Its sucks being a college educated BLK male in Chicago. (Maywood: best city, homes)

[urza216]

Originally Posted by Chicagoland60426

A white person thats ingrained in Hip Hop culture and/or acts stereotypically black.

Extreme example


V-Nasty On Some Real **** - YouTube

Does she act like that when her white relatives are in town?

I bet she doesn't say that word in public. I actually have heard a white person utter that word loudly and publicly at a gas station on Route 41 in Central Indiana. I knew I was far away from the hood.

It really doesn't bother me. I just don't take her completely seriously.

[Count David]

Originally Posted by Chicagoland60426

V-Nasty On Some Real **** - YouTube

Can I have that 2:01 of my life back?

[sydbarrett]

There are some "wiggas" that post here in these forums that are in denial.

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by Lorielicious

^^Spot on, for the most part. I'd also attribute the larger integration of Los Angeles to larger number Blacks and Latinos in the middle and upper classes. People like that in Chicagoland may be reluctant to live in the city, as there really aren't that many good places for us to live. There aren't upper-class black neighborhoods here, and mid-to-upper class black people certainly do not live in racially integrated communities of the same class. There doesn't seem to be a Ladera Heights of Chicago, or an equivalent of the West Side. (And if there is, someone please let me know, and I will break my lease and move there today.)

If you're well off and black in Chicago, your choices of desirable places to live are extremely limited. The city is rather segregated racially, so your options are (with a pocketful of exceptions) to live on the South side, and be surrounded by people you have absolutely nothing in common with other than skin tone, or go North and be given the cold shoulder. People here seem to want to sweep the hostility under the convenient rug of "class hostility" but that's silliness and unfettered denial. Perhaps the problem would be solved by middle+ class black and brown people moving in, but I could see why they wouldn't want to. The problem just compounds itself.

Ah well. C'est Chicago.

I totally agree. I think many Chicagoans genuinely value Chicagos diversity in a very general sense, but from my analysis of other metro areas, Chicago does seem to have a wider socieconomic divide than other metro areas.

A lot of that has to do with Chicagos history, and economic activity.

In LA, hispanics have been part of the demographic mix from day one. Like when the missions were built, so there are families that go back far, and have had a lot of time to build wealth and transfer opportunity to their children. In Chicago as late as the 1950s, Chicagos hispanic population was no more than 2%. It really didn't start to "explode" until the 1970s really. And even then it was only 15%. (I got this information from "Cities of the Heartland: The rise and fall of the industrial midwest").

I think LA has communities like Ladera Hts, while Chicago does not possible because African Americans have always had a major presence in the entertainment industry. Chicago does not really have that, and its economic environment of corporations and financial institutions lend itself more to a more conservative way of carrying oneself and where the name of the school on your degree matters more, thus giving a leg up on those sectors of our population that have had opportunity build itself over more generations.

So, I think to add on to what Lori mentioned, for complex reasons, in cities in other parts of the country there is a greater acknowledgement based on the real demographics in those cities that:

White does not necessarily = more wealth and education and Black does not necessarily = less wealth and education.

When you go to west coast cities you simply see many more white (more runaways kids and homeless hippies, etc.) (I saw this in San Fran especially) panhandlers hitting you up for change than Chicago. I don't think ANYONE can argue that just about everyone hitting you up for change in Chicago is black. That in conjunction with the fact that the most popular, hot neighborhoods are very white, may indeed perpetuate the idea in peoples heads about the difference between black and white.

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by tribecavsbrowns

What about Beverly, the South Loop, Oak Park, Flossmoor, Hyde Park, or Kenwood?

And these are some of my favorite places in Chicagoland. I am lucky to live in one of the gems.

But heres the thing, you pretty much exhausted the list.

It just seems to me that the list is kind of low, considering that the AA population in these communities, and I do love these communities, are still less than a quarter black.

Not that, there has to be a certain percentage of course not.

But places like Ladera Hts in the LA area (and this goes for Baldwin Hills and Windsor Hills as well) are overwhelmingly black and just as nice as these areas.

And the reason why I brought up other midwestern metro areas in states to the east of Chicago that have a history of possibly worse race relations a while back is because well . . . yes Cincinnati and Detroit are not as cosmopolitan, diverse, or as world class, but the thing . . .

despite their problems whatever they may be, they have equivalents of all those six communities!
And when I look up the statistics the mix is more even, or black majority.

The northern stretches of Southfield, MI plus Lathrop village are like two or three Flossmoors with a higher % of black.

The Detroit city neighborhoods of Palmer Woods/University District are just like Beverly with a black majority.

Midtown Detroit with Wayne State and the Art museum feels a little like Hyde Park. And the east lakefront (they actually have a neighborhood there called the Gold Coast if you could believe that) has condo towers that have a lot of black professionals. Add on other neighborhoods in the city like North Rosedale Park and Indian Village also have mansions like those on Chicagos north shore suburbs. Yes, they are surrounded by more blight, crime, and poverty, but the fact they are there is something to think about.

In Cincinnati you have neighborhoods like North Avondale with large mansions that are 50/50. Pleasant Ridge neighborhood has a racial make-up similar to Oak Park, as well as architecturally (Tudor houses). Then you have the Tri-county area, 275/75 intersection with communities like Springdale which feed into the diverse and integrated Princeton high school.

On top of that those midwestern metro areas also have a greater presence of lower income white communities whether small, cheap houses or even trailor parks due to greater Appalchian migration what you get is a metro area, where:

White does not necessarily equal nicer neighborhoods and black doesn't always equal worse neighborhoods.

All I was referring to a post a while back, is that considering how large, diverse, vibrant and world class Chicago is, the number of nice neighborhoods that even have a 20% black population is simply rather low. And considering you can find neighborhoods just like that in smaller, less popular, more negatively stereotypes metro areas . . . its kind of profound.

And that was the point of my post a while back.

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by Lorielicious

Well the guy has spent whole days there, which not only makes him the foremost expert, but one whose expertise cannot be contained to CA forums. Don't hate knowledge.

I put food on my table and pay my bills by teaching people to carefully analyze maps and charts of demographic data. OK?

Does a doctor or nurse have to have experienced whatever condition or disease that a patient has in order to understand it?

I don't understand making references to other threads. I never said that I have personal experience living in a place, however I can take a look at a map of the city of LA, and see that city of LA extends as far west as Woodland Hills and Topanga Canyon, and as far southwest as Venice Beach (Santa Monica is its own jurisdiction as is Beverly Hills and West Hollywood) and see that the city limits has a long thin piece extending to San Pedro right by the harbor. And all I did was comment about how many cool areas there are in the LA area miles from downtown but still within the city limits or at least very close. Thats all, OK?

[urza216]

Flossmoor is less than a quarter black? I find that hard to believe. And you forgot Homewood, Olympia Fields, Matteson, Lynwood and South Holland. No list exhaustion.. All of the above are south suburbs that are solidly middle class to upper middle class and have a majority black population.

[urza216]

*all of the above except for Homewood

And BTW, Olympia Fields is predominately rich as far as I'm conerned. The median income income is around 100K and it's around 80 percent black. There's pleanty of room for college educated blacks in the south suburbs. How much room is there for other demographics though? Richton Park, Country Club Hills, Park Forest, etc. I didn't mention these because of income levels not because there aren't a lot of college educated blacks there too.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by Tex?Il?

I don't think ANYONE can argue that just about everyone hitting you up for change in Chicago is black. That in conjunction with the fact that the most popular, hot neighborhoods are very white, may indeed perpetuate the idea in peoples heads about the difference between black and white.

If you exclude the Belmont & Clark area, probably - but that's a pretty notable exception, there have always been runaways and other miscreants/deadbeat white teens bumming for change and smokes on the street.

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by urza216

*all of the above except for Homewood

And BTW, Olympia Fields is predominately rich as far as I'm conerned. The median income income is around 100K and it's around 80 percent black. There's pleanty of room for college educated blacks in the south suburbs. How much room is there for other demographics though? Richton Park, Country Club Hills, Park Forest, etc. I didn't mention these because of income levels not because there aren't a lot of college educated blacks there too.

Gotcha. Thanks for the info.

I guess that brings up an issue that the solid middle class majority black areas of Chicagoland are not places anyone would know about, since theres really little reason why people would go down there so they might not know.

Apparently I didn't either.

Probably wouldn't be a bad thing for some north siders to take a trip down there, and do a little people watching just so they know that many black people grew up just like they did.