Talk:William A. Johnson Jr.

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Untitled

In my original stub for this article I stated what I had read on the City of Rochester's web site:

Johnson ... is notable as one of the few African-American mayors of a predominantly white city.

I've since read this statement in other places, though his biography seems to have been removed from the city's web site since the new mayor took office.

An anonymous user removed the statement from the Wikiperdia stub, saying Rochester is not predominantly white. I looked up Rochester's demoraphics in Wikipedia and saw that indeed, the majority of people in Rochester are non-white. The 2000 census showed 48.3% White, 38.55% African American, and the rest were much smaller minorities.

I guess the question is "what does predominant mean?" In this case non-whites are predominant, but they don't constitute a single race or ethnic group, so we could say that Whites make up the predominant group. We could however say that African Americans are not predominant.

Should we say:

Johnson ... is notable as one of the few African-American mayors of a predominantly non-African-American city?

That may not even be true. There could be a number of African-American mayors of a predominantly Hispanic citys.

I guess some research and convincing are in order before I put anything back in the article concerning this particular point. Nonenmac 04:10, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]