Question for Ohio residents about racial divide...

[Averroës Nix]

I've had similar experiences with whites in Upstate New York - cities like Syracuse, Buffalo, and Rochester have both significant African American populations and significant problems with crime and poverty. Like cities throughout much of the Rust Belt, they are widely perceived as being in decline, in every respect.

I live in a very rural, very white community. But it also hosts a large population of summer residents - many of whom once lived in Rochester or Syracuse. Kodak retirees, for instance. A large portion of them are solidly working-class - no high-school degree, but as they had a steady, well-paying job for decades and are now receiving a fat pension, they're better-off than most college graduates from our generation will ever be.

Many of these people - the working-class retirees of large corporations - behave in the way that you describe. They have no problem interacting with blacks whom they see as being similar to themselves, but they'll routinely make disgustingly racist comments. And it's easy to understand why they do - the cities that they lived in through most of their lives no longer seem safe to them. They're in decline, physically deteriorating. Probably the most important factor is that their children and grandchildren, many of whom still in live these cities, can't find jobs (or, to be more precise, they can't find good jobs), and often are entangled in crime.

Of course, a reasoned discussion would explain these changes as the product of a web of economic and social changes that have occurred over the past half-century. But it's easier to blame the Other.

[Averroës Nix]

Is the crime rate amongst whites increasing in the rust belt?

I don't know where I can find race-specific data on all crimes, but rates of violent crime, at least, are falling fast enough that they're probably declining among all groups.

Consider homicide rates, for instance:



Some Rust Belt cities might buck this trend, but in this case, it's perceptions of urban crime among certain groups, rather than actual rates, that matter.