Its sucks being a college educated BLK male in Chicago. (Lincoln: neighborhood, buy)

[Dressy]

To lean "how to act white'' (that is the OP's expression) and to have some kind of college education is appearantly not enough for people of all races willing to befriend you. I will tell you more, it is not enough even if you are white.

What you need is a simple thing: just some friends that would have introduced you to others. It is hard to start from scratch. How about your co-workers? Can you befriend anybody?

[Halsted]

Originally Posted by Aleking

As for your final note, I think Chicagoans like it the way it is. People like the idea of diversity but aren't so fond of it in practice.

Why do you think this?

[Aleking]

Originally Posted by Halsted

Why do you think this?

There are countless reasons, not all nerfarious, why people prefer to hang out and surround themselves in homogenous communities.

[AmosBanks]

When you think about it, friendship is totally random. I have friends since college, but we are only friends because we were placed in the same residence hall. I could have been placed in a different dorm (or on a different floor) and we would have never met. My parents are longtime friends with former neighbors, but that's just because our families happened to find houses across from each other

One of the best ways to meet people is to join a sports league. There's Players Sports, Sports Monster and the Chicago Sport and Social Club up north. There's ITZ on the South Side In The Zone, LLC . I moved here from Michigan in 1998. I joined a softball league as an individual and was placed on a team with other people looking for a team. We were all in our 20s and had all moved to Chicago in the last 1-3 years.

We hung tight for almost three years and over that time we went to 3/4 of the bars on the north side. That first group of people evolved and it turned into another set of friends who mainly hung at the same bar. We went to the Hopleaf (before they had a kitchen) every Wednesday. It was like our version of Cheers or How I Met Your Mother. That lasted for three years.

Flash forward 13 years. I look back at all the time I spent in bars and I can't think of a single friend who I can trace back to "yeah, we met at the bar and now we're still buddies". I went to bars with my friends, but I met all my friends outside of the bar. Any people I met at the bar were friends of friends. My team was sponsored by the same bar for seven years. We were there the same day every week from April-October and we never met anybody new. I think it's the same with everybody. The bars are full of people, but it's really just a bunch of people drinking together who are already friends. The bar allowed me to solidify the friendships I made elsewhere to the point where we have all been in each others' weddings. One of my original softball teammates is godfather to my daughter. You may think you're getting a vibe of "nobody wants to talk to the black guy", but most people in the bar aren't trying to meet ANYBODY new.

If you want to meet new people and socialize then sports is my suggestion.

[tribecavsbrowns]

Originally Posted by Tex?Il?

This is a great post. You know the funny thing is is that cities in regions that have a stereotype of being segregated and conservative, when you actually explore those areas you find sometimes the total opposite.

I am typing this from a motel room in Springdale, OH, a Cincinnati suburb about 20 miles directly north of the downtown. Cincy has a reputation for semi-southern racial segregation, with a race riot that occurred back in 2001. But I just drove down a neighborhoods street composed of nice split level houses (built in the 70s I'm guessing) and I see white homeowners talking to their black neighborhoods, white kids hanging out with black kids walking down the sidewalk.

I also noticed this went I've been to the Detroit area. Despite the fact that as a whole the metro area seems segregated, with 82% black in the city, the few areas in the city that are "hot spots" like Midtown where the museums and Wayne State are, the young adults are more mixed, than most young adults in most hot spot Chicago neighborhoods. This also goes for a major suburb to the northwest called Southfield. (Think Schaumburg, but 2/3 black).

Atlanta I've noticed is also integrated, with LOTS of white collared black professionals. In areas like ATL, you may have some old timer from back when ATL was small, who says some shockingly racist comment, but by and large you see all kinds of nice neighborhoods with upscale black crowds mingling with white people.

Chicagos the opposite, you will NEVER hear someway say something that is openly racist (well relative to other parts of the country) but for some strange reason, most white people don't have any or many black friends.

And yet, Southfield High School is 97 percent black, while places like Evanston and Oak Park have had stable integration for decades.

I'd imagine you see a mixed population around Wayne State because it's a college in the middle of an overwhelmingly black city. If you live in Detroit, of course you're going to have black friends. They're your neighbors.

I'm just cautioning against finding patterns that don't exist. Black and white folks get along with each other in Chicago as well as most places.

[AmosBanks]

Originally Posted by tribecavsbrowns

And yet, Southfield High School is 97 percent black, while places like Evanston and Oak Park have had stable integration for decades.

Southfield is different from Evanston and Oak Park in that white people still moved to Evanston and Oak Park over the last 30+ years. Southfield was all white in the early 70s, the perfect mix of diversity in the 80s and now it's, per your estimate, 97% black. Sorry for the sidetrack post.

#SHS c/o 1987

[ptug101]

I was just in evanston recently,I really liked the vibe. and Im going to join a mixed martial arts
club pretty soon so that might work.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Dressy

...
What you need is a simple thing: just some friends that would have introduced you to others. It is hard to start from scratch. How about your co-workers? Can you befriend anybody?

When I moved here, I started with people I knew from college and branched out from that. even people I didn't know very well in college were at least willing to have lunch or something to start off.

I know there aer a lot of people in Chicago who've gone to Southern Illinois, so you must have some some alumni aquaintances around, OP?

[TheArea00]

Originally Posted by ptug101

Im African American Grew up on the southside of chicago,but went to a private
highschool in the southwest burbs which was 80% white. I dealt with some racism,but nothing major just a handful of people and a few jokes. Highschool
was just a waste time in my opinion,really couldnt hangout with anyone because of how the neighborhoods were set up.

Then I went to a really diverse college,and had lots of fun, there were white parties,blk parties, and mixed crowds all to hangout and everybody accepted
everybody with opem arms, the white kids from the middle of the state were all really cool and not elitist even though I figured they would be more conservative then white kids from the chicagoland. The black,white spanish,etc etc ladies were all freindly. The white kids from the north suburban Chicago area seemed ok,but were kind of elitist not just to BLK kids,but to white kids from smalltowns.
The locals were pretty cool as well,Southern Illinois seemed to be an ok Community.

Now that Im back in Chicago,Im not really feeling the love,all the nice spots
like Lincoln Park Lakeview,and Rush/Division,seem to be for only for young white professionals,yes there are Blacks and Hispanics sprinkled around,but people really arent mingling an associating with each other,and I dont want to hangout at Black establishments all the time,because I am a professional and really wanna limit my exposure to the ghetto crowd. I know with BLK flash mob people are becoming more apprehensive to BLK males,which I understand.

but I just want a diverse social scene with college educated and open minding
professionals,but its not here. Chicago is diverse,but segergated.
Wicker park is ok and hipsters seem pretty reasonable,but Im not really into hipster culture.

You dont want to associate with the ghetto crowd. why worry about things you cant control?...

[TheArea00]

Originally Posted by Aleking

Not sure where people get this idea that the white people that live in the Lincoln Park/River North/Gold Coast equivelant hoods in LA/SF and NYC are sharing their blocks with a bunch of minorities, it just doesn't happen. The wealthy/upscale neighborhoods (like mentioned in the OPs post) are overwhelmingly white in every city.

I think Alek Crebeck has a point. That tends to be fact. The upper middle class is always mostly white my dude...