Is pittsburgh extremely racist?? (Upper St. Clair, Brentwood: crimes, neighborhoods, school districts)

[Veyron]

So I'm getting ready to move pittsburgh......and my friend tells me that alot of areas around the pittsburgh area is extremely racist and that they practice high levels of segregation there.

I'm freaking out a little because I've already invested in going down there and theres no turning back..

Is this true that pittsburgh and its surrounding counties and cities are racist?

I know you find racism everywhere but he said its really bad over there.

[Pitt Chick]

No. It's not extremely racist.

In what part of Pittsburgh does your friend live?

[eschaton]

From my experience as a white person moving here from New England, I'd say Pittsburgh is more openly racist than I was used to. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of racism you see here.

1. The typical suburban upper-middle class fear of significant numbers of black people moving into their neighborhoods and enrolling in their schools. This is no worse than anywhere else, and these people are, generally speaking, not openly racist in socially mixed situations (like work) anyway.

2. The working-class white racism, which does tend to be a little bit more explicit here than I was used to. I heard the N word used more by whites in the first year I lived here than my entire life beforehand. The curious thing is while many of these people will say awful, ignorant things, they still live in racially mixed neighborhoods, and quite often their children will be dating black kids - or they will even have a biracial child themselves (one guy told me he was "allowed to say n****r" because he had a half-black son."

Which one of these is worse? I'm not sure. Generally speaking, however, if you stay within the core of Allegheny County, you shouldn't have a problem (outside of a few areas like Lincoln Place and Brentwood), as even the racists have largely resigned themselves to living in an integrated metro area.

[gg]

For the most part, Pittsburgh has grown past a lot of that. There was a time it was a bigger deal because mostly white affluent great school districts were forced to merge with districts that didn't have the same values in education that happened to be mostly black. Also, places like the East Hills Shopping Center used to be really nice, but an element of black folks moved in that region and Kaufmanns, Hornes and the whole places closed down. It was perceived all this happened because black people "moved in". Grand places like East Liberty, were totally let go and run down and so many equated that to black families living there. A lot of racism stemmed from these happenings I think, but it was quite a long time ago and Pittsburgh has such a mix of races living together, I think racism has been played out for the most part and it doesn't exist much. Sure there are racists whether they are black people or white people, but that is true everywhere to my knowledge. So in a nutshell, IMHO I don't think you will encounter much racism here as long as you don't wear clothes that are promoting a gang or playing those games. If you are into that, you will probably be hassled now and again by police and probably won't get the best service places. People don't care for that stuff much.

It would be nice if Simetime would respond to this or wpipkins. Hope I got those two handles right. They are really knowledgeable folks.

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

I recently moved from the Sheraden neighborhood where there is probably a 50/50 racial mix. That neighborhood seemed somewhat racist to me from both sides, especially from some of the older white residents.

I have not experienced the same level of racism in other neighborhoods I've lived in on the east end. There doesn't seem to be any appreciable racism here in Crafton.

[Bong477]

No its not extremely racist. There is however, not a lot of racial diversity. There's dozens of threads that detail people's opinion on this subject. In summary, the more affluent the area the less racism there will be.

[Goodjules]

Originally Posted by eschaton

From my experience as a white person moving here from New England, I'd say Pittsburgh is more openly racist than I was used to. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of racism you see here.

1. The typical suburban upper-middle class fear of significant numbers of black people moving into their neighborhoods and enrolling in their schools. This is no worse than anywhere else, and these people are, generally speaking, not openly racist in socially mixed situations (like work) anyway.

2. The working-class white racism, which does tend to be a little bit more explicit here than I was used to. I heard the N word used more by whites in the first year I lived here than my entire life beforehand. The curious thing is while many of these people will say awful, ignorant things, they still live in racially mixed neighborhoods, and quite often their children will be dating black kids - or they will even have a biracial child themselves (one guy told me he was "allowed to say n****r" because he had a half-black son."

Which one of these is worse? I'm not sure. Generally speaking, however, if you stay within the core of Allegheny County, you shouldn't have a problem (outside of a few areas like Lincoln Place and Brentwood), as even the racists have largely resigned themselves to living in an integrated metro area.

I haven't been here that long myself, but your impression matches what I've seen.

[sskink]

Originally Posted by Veyron

So I'm getting ready to move pittsburgh......and my friend tells me that alot of areas around the pittsburgh area is extremely racist and that they practice high levels of segregation there.

While I share the same background (New England) and experiences on moving here as eschaton, it's doubtful you'd have issues if you were in a city neighborhood.

As far a suburbia goes, I can only speak to the South Hills and even there, other than Brentwood (which seems off the charts), the only place I notice any outward angst re "undesirables" is Upper St. Clair.

[sparrowmint]

My definition of extremely racist would be if there were a lot of hate crimes and such, and I wouldn't say so. There is a lot of racism though, much of the institutionalized variety, and the multitude of issues that come with that. I'm doubting that middle class black people face a higher amount of problems in their day to day life here than they would any other urban centre in this country, but if you're looking for a place where significant numbers of white people don't hold horrible beliefs secretly within themselves... well, that isn't here, and I'm not sure where it would be either.

Moderator cut: orphaned

[Veyron]

Originally Posted by Pitt Chick

No. It's not extremely racist.

In what part of Pittsburgh does your friend live?

I don't know based off some of these responses it is...