More Allegheny County Homicides Outside Than In The City 2019 (Pittsburgh: transplants, real estate)

[Independentthinking83]

Originally Posted by wood_lake

I'm from the South and lived in Pittsburgh for a good while. I was absolutely floored with not only the open racism I saw on display while living there. People are not passive aggressive about it like they can be in the South, they are open with dropping slurs outright and calling groups out without hesitation. There is also the direct "shut your mouth" response when people call it just like we see in this thread.

But what really blew my mind is that there is no black middle class whatsoever in Pittsburgh. If you are black you are poor, and deviations from that were EXTREMELY rare. I'm back again where I grew up (Raleigh) and there is a healthy black middle class here. White people and black people interact freely without hills and rivers separating their neighborhoods. When you interact with people different from you all the time it no longer becomes a point of contention, imagine that. I will back up what this poster says, if you can make it out of Pittsburgh as an African American there are much much better places you can live in the US.

Sorry, I usually just lurk but I saw some of the recent posts in this thread and it brought me back to those same racist attitudes I remembered when living in Pittsburgh.

^^^^^

That’s why a lot are leaving the city and the region entirely. When you are born into an environment and a region that doesn’t value your existence that is the result. I think many more have left and I expect it to be newsworthy once the final census count is in.

People can work to get out of it, but it is extremely hard. I did, but I’m an exception not the majority. Maybe 1 in 10 at best.

I have a good friend, white guy that lives in Swissvale, we went up to Cleveland for a weekend to watch the tribe play. We drove through Cleveland Heights and he was amazed that other cities have a black middle class. Those were his exact words. Black people own nice older homes in the Cleveland suburbs? He was floored. This is a white guy that grew up in the hills of central PA.

It clicked with him after that.

Atlanta and Raleigh are two cities where black people from Pittsburgh settled to have a better life. And it is still the case.

And lawrenceville is becoming the least diverse neighborhood in the city along with others. I don’t think this new growth or breaking even is sustainable without everyone being included and valued. It is short lived and I’d call it terminal lucidity. One last burst of energy before death.

Blacks are leaving the city in droves, the under 18 population is in extreme significant decline and the city is now a majority renter. The suburbs are taking on the displaced blacks because they have the vacant housing. These suburbs can’t pay their own bills or provide services. Read between the lines on where the future is.

[bradjl2009]

Originally Posted by Independentthinking83

^^^^^
And lawrenceville is becoming the least diverse neighborhood in the city along with others. I don’t think this new growth or breaking even is sustainable without everyone being included and valued. It is short lived and I’d call it terminal lucidity. One last burst of energy before death.

I'm just wanted to point out that before lower income black people started to move into Lawrenceville in the late 90's and early 2000's, the neighborhood was actually overwhelmingly white in the not too distant past. IIRC, Central Lawrenceville was in the low 90's for percentage who were white, and Upper Lawrenceville was in the mid 80's for its white percentage in the 2000 Census. Black people did not really live in Lawrenceville at all until the older longtime white homeowners started to pass on in the late 90's who retired before things went downhill with manufacturing.

[szug-bot]

Originally Posted by Independentthinking83

^^^^^

That’s why a lot are leaving the city and the region entirely. When you are born into an environment and a region that doesn’t value your existence that is the result. I think many more have left and I expect it to be newsworthy once the final census count is in.

People can work to get out of it, but it is extremely hard. I did, but I’m an exception not the majority. Maybe 1 in 10 at best.

.....

what i have in bold is basically a false narrative.

my parents escaped the third reich - they were dirt poor in europe, and they arrived in North America dirt poor. some of us with that experience are perhaps less sympathetic to this argument about how no one cares about you. its more about what you CAN do for yourself. this does not mean one shouldnt support, share, contribute to someone else bettering their life.

[Independentthinking83]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

what i have in bold is basically a false narrative.

my parents escaped the third reich - they were dirt poor in europe, and they arrived in North America dirt poor. some of us with that experience are perhaps less sympathetic to this argument about how no one cares about you. its more about what you CAN do for yourself. this does not mean one shouldnt support, share, contribute to someone else bettering their life.

And I am speaking of one city, not the USA as a whole. The last 20 or so years, black folks have been getting it that Pittsburgh is a place that doesn’t value their existence and many have left. Most of the ones that stay and have never left have a difficult time making it. I left, lived in 3 other places, and moved back as I work from home for a company HQ elsewhere. Ones that left never will come back as they live in places like Atlanta or Raleigh where they can get a good paying job and their children have a chance at a decent education and much better living conditions.

There were still people that stayed in Europe? What was life like for them if they didn’t leave? A lot left like your parents and never looked back. It was still hard for many of them. The others that grew tired of it picked up and left.

The sad thing about Pittsburgh is that it is in the USA and not Europe. The fact we are making the comparison to third reich Europe is eye opening and a disgrace.

It isn’t a false narrative either. Reports have documented this.

https://www.publicsource.org/pittsbu...-report-finds/

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Independentthinking83

We drove through Cleveland Heights and he was amazed that other cities have a black middle class. Those were his exact words. Black people own nice older homes in the Cleveland suburbs? He was floored. This is a white guy that grew up in the hills of central PA.

I'm a white guy who grew up in Pennsyltucky and had the exact same experience with Cleveland Heights. We stopped at the Whole Foods shopping center there (actually, I believe it may be neighboring University Heights) and couldn't believe we saw more African-American faces than white faces. Despite being in a part of town with a white/black plurality, it seems like the VAST MAJORITY of faces in the East End ("progressive center of the universe") Whole Foods here in Pittsburgh are white.

Why does Pittsburgh have such a tiny black professional class when compared to other MSA's? I can't think of any majority-black middle-to-upper-middle-class neighborhood in this city. Just about every heavily-black neighborhood in this city is impoverished and has very few people who possess an education beyond high school.

I work in a middle-class profession in a building with many middle-class professionals. Despite the jobs here paying $15/hr.-$20/hr. a college education is unnecessary. The vast majority of the workers in my building are white. There are fewer than a dozen African-Americans I can think of in our building in comparable roles to my own. I can only think of one African-American in our building who has a supervisory role (higher than my own). We are always hiring. Why aren't African-Americans applying, then? Is the African-American population here just declining much more rapidly than even Briem's analysis indicates?

[prnlvsxy]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

I can't think of any majority-black middle-to-upper-middle-class neighborhood in this city.

Garden City, Monroeville

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by prnlvsxy

Garden City, Monroeville

Thank you. I don't get to Monroeville often because it's so far out of the way for me. I'll have to spend more time there. Glad to hear it's a mecca of professional African-Americans akin to University Heights or Cleveland Heights. I was hoping we had an area like that here.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by bradjl2009

I'm just wanted to point out that before lower income black people started to move into Lawrenceville in the late 90's and early 2000's, the neighborhood was actually overwhelmingly white in the not too distant past. IIRC, Central Lawrenceville was in the low 90's for percentage who were white, and Upper Lawrenceville was in the mid 80's for its white percentage in the 2000 Census. Black people did not really live in Lawrenceville at all until the older longtime white homeowners started to pass on in the late 90's who retired before things went downhill with manufacturing.

This is true in Upper/Central Lawrenceville, but black people lived in Lower Lawrenceville going back to the 1940s at least.

[eschaton]

I've also heard it said that when the bottom fell out on the Pittsburgh economy around 1980, educated black professionals disproportionately left the metro entirely for greener pastures. In contrast, the more auto-focused Rust Belt areas didn't have the bottom fall out quite as dramatically, meaning there was less reason for middle-class black residents (particularly those who lived in the suburbs) to move away.

[Uptown kid]

Here’s where the (mostly secluded) Black middle class neighborhoods are, mind you many more folks are scattered within predominantly White communities (or are even married to non-Black partners):
- Garden City and other a few other neighborhoods now in Monroeville, PA
- Blackridge in Wilkinsburg, PA; Penn Hills, PA and Churchill, PA
- Chartiers City and Windgap north of Summerdale Street
- Stanton Heights south of Stanton Avenue
- what's left of the Black population in Point Breeze North
- Not to mention a significant part of Penn Hills, PA that’s still desirable

The rest are pockets on the outskirts of rough ghettoized areas such as the following:
- parts of Beacon Hill, Upper Penn and Laketon (north of 2100 blocks), Wilkinsburg, PA
- Crawford Square/streets between Centre and Webster Ave from Roberts to Devilliers Street in the Crawford-Roberts section of the Hill District
- Lower East Hills / Eymard St-Madonna St area of East Hills
- Finland Street, Rampart Street, 3400-3500 Webster Ave and 3500 Camp Street area of “Sugar Top”, Upper Hill section of the Hill District (i.e., north of the Robert Williams Reservoir)
- what’s left of middle class Blacks in Lower Manchester
- Townhouses on 1800 Arcena Street & 1700 Cliff Street, Crawford-Roberts section of the Hill
- what's left of the Black population on 3000-4300 Centre Avenue, Edwart Drive, Andover Terrace and Schenley Farms Terrace (Schenley Heights), Upper Hill section of the Hill District
- 3100 Avalon Street and Brackenridge Street in the Terrace Village section of the Hill District
- 4800 Mossfield Court and Sullivan Street in Garfield near the cemetery
- 7000-7100 Campania Ave, Broadcrest Drive and Ross Garden Road in “Upper Lincoln”, Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar. Even most of the Belmar section (other than 7200 Everton Street Homewood North Apts)
- scattered in East Liberty and Highland Park
- scattered in Perry North “Observatory Hill”, the Columbia Park neighborhood and 1900-1600 Perrysville Ave/Clayton Avenue and University Avenue in Perry South/Perry Hilltop
- scattered in Swissvale, PA near the beginning of “South Swissvale”

Used to be more in pockets of Beltzhoover, Hazelwood, throughout Homewood-Brushton, streets of Middle Hill and the 2526-2600/2800 blks of Bedford Ave but those residents mostly died off by 2000.