Best Cities For Cultural Blending (neighborhoods, construction, gated)

[jgp333]

Often on this forum I have read where someone asks if a city if welcoming to people of a particular group however my question is slightly different.

I would like to know which major cities have minority populations that both retain their own culture and traditions yet are also very open and welcoming to outsiders. My ideal society is more similar to Brazil than the US to be honest in that I have a strong belief that the more integrated people are and the more contact they have with each other including intermarriage etc. the less racism festers beneath the surface in society.

I don't believe that it's possible for anybody to truly ever be "colorblind" but I do think it's possible to embrace who you are while also living in close proximity to people of other groups if people are willing to have real conversations with each other. Many of the cities in the US that are often touted as the most "diverse" are in fact some of the most segregated places you'll ever go in the world.

If it helps my situation is that I am a young working class Caucasian male who really loves being around black people but where I grew up the black community was very closed to outsiders (and vice versa). I still managed to have close friendships with people from other communities but I always felt I was forced to choose between worlds it was like you couldn't have friends on both sides of the tracks so to speak. I just wondered if there were cities in the US that really embodied truly being a "tossed salad" (as opposed to a melting pot) if so I just haven't spent time there yet.

[Davros]

New York City?

[jgp333]

NYC is THE most segregated city in the United States. It's exactly what I was referring to when I said the so-called most "diverse" cities are the most segregated. Taking over black neighborhoods and evicting the long term residents isn't what I had in mind when I said "integration"

[Davros]

Portland Oregon? Seattle?

[jgp333]

Haven't been there...but I do suspect the answer is somewhere out west. I have traveled pretty much throughout the south and the mid-Atlantic region of the country.

[Drewcifer]

In my experience the most segregated cities are ones where the pattern of racial interaction was established a long time ago and never really changed much - places like NY, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, etc. I would say your best bets are cities that have had strong growth recently or ones where the non white population has grown quickly recently. They seem to have fewer "established patterns" of interaction between groups. Off the top of my head I would suggest Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Charlotte, Orlando, Columbus, and Minneapolis. I have less experience with the west so I won't comment about that, I've heard Oakland is good though.

[blkgiraffe]

California. The blacks out there don't even realize they're black anymore.

[jgp333]

Atlanta is actually the place I grew up and it's incredibly divided. The modern pattern of racial interactions there it may surprise you to know really isn't new even during Jim Crow Atlanta had a very strong black middle class especially entrepreneurial types who ran stores and such, Madame C.J. Walker being a very famous example. Also Jim Crow only lasted about 50 years in Atlanta those laws weren't passed until after 1900 and we had a population that took kindly to Reconstruction compared with other places because of Henry Grady's "New South" ideology. Atlanta is a good place to be successful if you are black but the community is very contained there are essentially two separate "good old boy" networks that operate simultaneously within city politics. People rarely build cross-racial coalitions in the authentic sense of the word. If anything the black community in Atlanta today is much poorer than at the height of the Sweet Auburn district in the 1920's.

This really touches at the heart of my question. What cities are good places to be black or white or what cities have very diverse groups living there those are different concepts that what cities experience a lot of racial blending and interaction. I appreciate the responses yet I really think they reinforce my point that most Americans of all races really have a different conception of what diversity is than say Brazil's "racial democracy" concept.

[citylove101]

I don't know of any cities that are entirely like that, but several neighborhoods in various cities are. See these threads though. There are probably other threads like these if you search

//www.city-data.com/forum/gener...white-mix.html

//www.city-data.com/forum/gener...relations.html

[jgp333]

blkgiraffe... I am very familiar with what you are talking about some of my close friends are from LA that's not what I'm looking for either. I just wonder if there's anywhere in the US where there is real diversity and people can both be themselves AND get along with everyone else