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Well, there is one thing no one has considered. I'm looking at Iowa and for what it's worth, it has alot of the trappings that a hard working person would like. A safe place to live, relatively reasonable cost of living, and good schools. For many African-Americans who have a mind to work, raise a good family, and live a good life, this can be done in Iowa. The question is this. Why aren't there more of such African-Americans moving to Iowa? I'm asking this because while those types of Blacks are moving to Iowa, Iowa doesn't seem as attractive to that element of the Black population. On the other hand, many who could be considered "hood rats" move to Iowa. The kinds of persons you want to come to a particular place aren't coming in as big of numbers as one might like. However, the hood rat seem more interested in it.
Consider this. Iowa has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation. That is one good thing to consider.
I live in the Atlanta area, and there is something I am noticing. I've seen more cars with Iowa license plates. I normally would expect to see mainly Whites driving those cars. However, I've seen alot of Blacks in the Atlanta area with Iowa license plates on their cars. This leads me to believe there is a migration of Blacks from Iowa moving to Georgia.
I want to expand this further. I meet many Wisconsin natives in Georgia. Alot of them come from the Fox River cities and Green Bay. However, a majority of Milwaukee natives I've met in the Atlanta area are Blacks. Many Black Milwaukeeans I've met express no interest in moving back to Milwaukee. These are not the thug/hood rat Blacks that many people here about. Just regular Black people.
I bring this up for this reason. Places like Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, parts of the Greater DC area are attracting middle class Blacks. Most of the hood rat element I've seen in Atlanta is home grown. Iowa and other parts of the Upper Midwest have been attracting some of Chicago's worst, as well as the worst from other Midwestern cities. The Atlanta area has been attracting alot of middle class Blacks. It leaves alot to wonder.
I live in the Atlanta area, and there is something I am noticing. I've seen more cars with Iowa license plates. I normally would expect to see mainly Whites driving those cars. However, I've seen alot of Blacks in the Atlanta area with Iowa license plates on their cars. This leads me to believe there is a migration of Blacks from Iowa moving to Georgia.
I want to expand this further. I meet many Wisconsin natives in Georgia. Alot of them come from the Fox River cities and Green Bay. However, a majority of Milwaukee natives I've met in the Atlanta area are Blacks. Many Black Milwaukeeans I've met express no interest in moving back to Milwaukee. These are not the thug/hood rat Blacks that many people here about. Just regular Black people.
I bring this up for this reason. Places like Charlotte, Atlanta, Houston, parts of the Greater DC area are attracting middle class Blacks. Most of the hood rat element I've seen in Atlanta is home grown. Iowa and other parts of the Upper Midwest have been attracting some of Chicago's worst, as well as the worst from other Midwestern cities. The Atlanta area has been attracting alot of middle class Blacks. It leaves alot to wonder.
That seems like the case in my experience as well. I think people just like to be where they fit in, and the good people will usually migrate away from the bad, regardless of race or anything else. Some will stay out of loyalty and desire to help their community, but most black friends I have aren't planning on going back to the area they're from. They specifically have said that they feel like a white person who leaves their backwards hick town, except in their case it's a neighborhood of ignorant criminals.
MOST of the black patients I have (in Des Moines) are from Chicago originally. They are really nice folks who wanted to get the hell out of bad situation. The black folks I run across have jobs and are good people. We have imports from St. Louis who are similarly just dark skinned Iowans.
In Iowa City, an entire part of a quiet university town has been turned into a high crime ghetto and wrecked the place. One of my patients who grew up there (a 350lb, 6ft 6 black guy and a former football player) is afraid to go into that neighborhood. I grew up in that area and it is completely wrecked. Crime has escalated there and has spilled over into the university campus.
Why the difference? I have no idea. But I am happy for the hard working black folks we have in the DSM area, as they either had or incorporated "Iowa culture" and are just like the rest of us here.
In towns of this size, it's typically just one or two groups, often extended families that are just rotten to the core and can turn a neighborhood to crap.
I grew up near the quadcities and my folks were telling me of one such family where they were pretty much the prime suspects in every serious crime that went down around there.
I don't agree with the racist tone of the OP. There has certainly been *some* criminal element that has come in from Chicago but the vast majority are seeking a better life.
Heck, the last major criminal spree I recall in the area was a White guy out of Rock Falls that killed many people before they arrested him.
Here in Iowa, there is a very interesting phenomena that has been going on for many years. Due to our proximity to Illinois, several Iowa towns receive hundreds if not thousands of African American "migrants" from the Chicago area, especially the South Side.
I have seen this in Des Moines, Ames and it is more prevalent here in Cedar Rapids, Waterloo and Davenport. I have nothing against people relocating to find a better life but here in Cedar Rapids in particular, there are two neighborhoods near Downtown that are basically what I call "Mini South Side of Chicago- Mind you, this is a city with a population of 128000.
The grocery store(Hy Vee) which is located right in the middle of these two neighborhoods is a very strange place because it is the only Hy Vee grocery store in this city with two Cedar Rapids cops inside the store at all times.
When I first moved here, I was shocked because not even in Des Moines, I had never seen anything like this not to mention that it is perhaps the only Hy Vee grocery store in this state that closes at midnight and does not stay open 24 hours.
The bank right up the street also has a police officer inside almost every time I have been there, this is something that is very unusual and bizarre for an Iowa city of this size. What are your thoughts? Should Iowa continue to embrace people from Illinois that bring a totally different mentality and lifestyle to this state?
if it was my state I would demand every single person from Chi-town that gets caught breaking the law be deported back to MI
MOST of the black patients I have (in Des Moines) are from Chicago originally. They are really nice folks who wanted to get the hell out of bad situation. The black folks I run across have jobs and are good people. We have imports from St. Louis who are similarly just dark skinned Iowans.
In Iowa City, an entire part of a quiet university town has been turned into a high crime ghetto and wrecked the place. One of my patients who grew up there (a 350lb, 6ft 6 black guy and a former football player) is afraid to go into that neighborhood. I grew up in that area and it is completely wrecked. Crime has escalated there and has spilled over into the university campus.
Why the difference? I have no idea. But I am happy for the hard working black folks we have in the DSM area, as they either had or incorporated "Iowa culture" and are just like the rest of us here.
Just wanted to point out that black people are Americans unless they are from another country. We adhere to American culture which is pretty consistent no matter the state. There are some variations but by and by, one can always tell an American from a non-American, especially when we travel, people know that I (and I am black) am an American.
There is no reason why they would be different from you or have a need to incorporate "Iowa culture."
As stated, I have a good friend from a small town in Iowa. She actually moved to Chicago (shocker I know to the OP) for more career opportunities. She is just like a regular black American Chicagoan and I was surprised to find out she was from small town Iowa.
We are all the same. Our poor people also usually have the same sorts of dysfunctional behaviors. I know lots of poor white criminals and grew up in a heavily integrated neighborhood in Ohio and the poor whites were just as bad as the poor black people. They just didn't get as much attention due to the whole racial stereotyping thing.
Oddly enough, and to me this is funny, but my older relatives always used to say that poor whites were the worse of the worse in dysfunction and were super dirty and nasty and my great grandmother encouraged me to go to an HBCU because she felt, due to growing up around a lot of poor white people in the 1920s and 1930s that whites were disgusting house keepers and she didn't want me to have to potentially deal with a white room mate. They also were all "gangsters" lol (there was a lot of organized crime in the area near where she grew up with Italians and Irish gangs).
Just like that sounds racists and stereotypical, that is how the OP and those agreeing with him/her sound. The OP is also giving "conservatives" a bad name.
Here in Iowa, there is a very interesting phenomena that has been going on for many years. Due to our proximity to Illinois, several Iowa towns receive hundreds if not thousands of African American "migrants" from the Chicago area, especially the South Side.
I have seen this in Des Moines, Ames and it is more prevalent here in Cedar Rapids, Waterloo and Davenport. I have nothing against people relocating to find a better life but here in Cedar Rapids in particular, there are two neighborhoods near Downtown that are basically what I call "Mini South Side of Chicago- Mind you, this is a city with a population of 128000.
The grocery store(Hy Vee) which is located right in the middle of these two neighborhoods is a very strange place because it is the only Hy Vee grocery store in this city with two Cedar Rapids cops inside the store at all times.
When I first moved here, I was shocked because not even in Des Moines, I had never seen anything like this not to mention that it is perhaps the only Hy Vee grocery store in this state that closes at midnight and does not stay open 24 hours.
The bank right up the street also has a police officer inside almost every time I have been there, this is something that is very unusual and bizarre for an Iowa city of this size. What are your thoughts? Should Iowa continue to embrace people from Illinois that bring a totally different mentality and lifestyle to this state?
I'm not understanding what the issue is. So a grocery store closes at midnight. Ok. Is it an imperative that it stay open 24 hours a day? I mean, i don't go grocery shopping after midnight myself.
This grocery store has security. Ok. I don't find that to be highly unusual. It's only unusual in that it's an actual police officer, but i don't see anything else strange about a grocery store hiring security.
As to your last sentence, Iowa is a state within the United States. It doesn't get to choose who lives there. That's not to say that you should embrace people who move there from other places, but whether your do or don't is irrelevant. I doubt that the new residents are looking for acceptance.
Mentality and lifestyle? What mentality and lifestyle did they bring to Iowa that wasn't already there? Was Iowa some utopia at one time? I used to go up to the Quad Cities quite a bit when i was brokering John Deere equipment....let's just say that utopian isn't what came to mind. Why anyone from Chicago would go there looking for a better life is beyond me.
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