"Real life" for African Americans in Washington State (Seattle: houses, neighborhoods)

[jinj]

Life is what you make it here, really.

[Home?]

I don't usually post but I felt inspired to share our story. We are friendly, dog loving, God-fearing christians family that loves the land, mountains, woods, streams & ocean. We moved her almost two years ago to north snohomish county. We hand picked this area for the small community, rural setting, ranked higher than normal schools & close to the sound.

I agree with most of the post here. We have had issues with the people. Mostly, low morals & overly judgemental type of stuff. This has had a severe impact on our child. I only mention this because I wish someone had told us before the move.

We are moving again & our trying to figure out if this is a northwest issue that has to do with the non religious aspect or if we just landed in the wrong small town.

Please feel free to message me if you have additional questions.

Good luck to you both!

[AlohaHuey]

Originally Posted by solamarv

Seattle prides itself on "celebrating diversity", but that is only partially true. I work with a lot of aging hippie, bleeding heart liberal types....but they are actually closet racists.

You hide in their closets?

[yescandycan]

Thanks so much to everyone who responded to my post. Your comments were all helpful and thought-provoking. I found it very interesting, however, that one person indicated that "we would probably receive more flak for being Christians than for being African-American". This was news to me because I've never heard anything about Washington State being anti-Christian. But no matter. We are still looking forward to visiting this beautiful state, and if we like what we see and experience, we may soon be calling it home. Again, thanks everyone!

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by yescandycan

Thanks so much to everyone who responded to my post. Your comments were all helpful and thought-provoking. I found it very interesting, however, that one person indicated that "we would probably receive more flak for being Christians than for being African-American". This was news to me because I've never heard anything about Washington State being anti-Christian. But no matter. We are still looking forward to visiting this beautiful state, and if we like what we see and experience, we may soon be calling it home. Again, thanks everyone!

Washington is a diverse place. The area I live in is heavily Christian, including a guess of 12% LDS. There's no way anyone gets flak for being Christian here (nor would they, unless they were really irritating about it). Nor do they get much flak for being non-Christian, as I am. There is this nationwide perception (shared by many in Seattle) that Seattle = Washington. It's actually several regions that all have their own tendencies.

Even in Seattle, though, I think the idea of flak for being Christian is way overstated. It's just too diverse a place for that. Now, I would agree, if someone is very un-PC in social views, Seattle's pretty hostile about that. Far as Seattle's concerned, the problem-causers should be coddled and pitied and their victims should just understand that it was Not Their Fault. The dirty secret of Seattle is its total enabling of jerks through its culture of non-confrontationalism, which says that if someone's giving you a massive hassle for no reason and you finally put a stop to it, you are the bad guy. I hated that all day long, and I'm glad I'm away from it.

[Transmition]

The only times I've know people get any flak for being Christian is when they purposely go out of their way to do things that annoy others. The Halloween festivities at my workplace were renamed because of one guy. Then there are a few who try to force everyone to conform to their morals. My wife is shocked by the overly preachy people at her MOPS group. On the whole, most Christians seem very open about their faith and are not afraid to talk about it to strangers so there can't have been many issues from anti-Christian sentiments. The further you go from Seattle in the state, the fewer issues you will have with being a Christian and the more you'll have with being another religion.

[ken brookins]

I am a black man who lives in Kentucky , but I have travel to Washington state a lot in the past 20 years and I have a lot of white friends from Bellingham to Spokane, a few years ago some of my white friends came to ky . to visit and they said they would never come back again , they were treated very poor, I am ready to move to wa. state ,I have always consider Washington state my second home,i like Bellingham a lot. my question is would you recommend a black man to relocate to Whatcom,county ?

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by ken brookins

I am a black man who lives in Kentucky , but I have travel to Washington state a lot in the past 20 years and I have a lot of white friends from Bellingham to Spokane, a few years ago some of my white friends came to ky . to visit and they said they would never come back again , they were treated very poor, I am ready to move to wa. state ,I have always consider Washington state my second home,i like Bellingham a lot. my question is would you recommend a black man to relocate to Whatcom,county ?

I'd think so. I might not choose the survivalist/wingnut rural regions up the Skagit, but I think B-ham is fine; college town, pleasant people. A guy I know from Epinions has been in Bellingham a while, and he's pretty vocal, so if he thought it was racially unpleasant beyond the expected levels of ignorance, I'd have heard about it by now all over my Facebook wall. He sure prefers it to his hometown of Lakewood, which is the part of Tacoma that causes people to call the latter 'Tacompton.' I have no creditable means of speaking to the black experience in various places, but I live in Washington (in a part that used to be a sundown town), and if I suddenly magically became black and had to adjust, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't trade even my current town and its dishonorable racist history for Kentucky. Or that if I tried, I'd probably end up heading back here.

[ken brookins]

thanks for the useful info. it looks like I will be in wa. state soon. it's pretty sad I live now in Lexington,ky [pop. 300,000] even the black people here hate it. and they have been here all of there life. they still have a monument here where they use to trade slaves , it's called cheapside park look it up on the net. I do have some friends in burien,wa they talk very highly of Washington state , I cannot wait to get there

[west seattle gal]

Originally Posted by yescandycan

Thanks so much to everyone who responded to my post. Your comments were all helpful and thought-provoking. I found it very interesting, however, that one person indicated that "we would probably receive more flak for being Christians than for being African-American". This was news to me because I've never heard anything about Washington State being anti-Christian. But no matter. We are still looking forward to visiting this beautiful state, and if we like what we see and experience, we may soon be calling it home. Again, thanks everyone!

In my 10 years of living in Seattle, I have never met a racist person here or even overheard a racist conversation. This is in huge contrast with my experience living in NC for 30 years, particularly the rural areas. Race is not really discussed (or probably even thought about) here, though I have read that there is an achievement disparity in our public schools based on race. OPSI publishes data that you can find online about all the public schools and districts in WA. Multiracial couples are just a normal part of our city diversity.

Religion is very much a personal thing here, and it's almost indecent to discuss your beliefs in general conversation. Religion is as private here as the type of underwear one wears -- no one wants to hear about it. Proselytizing is not really tolerated, which I find to be a great freedom -- I really dislike the way people ask about church attendance and try to save their neighbors in NC. Being "God-fearing" doesn't really have meaning to most in Seattle. However, we do have churches in every neighborhood that are well attended. You can find your religious community here.