The Washington Post
November 9, 1998, page 1

A White Migration North From Miami

                   By William Booth
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
 
                  WESTON, Fla.—Fifth in a series of occasional articles

                  Everything here is nice and neat, just the way Joanne Smith likes it. The
                  developers call their new city on the edge of the Everglades "Our Home
                  Town," and Smith agrees. "It's more like America," she says.

                  Like thousands of others, Smith moved to this planned community 40 miles
                  north of Miami just a few years ago, searching for a safe and secure
                  neighborhood like this one, where both modest homes and rambling
                  mansions sit against the manicured landscape of palm and hibiscus, and
                  gated streets called Wagon Way and Windmill Ranch gently curve around
                  the shallow lagoons and golf links.

                  Weston is a boomtown filling with refugees. But the migrants pouring into
                  this part of Broward County are rarely those from the Caribbean, Central
                  and South America -- the immigrants to the south who have transformed
                  Miami and surrounding Dade County into a metropolis proudly called by
                  its business and political leaders "The Gateway to Latin America."

                  Instead, the refugees here are mostly native-born and white, young and
                  old, and they have been streaming up from Miami for years now, creating a
                  new version of the traditional "white flight" in reaction not to black inner
                  cities, but to immigration.

                  While Miami is unique in many respects, because of both geography and
                  politics, the out-migration of whites is occurring in other high-immigration
                  cities. New York and Los Angeles, for example, each lost a million
                  U.S.-born residents in the last decade, as they gained a million immigrants.

                  According to an analysis of the most recent census data, for almost every
                  immigrant who came to Miami-Dade County in recent years, a white
                  non-Hispanic left.

                  "I loved Miami, but it's a mad scene down there now," said Smith, who is
                  semi-retired and asked that her occupation not be given. Before her move
                  to Weston, Smith lived in Miami for two decades, "in a nice neighborhood
                  gone bad. People say things, 'Oh that's change and that's progress,' but I
                  like it clean and green -- and everybody speaking English," Smith says.

                  In discussions about the historic demographic transformations occurring in
                  the United States, which is absorbing almost 1 million immigrants a year,
                  most of the attention focuses quite naturally on the newcomers: Who are
                  they and where are they from and how do they make their way in
                  America?

                  But immigration is a two-way street -- and the welcome the immigrants
                  receive from the native-born is crucial for the continued idea of America as
                  a fabled "melting pot." Of course, there are many whites -- and blacks, too
                  -- who have remained in Miami-Dade County, to either continue their lives
                  as before or accept, even embrace the Latin tempo of Miami, who have
                  learned how to pronounce masas de puerco at lunchtime and to fake a
                  respectable merengue dance step, who enjoy the culture, the business
                  opportunities and caffeinated hustle of a metropolis dominated by
                  immigrants. No one could call Miami dull.

                  But it is almost as if there are two kinds of native whites -- those who can
                  deal with multiculturalism that has transformed Miami over the past several
                  decades and those who choose not to. Either way, if the country is to
                  successfully transform itself into a completely multicultural industrialized
                  nation, what these internal migrants say -- and there are millions of them
                  around the country -- needs to be heard and understood.

                  Those transplants interviewed by The Washington Post, including those
                  who asked that their names not be used, take pains to explain that, for the
                  most part, the people like them who are moving out of Miami-Dade to
                  Broward are not anti-immigrant xenophobes.

                  In several dozen interviews with a cross-section of these "domestic
                  migrants," a picture emerges of a segment of the non-Hispanic white
                  population in Miami-Dade County that feels marginalized, exasperated and
                  sometimes bitter, and who move from Dade to Broward with a mix of
                  emotions.

                  Migrants to Broward give many reasons for the move north: Their money
                  buys a bigger, newer house in Broward; they are tired of the traffic and
                  congestion; they worry about crime; they complain about the overcrowded
                  schools; those with young families often say they are looking for a place
                  where their children can play ball in the front yard and ride their bikes
                  down the block.

                  But all these things, the good and bad, can also be found in booming
                  Broward County. Sooner or later, many of the refugees moving north
                  mention immigration and the sense that they are no longer, as many
                  transplants describe it, "comfortable."

                  Phil Phillips was born and raised near what is today downtown Miami,
                  where his father worked for the Immigration and Naturalization Service
                  during the postwar years, at a time when the immigrants to Florida were
                  mostly from Europe. Phillips served in the Navy, taught vocational classes
                  at Miami High School, and made a living running a small air conditioning
                  and refrigeration business.

                  Until the rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba, Phillips described the Miami of
                  yesteryear as a more sleepy, more southern town. It had its glitz in the
                  fanciful playground of Jackie Gleason's city of Miami Beach, but the
                  county was still filled with open land and farms.

                  "Miami was a very happy place," Phillips remembers with nostalgia. "We
                  had our demarcations, don't get me wrong. But we didn't have the
                  animosity." When pressed, Phillips does remember that the beaches,
                  restaurants and nightclubs were often segregated, not only for African
                  Americans. Jews had their own country clubs.

                  The Miami of black-and-white all began to change with the arrival of the
                  Cubans in the early 1960s. "The vast majority of the Cubans came here
                  and worked two and three jobs," said Phillips, who is retired and living in
                  Weston. A man who worked with his hands all his life, Phillips respects
                  that. "I saw them do it. And in time, they took over, and some people
                  resent that. But that's the way it is."

                  "There's this myth out there that a Cuban will screw an American in a
                  deal," Phillips says. "I don't think that is so, but that's the feeling the whites
                  have, and it's because the two sides don't communicate, sometimes they
                  can't communicate, and so they don't understand the other guy."

                  Phillips has seen decades of change, as the demographics of his home
                  town kept skewing toward Hispanics, in fits and starts. After the first big
                  influx of Cubans in the 1960s, there was Cuba's Mariel boatlift in 1980.
                  Then all through the proxy wars and upheavals in Central America and the
                  Caribbean through the 1980s and 1990s, refugees from Nicaragua,
                  Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti kept coming to Miami.

                  "We're great in America at blaming somebody else for our problems,"
                  Phillips said. "But I will tell that for a lot of the people who leave Miami,
                  they might not tell you, but they're leaving because of the ethnics."

                  Phillips offered his opinions as he sat sipping soup at the counter of a new
                  restaurant here in Weston opened by Tim Robbie, whose family owned the
                  Miami Dolphins for years, before they sold out to Wayne Huizenga, who is
                  "The Man" in Broward County, as much as Jorge Mas Canosa, the power
                  behind the Cuban American National Foundation, was "The Man" in
                  Miami before his death last year.

                  Robbie was raised in Miami. His family, lead by his father Joe, was a civic
                  institution. But Robbie himself recently moved to Weston, too.

                  "I know a lot of our friends down in Miami were disappointed with us,"
                  Robbie said. "They asked: How can you do this to us?"

                  Robbie agreed that something akin to "the tipping point" phenomenon
                  might be at work, whereby one or two families in a social or business
                  network can leave a community and nothing much changes. But at some
                  point, if enough people leave, the balance suddenly tips, and large groups
                  start selling their homes, and over a period of several years, they create
                  mass demographic shifts.

                  Robbie himself said he was comfortable down south in Miami, but
                  concedes that many are not. "Anglos are accustomed to being in the
                  majority, and down in Dade, they're not. And that puts some people
                  outside of their comfort zone. People tend to like to stick together."

                  Robbie's business partner is Bob Green, who also moved from Miami to
                  Broward. A longtime denizen of funky and fun Coconut Grove, Green
                  describes himself as one of those who never would have thought about
                  moving north to Broward.

                  But then he saw the new business opportunities, and also found himself
                  liking a place like Weston. "It has this midwestern feeling," Green said.
                  "More downhome and friendly."

                  This mass internal migration is the latest version of a classic "push-pull"
                  model of residential segregation, whereby many whites in Miami feel lured
                  north by the offerings of a development like Weston, but also feel pushed
                  out of Miami -- not only by their fatigue with crime or congestion, but the
                  cultural and demographic upheavals caused by three decades of
                  immigration.

                  Peter Schott is a tourism official who is changing jobs and, reluctantly,
                  moving with his wife, who works for a cruise ship line, to Broward. The
                  couple, both in their thirties and expecting their first child, are looking for a
                  bigger home. Schott says he will miss the exotic, foreign feel of Miami.
                  Miami, Schott says, is a media noche, the name for a Cuban sandwich,
                  while Broward he fears is "white bread and baloney." While he will miss
                  Miami, Schott knows that many of those moving north to Broward may
                  not.

                  "Some people are real frank," he said. "They say they want to be with
                  more people more like us. If they're white Americans, they want white
                  Americans around them."

                  For non-Hispanic, non-Spanish-speaking whites to survive in Miami, there
                  is no choice but to move, or to adapt. "It is our city now," many Cuban
                  Americans say, and the numbers tell part of the story.

                  In the 1990s, some 95,000 white non-Hispanics left Miami-Dade County,
                  decreasing that group's presence by 16 percent, to around 492,000, or
                  about one-fifth of the county population.

                  They either moved away or, in the case of elderly residents, particularly in
                  the Jewish community, died. (The Jewish population in Miami-Dade
                  County has decreased from about 250,000 to 100,000 in the last two
                  decades. The new destination for Jewish retirees and younger migrants is
                  Broward and Palm Beach counties).

                  As whites left Miami, they poured into Broward. Between 1990 and 1997,
                  the white non-Hispanic population here increased by about 82,000, or 8
                  percent, to more than a million residents.

                  These dramatic numbers follow an equally large out-migration of whites
                  during the 1980s. So many non-Hispanic whites left Miami-Dade in the
                  previous decade that Marvin Dunn, a sociologist at Florida International
                  University, who has followed the trend, said in 1991, "You get down to the
                  point below which those who are going to leave have left and the others
                  are committed to stay. I think we're close to that with whites."

                  But Dunn was wrong. The whites keep leaving.

                  "White migration to Miami-Dade has essentially stopped," said William
                  Frey, a demographer at the University of Michigan, who coined the phrase
                  "demographic balkanization" to describe the ongoing trend of ethnic and
                  racial groups to self-segregate -- not only within a city, but from city to
                  city, and from state to state.

                  "The two appear almost like mirror images of each other," Frey said of
                  Broward and Miami-Dade counties. "There is definitely something going
                  on here and we can only guess what it is. But this 'One America' that
                  Clinton talks about is clearly not in the numbers. Segregation and
                  non-assimilation continue."

                  Many times, native whites on the move explain that Miami now feels to
                  them like "a foreign country," that they feel "overwhelmed" by the presence
                  not just of some Spanish-speakers, but so many.

                  "You order a Coke without ice," said an executive and mother of three
                  who moved to Broward from Miami in 1996 and asked that her name not
                  be used. "And you get ice. You say no starch and you get starch. You call
                  government offices, and they can't take a decent message in English. You
                  spell your name letter by letter and they get it wrong. They keep saying
                  'Que? Que? Que?' (Spanish for "What?') You go to the mall, and you
                  watch as the clerks wait on the Spanish speakers before you. It's like
                  reverse racism. You realize, my God, this is what it is like to be the
                  minority."

                  "The white population feels increasingly beleaguered," said George Wilson,
                  a sociologist at the University of Miami who is studying the phenomenon.

                  "Their whole domain is changing at the micro-level," Wilson continued. "At
                  the malls, in the schools. A lot of the whites I talk to say they feel
                  challenged by the rapid ethnic and cultural change. A whole population of
                  whites has gone from a clear majority to a clear minority in a very short
                  time . . . and a lot of them simply say, 'To hell with this,' and move up the
                  road."

                  This feeling of being the beleaguered minority is creating among some a
                  new consciousness of "white ethnicity," and for those who see America's
                  future as a relatively harmonious multicultural state based on shared ideas
                  of capitalism and freedom, this may not bode well.

                  For if whites do not want to share power and place, or if they feel
                  increasingly shoved aside or overwhelmed in the cities and states with high
                  immigration, they will continue to vote with their feet, by moving away,
                  creating not a rainbow of citizens, but a more balkanized nation, with jobs,
                  university enrollments, public spending, schools all seen through ethnic or
                  racial prisms, including among whites.

                  Several of those interviewed complain that the politics of Miami-Dade are
                  dominated by the issues of the newcomers, particularly the Cuban
                  Americans, who wait for the fall of Fidel Castro; they see in the city hall,
                  where a number of officials were recently indicted and convicted of taking
                  kickbacks after it was discovered that the city was broke, a "banana
                  republic" of ethnic cronyism; they dislike being referred to in Spanish media
                  as "the Americans" by Miami's Hispanic residents and politicians, as if they
                  were the foreigners.

                  And many balk at the dominance of Spanish -- on television, in official
                  news conferences, on the radio, in schools and meetings and in their
                  day-to-day lives. The movement of so many whites from Miami-Dade to
                  Broward is viewed by many Hispanics as understandable, even natural,
                  though hardly something to be encouraged.

                  "We had a tremendous exodus of Anglos, especially Anglos who did not
                  feel comfortable with the new demographics of Miami, who were
                  intimidated by the Spanish language and the influx of different people," said
                  Eduardo Padron, a Cuban American and president of the Miami Dade
                  Community College. "It is a natural trend for them to move out. Many of
                  them kept working in Miami, but they found refuge in Broward."

                  Padron believes the rapidity of demographic changes, and the creation of a
                  Hispanic majority, was "intimidating" for many whites, particularly those
                  who did not speak any Spanish.

                  Some whites interviewed say they know they may seem like "whiners," as
                  one woman put it, but they feel they are not being met halfway by the
                  newcomers, and this is an especially acute feeling in Miami, where Cuban
                  Americans and other immigrants from Latin America now dominate the
                  political landscape, serving as city and county mayors and council
                  members. Both of Miami's representatives to Congress are Cuban
                  Americans.

                  Recent elections reveal that voters in Miami-Dade select candidates along
                  stark racial and ethnic lines in classic bloc voting. The 1995 county mayor's
                  race, pitting Cuban American Alex Penelas against African American
                  Arthur Teele, Jr., turned almost entirely on demographic lines, with exit
                  polls showing that the overwhelming majority of Cuban Americans voted
                  for Penelas, as most blacks voted for Teele. What did whites do? A lot of
                  them did not vote at all.

                  Over the years, there has been sporadic, organized resistance by whites in
                  Miami to hold back the changes. One group, calling itself Citizens of Dade
                  United, was successful in passing a referendum in 1980 that declared
                  English the "official language" of county government. But it was overturned
                  in 1993. Enos Schera, who is a co-founder of the group and who is now
                  71, is still filled with vinegar, and says he refuses to move from Miami --
                  though he says he and his group have received death threats.

                  "I'm staying to fight this crazy thing," Schera said. "I'm not a bad guy, but I
                  don't want to be overrun. They come here and get all the advantages of
                  being in America and then they insult you right on top of it." He is writing a
                  book about the changes. "That will tell all," he promises.

                  But it seems as if Schera is fighting in retreat. He, and his group, have
                  largely been relegated to the role of stubborn whites whose time is over.

                  Many of the others, like Weston resident Joanne Smith, have already left.
                  "There's no room for us in the discussion," said Smith. "It's like we were
                  the oppressors."

                  Smith says she likes to eat at Cuban restaurants, has Hispanic neighbors in
                  Weston and admires the strength and striving of the newcomers. She
                  herself is the granddaughter of immigrants, from Europe. But Smith feels
                  the immigrants should try harder to understand the feelings of native
                  Americans. "If they can survive coming here on a raft," she says. "They can
                  learn to speak English."

                  Here at Weston, almost all of the communities are closed with security
                  gates, requiring a visitor to punch a code or be cleared by a guard before
                  entering the enclaves. In addition to the gates, a private security firm
                  patrols the neighborhoods.

                  One researcher on the topic, Edward Blakely of the University of Southern
                  California in Los Angeles, says that gated communities like Weston's are
                  the fastest growing new developments around the country. Blakely
                  deplores the trend, claiming it creates "fortress neighborhoods," dividing
                  citizens, creating walls between "us" and "them."

                  But obviously, many home buyers like the concept, and many of the
                  residents of Weston say one of the things they like most about the
                  neighborhood is its sense of community, of safety and the ability of their
                  children to ride their bicycles on the streets.

                  Yet the gates cannot keep demographic change at bay. Though two of
                  every three residents in Weston is white, most of them in their thirties,
                  about one in four are Hispanic. But these are the most assimilated, often
                  second-generation, solidly middle-class Cuban Americans who come north
                  for the same new schools and golf courses as the white migrants, allowing
                  almost everyone to continue to live within their comfort zone.

                  But not all. As one three-year resident, who declined to give her name,
                  observed, "I keep hearing more and more Spanish in the grocery store. I
                  don't know if they live here or are just working here. But I started to see
                  some Spanish magazines for sale. Maybe I didn't move far enough north."

                  Special correspondent Catharine Skipp contributed to this report from
                  Miami.

                  White Flight

                  As Hispanics immigrate to Dade County, non-Hispanic whites are leaving
                  for neighboring Broward.

                  1997 population, estimated

                  Broward County

                  Hispanics 151,454

                  Non-Hispanic whites 1,023,614

                  Dade County

                  Hispanics 1,082,989

                  Non-Hispanic whites 492,397

                  Population change, 1990-97

                  Broward County

                  Hispanics 56,680

                  Non-Hispanic whites 80,539

                  Dade County

                  Hispanics 179,475

                  Non-Hispanic whites -92,130

                  Causes of growth, 1990-97

                  Broward County

                  Immigration 54,480

                  Domestic migration 127,612

                  Dade County

                  Immigration 158,035

                  Domestic migration -165,414

                  SOURCE: William H. Frey, Milken Institute and University of Michigan;
                  U.S. Census
 

                           © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company