one people, and we need to talk to one another. And somehow that means we need to be present with each other, and overcome our fears and discomfort.