Question for Ohio residents about racial divide...

[TJ in Oregon]

Racial tensions are a big reason why Cleveland and Detroit fared much worse than Pittsburgh and Toledo upon the collapse of the steel and automotive industries. In 1976, a federal court required Cleveland's school system to be racially desegregated by implementing busing between white and African-American neighborhoods when the neighborhood school boundaries had previously fallen largely along racial lines. In doing so, the mass exodus to the suburbs began and Cleveland Public Schools lost more than a third of its students from 1976-1980. The mass exodus was especially pronounced on the east side where the black population had largely settled, leaving behind increasingly large ghettos riddled with vacancies. Over time the ghettos grew and formerly middle class neighborhoods experienced the pattern and fell rapidly.

Real estate values are based on perceptions about an area, the perceived quality of the neighborhood. When African-Americans begin to move into an area, only a handful of people will initially assume the place is starting to decline, but it's enough that some residents will fear a future loss in housing value and move out. When this happens, everyone else's house is worth less because more people want to move out than move in and the area does begin to decline. The thing that makes the problem even worse is school systems. Most families want the very best for their children and if an area begins to experience a demographic shift, test scores seem to decline as well. This is truly the death knell for an area. As a single male, I would have no qualms whatsoever about living in Euclid or Garfield Heights. But if I have kids it's a whole different story. While those areas are changing in terms of demographics, they remain safe and largely stable neighborhoods. Crime and gang violence are not rampant in Euclid or Garfield Heights (or Richmond Heights or Bedford or South Euclid or any of the other suburbs in this category). But yet the school systems are not nearly as stable. This will result in no new middle class white families moving into those communities, thus the demand drops even more.

People in this situation aren't necessarily racist persay; they don't dislike black people in general or think less of them as individual people. However, they still would not like to be living in a black neighborhood, surrounded by only black people. It's kind of intimidating being the only white person in a black neighborhood (and I expect the same is true for the only black person in a white neighborhood). If I'm in an all black neighborhood, I do get some uncomfortable encounters with women making catcalls, young adults making random threats of violence, etc. But again, those people are the minority there too and most people, particularly older black people (I don't know why that is and it sort of worries me about the future of race relations), tend to be very nice and friendly. There is a pretty large cultural difference between blacks and whites on the east side of Cleveland about how to talk to strangers and that's also part of it (remember most of the east side whites are very wealthy and their ancestors never emerged from the sort of immigrant ethnic communities many west side whites' ancestors did and thus seem to be a bit less communal in perspective; west side whites often have much more in common with blacks than east side whites do).

Cleveland, while still extremely segregated, is experiencing some interracial mixing especially in the traditionally poor white neighborhoods on the near west side. While the west side often gets blamed for racism because of the immigrant days when certain European ethnic groups literally controlled certain areas and no one else was welcome there, these days the west side has far more racial diversity and far less stark tension than the supposedly "tolerant" east side, where the only racially mixed areas are gentrification invasions, formerly white neighborhoods turning black, homeless shelters, and poltically forced mixing like Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights, in the case of Shaker done well and in the case of CH done horribly. My real hope for the future is that the near west side continues to act as a melting pot for all the poor migrants, whether they came from the east side ghettos or Puerto Rico or as Middle Eastern refugees continues to remain strong and welcoming as the epitomy of the American melting pot. It would be nice if we could see the day when the black inner city neighborhoods become desirable ethnic communities like so many of the formerly undesirable European ethnic ghettos have. I think too often we forget that there are stable black neighborhoods in Cleveland too; not every black area is a ghetto. The best example of this in the city is Lee-Miles, which has a crime rate not too terribly different than a lot of middle class suburbs. You aren't very likely to randomly get shot, stabbed, or mugged in Lee-Miles. But unfortunately we tend to overlook that a lot based on the reality that if you walk through Kinsman, Central, or the non-hill parts of East Cleveland things are quite a bit different and much more of the city is like Central or Hough than it is like Lee-Miles.

[TJ in Oregon]

People in this situation aren't necessarily racist persay; they don't dislike black people in general or think less of them as individual people. However, they still would not like to be living in a black neighborhood, surrounded by only black people. It's kind of intimidating being the only white person in a black neighborhood (and I expect the same is true for the only black person in a white neighborhood).

By definition, if it is motivated mostly by race that's a racist attitude.

It's not so much that the entire neighborhood is a different race as much as it is that the entire neighborhood is socially different in some way the newcomer can never really belong. If I move to a 95%+ black neighborhood, I would be a social outcast there because I am not black, never will be black, and am easily identifiable as not being black. Every person I pass by on the street immediately knows I am an outsider to their community. Now, if I was really bent on moving there and making this my one great stand in life, I could probably become socially accepted but it would take time, effort, and a lot of confidence in myself.