Some questions about Milwaukee

[nidex]

You will be fine anywhere you have reason to go while you're at UWM. The area surrounding the campus, east side in general, and downtown are all safe. As long as you don't venture to the hood, which you will have no reason to, you will have no problems.

[Devitron5000]

Originally Posted by ultravioletfly

but all I've heard from relatives (who live around Green Bay) is that Milwaukee is dangerous, about to explode from racial tension, and is entirely unsafe.

I finished high school in Green Bay and found the people there to be some of the most sheltered and ignorant people I've ever come across when it comes to race and urban life in general. In fact, when I first got up there, I was asked... without the slightest bit of coyness or irony... if it was true that "all the black people sit on porches and shoot at cars."

You should probably keep in mind that many of the racists who left Milwaukee in the 60s and 70s when it got "too colorful" made their way up the lakeshore to the Green Bay area and this has no doubt shaped the overall attitude when it comes to race relations up there. Right now a large swath of Green Bay residents are losing their minds and spewing the "they're starting to take over" rhetoric even though Green Bay is still overwhelmingly white (close to 80%, if not more than that) simply because they can no longer go weeks between seeing people of color who aren't wearing green jerseys. Believe me, as someone who spent most of his formative years in Milwaukee as a whiteboy surrounded by people of color, Milwaukee is perfectly safe and accepting for anyone with the smallest semblance of common sense (which explains why so many people in Green Bay hate us ).

[ultravioletfly]

Thanks very much, everybody! I'll be touring the campus next week.

[Ultracorp]

I always felt safe around the UWM area. The most annoying thing you will run into are panhandlers and the occasional crazy person having a conversation with themselves or inanimate objects.

For the record, I am tired of people being so scared of Milwaukee. I don't want to repeat how I have worked in literally every single neighborhood in the city and somehow survived without a scratch, but jesus. It not like people are hiding in alleyways waiting to murder you or rob you. It the same as any other large city in the U.S...Just be smart. Racial tensions are a myth to me. I'm a white guy and had many black friends when I lived in Milwaukee...All you have to do is talk to people like they are human beings? Is that so hard?

Anyway I'm going to stop before I go on a rant.