It is always fun telling liberal white hipsters that gentrification is just a nice word for ethnic cleansing. In reality, it is nothing more than old rich white people throwing out poor brown people, so young white people can live in the city. This is very upsetting to white liberals, as they have no defense against it. It points to the fact that Progressives talk like MLK, but they live like the KKK.

It’s a nice gag and it gets the desired reaction, because it has the advantage of being the truth. This old NYTimes article tried to paint a pretty picture, but the fact is rich white people are flooding into cities like New York, pushing out the brown people. These sincere, wholesome bourgeois bohemians will chew your ear off about how diversity is our strength, except where they live of course.

It is not just NYC, DC is getting whiter. Boston gentrified long ago. Even Oakland is going for a lighter shade of pale. These cities voted for Obama 81% (NYC), 90% (DC), 80% (Boston) and 84% (Oakland). As these cities get whiter, they get more Progressive and they get more aggressive in their proselytizing. At some level, they know the truth, but their coping strategy is to become even more hysterical on race.

That’s why this story in the NYTimes is interesting.

Cities that have worked for years to attract young professionals who might have once moved to the suburbs are now experimenting with ways to protect a group long deemed expendable — working- and lower-middle class homeowners threatened by gentrification.

The initiatives, planned or underway in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh and other cities, are centered on reducing or freezing property taxes for such homeowners in an effort to promote neighborhood stability, preserve character and provide a dividend of sorts to those who have stayed through years of high crime, population loss and declining property values, officials say.

Newcomers, whose vitality is critical to cities, are hardly being turned away. But officials say a balance is needed, given the attention and government funding being spent to draw young professionals — from tax breaks for luxury condominium buildings to new bike lanes, dog parks and athletic fields.

“We feel the people who toughed it out should be rewarded,” said Darrell L. Clarke, president of the Philadelphia City Council, which last year approved legislation to limit property tax increases for longtime residents. “And we feel it is incumbent upon us to protect them.”

I love how they were not terribly concerned about “neighborhood stability” when the neighborhoods were black and brown. Once the white people took over, they suddenly start sounding like Rotary Club Republicans from the suburbs. The even funnier part is the city council president just about says they owe these urban pioneers for driving the bad element out of the city.

In doing so, cities are turning urban redevelopment policy on its head and shunning millions in property tax revenue that could be used to restore municipal services that were trimmed during the recession because of budget cuts, including rehiring police officers.

A decision to reduce property taxes can be risky because such levies account for at least 50 percent of operating budgets in most American cities and sometimes provide as much as 80 percent of a city’s revenue.

But even Detroit, where a declining tax base has been at the core of the bankrupt city’s troubles, recently announced plans to cut property tax rates.

Last month, Mike Duggan, Detroit’s new mayor, said property taxes would be cut by up to 20 percent to levels that more accurately represent the value of homes in the city. The reduction could cost Detroit as much as $15 million annually in revenue.

The tax adjustments are part of a broader strategy by cities to aid homeowners — who continue to struggle financially since the home mortgage crisis. In Richmond, Calif., lawmakers are attempting to use eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages to try to help homeowners keep their houses.

Housing experts say the arrival of newcomers to formerly working-class areas — from the Mission District in San Francisco to the Shaw neighborhood in Washington — is distinct from previous influxes over the past 30 years because new residents are now far more likely to choose to move into new condominiums or lofts instead of into existing housing, making the changes more disruptive.

“This latest wave of gentrification has happened very quickly, and cities are cognizant to keep from turning over entirely,” said Lisa Sturtevant, executive director of the Center for Housing Policy, a nonprofit research group. “And cities where property values are up and budgets are generally more stable have the wherewithal to provide tax breaks.”

Ms. Sturtevant said that given that many of the younger, newer arrivals do not necessarily plan to stay for long, cities are making a sensible economic choice.

“There’s less personal investment and less incentive to stay, so cities are saying, ‘Let’s invest in the stayers,’ ” she said.

It makes perfect sense for cities to try and lure middle-class white people. There are a million arguments about crime and race and poverty and education and drugs and blah, blah, blah. There’s no argument about the crime rate among middle-class white people, as it is the lowest in the world. Fill a city with them and you don’t have a crime problem. The other fact no one disputes is low crime means higher property values, high civic participation, better schools and more stable tax receipts.

This should be something everyone knows and accepts. If you really want to help black people, demand they act white, instead of indulging their bad behavior from behind the walls of your gated community. There’s nothing to be gained from lecturing whites about diversity, while the people doing the lecturing ethnically cleanse their own neighborhoods. All it is doing is creating a lot of angry white people.