Thinking of moving to Chicago area (Evanston, Oak Park: to live in, things to do, suburbs)

[ebbystew]

Hi everyone! I currently live in a suburb of Detroit, but considering moving elsewhere. I am seeking a better area of the country to live in and raise my family. I am looking for an area where people are not racist (or at least openly), where there is still a sense of community and where there are things to do. How is the Chicago area? Thanking you in advance for your honest replies!

[tompope]

Originally Posted by ebbystew

Hi everyone! I currently live in a suburb of Detroit, but considering moving elsewhere. I am seeking a better area of the country to live in and raise my family. I am looking for an area where people are not racist (or at least openly), where there is still a sense of community and where there are things to do. How is the Chicago area? Thanking you in advance for your honest replies!

ebbystew, others may not agree with me, but in my opinion race relations and racial tension and outright racism are nearly as bad in the Chicago area as in Detroit. I never really noticed it until I started traveling and moving around the country, and found that there actually are a lot of places where white people and black people and Hispanic people really, truly do live and work around each other and get along with one another quite well. That's still fairly rare in places like Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. It is better than it used to be, and it's gradually continuing to get better, but it's still not great.

The racial tension is less pronounced amongst the younger generations, and among the educated and upwardly mobile parts of society. And there are some parts of Chicago with pretty decent racial integration and harmony (Oak Park, Hyde Park, Evanston, a few other areas on the North Side and in the south suburbs). And there are countless individual instances in Chicago where people of different races interact and get along very well, so on a day-to-day level the race relations are mostly manageable. But for the most part, there's still an awful lot of segregation, and open racial hostility between groups. The racial issues in Chicago have such deep roots, and are so thoroughly entwined with so much fear, anger, and emotional intensity that it will be a long time before they're really resolved, in my opinion.

If you're looking for an area with significantly better race relations than Detroit, I would look at the cities on the coasts and (surprisingly to some) the nicer, more modern metros in the South, where I find that different races actually tend to be quite harmonious, despite the obviously horrible history there.