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I've lived in Atlanta and Chicago both city prospers. You can feel on the streets the comfort level in both cities for blacks. I visit San Francisco every year. The same comfort level on the streets exists for asians. I llived in manhattan for almost 7 years. Half of time in Chelsea and the other half in spanish Harlem. The latter was a haven for Puerto Ricans. People don't talk about it but NY is as about as segregated as you can get. The misconception lies on the subway. Everyone has to ruse mass transit so you're always around every ethnicity. But the neighborhoods themselves are very segregated IMO.
PS, I am the OP
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nineties Flava
On a very basic level that does not take socioeconomic class, segregation, politics, etc. into account, then yeah that's more or less accurate. When talking about individuals though (such as yourself) it doesn't really do much good to speak in generalizations. For example, if you're a black person that wants to live in a socially liberal city then many parts of the South will likely not be appealing to you no matter how black they are. If you're a working class asian person with a family and you want to raise your kids in a relatively safe area where they'll thrive academically, San Francisco is not the city for you. Ultimately it just varies... for some people, other factors will be more important than race.
IMO it's not necessarily constructive to only look at race either... socioeconomic class is a very important aspect of racial experience in our country. If I were to go along with the OP of the thread though, I'd ask you to be more specific on why you think it would be better to be black in the Chicago area than in the Bay Area besides that it has a significantly larger black population.
Last edited by 75 South; 04-25-2012 at 09:47 PM..
Reason: Grammar
I've lived in Atlanta and Chicago both city prospers. You can feel on the streets the comfort level in both cities for blacks. I visit San Francisco every year. The same comfort level on the streets exists for asians. I llived in manhattan for almost 7 years. Half of time in Chelsea and the other half in spanish Harlem. The latter was a haven for Puerto Ricans. People don't talk about it but NY is as about as segregated as you can get. The misconception lies on the subway. Everyone has to ruse mass transit so you're always around every ethnicity. But the neighborhoods themselves are very segregated IMO.
PS, I am the OP
It depends on what you grew up around though. If you grow up surrounded by people of your own group, you'll probably be most comfortable in neighborhoods and cities that are also predominantly your own group. If you grew up in a very diverse community, though, you won't necessarily find an ethnically homogeneous community to be comforting. I myself for example prefer to live in a racially diverse neighborhood, but I grew up surrounded by latinos in school, extracurriculars, etc. so I always feel particularly at home when I'm in heavily latino areas despite that they're not diverse. I'm a half African-American half Nigerian-American who has no blood ties to Latin America... that's just the way I grew up.
Other posters from the Bay Area have experienced that too... 18Montclair for example is Tongan but identifies a lot with black culture and its legacy in Oakland because he grew up in a neighborhood that at the time was predominantly black. This is the story of a ton of asian, latino, pacific islander and white people who grew up in East Oakland... to a certain degree, a lot of them identify with it more than what's supposedly "their culture". The way they talk, what they listen to, what they eat, their stances on social issues (for example police brutality) are all very obviously influenced by Oakland black culture and entirely different from the culture in predominantly asian/white/latino neighborhoods in other parts of the Bay. That simply does not happen in places that are segregated... a latino neighborhood in East LA is not going to be culturally very different at all from a latino neighborhood in Chicago but it will be entirely different from a latino neighborhood in Oakland because in Chicago and LA - and most of the country for that matter - there is very little cultural exchange between the various groups.
That's why I was very interested in Studded Leather's experience in living in a predominantly Greek/Italian area of Queens... I was under the same impression that NYC is pretty segregated, so I was curious about whether he thought that he could ever be viewed as an insider (i.e. within the culture of the neighborhood) or whether he was only being tolerated.
Yes, but that only means that far flung suburbs and neighboring metro areas are increasingly diverse.
I can live with that. Blacks are leaving lots of cities, not just San Francisco.
We cannot tell people where to live because its convenient for us to brag about how diverse we are. No people move on to what they perceive to be greener pastures. More power to them.
I can understand someone wanting to trade a tiny bungalow in East Oakland for a 5-bedroom mini-mansion in Sacramento county. This is what White people have been doing for about 50 years.
Furthermore it makes total sense that our Black population is not really leaving Northern California, but moving inland. If the point of moving is to upgrade, being 100 miles from San Francisco is still preferable to being 10 miles from god-knows-where. ick.
Exactly. I never got the whole argument about "SF is racist because Blacks are leaving". That argument in itself is stupid.
In Sacramento, there are tons of middle class Black folks who are originally from the Bay, many from Oakland. They just want a middle class lifestyle and a safe environment to raise their kids, and within a budget they can afford.
None of them talk about how they were "driven away" from the Bay Area due to racism. It's just economics and personal preferences.
If anything, it shows black Americans have covered a huge amount of ground in terms of their economic and social positions.
The notion of black people leaving inner city America for middle-class suburbs in large numbers was unthinkable even a couple decades ago because of economic disparity. Many black people fled the rural South after slavery and found residence in big cities, where they were then relegated to specific neighborhoods, barred from employment in many sectors, etc. by unspoken codes of discrimination.
Now? Not so much. A kid who grew up in San Francisco, be it down by Hunter's Point or in Central SF or wherever else he was raised, who does well in school, goes to UCSF, moves over to Oakland like many (most?) other post-college young people, and then accepts a job near Sacramento a few years later can now say, "I want to buy a 3-bedroom starter home with a yard in a safe area with good schools so that my wife and I can raise our kids the way we see fit" without worrying how his neighbors will treat him. They'll have barbecues and talk about the Giants. Hell, his neighbors are just as apt to be Filipino or Mexican as they are white...
I think it depends on where you are to some degree too. Even here in the Syracuse area, I'd say that the start of a noticeable amount of Black people moving to the suburbs started around the late 70's/early 80's. Before that, i'd say that middle class Black folks were moving to the mostly middle class East Side in the late 60's/early 70's. Now, it is nothing for Black people to move to other suburbs that you wouldn't necessarily think of, but it wasn't like Black folks were moving to just working class suburbs during that early push either. In many Northeastern metros, it does seem like middle class Black folks follow the migration pattern of the Jewish community, in many cases.
I feel if a person is willing to step outside of their comfort zone and try new things, they can adapt to any environment well (i.e. becoming an insider). I'm a guy from Bed-Stuy now living happily in Astoria (Queens, though eventually I want to live back in Brooklyn). I'm not saying people should conform just to fit in, but if you're moving into a neighborhood you should try to learn about the people who occupy it. This also goes both ways and in NY usually it's mutual. It also has a lot to do with class and the way someone carries themselves.
On another note what did you think I was? I've always said I'm Black and Latino when people bring up race and stuff. Maybe more so in the NY forum though.
Good point and even here in Syracuse, the many of the working class/poor neighborhoods are the city's most diverse and integrated. On the flip side, some of the nicer urban neighborhoods in Syracuse are integrated.
Just saying just because you have more minorities does not mean that it's a better life or they are more accepting of them.
If that where true 1990 South Africa was way ahead of the US Despite apartide.
Not sure if you're addressing my comment. If you are, I'd be interested to hear what's the "reality".
EDIT: And Huge Foodie 215, you made onto it to my ignore list a couple dozen posts ago. Let me guess, Bay Area minorities are race traitors, asians are white and the sky is green.
we got the numbers guy, so i guess i'm wrong
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