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by cmonfeat
3721 days ago
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I lived in PGH for 5 years and, unfortunately, I think he's right that there is a huge amount of racism in the area. It definitely wasn't most people I knew, but among people that grew up in the area it's definitely a thing. Pittsburgh is one of the least diverse metro areas in the country (http://www.post-gazette.com/business/career-workplace/2015/0...) and it really is eye opening how segregated the city is when you live anywhere else. I discussed this with most transplants I knew there and they agreed. I think the effect of this was pretty apparent for my entire time there. This makes me super sad, because I absolutely love PGH and am a huge booster of it. The lack of diversity was far and away the biggest draw back of living there for me. |
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I'm not saying that it's not a problem where it happens, but I guess I have the fortune/privilege of observing it so rarely despite living in an suburban borough that is 29.25% White, 66.51% African American according to the 2010 census. I admit that I don't patronize its lone business district very often.
In the city, though, I don't have incidents in my memory that I can cite as evidence that racism is "huge" in Pittsburgh. Big incidents are in the minds of many, e.g. Jordan Miles incident (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jordan+miles) and to my knowledge and memory, are the exception, not the rule. Then again, I spend most of my time in the East End, which is pretty segregated.
I do concede the lack of diversity in Pittsburgh's tech scene though. The only quantification I have of it is C&S's meetup attendance, which is approximately 10% people of color on average (women = 20%). The number of PoC attending have been slowly but steadily increasing but the number of women fluctuates. We're working on encouraging both demographics to attend!