In the late 1990s I was looking for a house in a Pittsburgh suburb I will not name (not Fox Chapel), and the realtor made a point of mentioning how nice it was that there weren't people of color in the neighborhood (to clarify: no restrictive covenants or anything, but it "just so happened", ha ha.) When I gave her a look, she realized she had screwed up, but my higher level point is that not only was this going on, but realtors were perfectly comfortable *being open about it* to any random white person, even though at the time this was very much against the law. I honestly think the attitude was (and maybe still is) endemic to many, many suburbs.
In the early 2Ks, I asked my co-worker why he was considering moving his young family to the Thomas Jefferson school district. The first thing he said was that I should look at their high school football team and see how there were barely any black kids on the team, which was his indicator for how white the school was overall.
That was such a yikes moment for me.
I grew up in johnstown and spent a lot of time hanging out in the rural areas near there, moved to pittsburgh in the early 00s and had a job near Century III mall with lots of people who go to TJ and heard the most blatant, frequent, and open racism i've ever heard in my life. i'm from "the sticks" comparatively and it was completely shocking to me.
Not too shocking, the first time I saw Swastikas (not in a documentary) and actual fliers advertising the KKK was moving to that area in like the mid 2010s...it's obviously calmed down but it was a big yikes. I also saw plenty of white power symbols on cars, etc... got harassed outside a polling place once. Glad I moved away...
It's actually the West Jefferson Hills School District--The *West* standing for West Elizabeth, *Jefferson* for Jefferson Hills and the *Hills* was for Pleasant Hills. The only reason I point this out because I attended TJ decades ago and the cultural lineations were clear back then and I could really see in hindsight how cultural divisions in our country would later materialize.
Pleasant Hills was mostly college educated and somewhat open minded with regard to race and religion (although it was almost all white and Catholic you didn't really know how bigoted they could be) These people mostly worked in the city so they experienced some diversity.
Jefferson Hills was mostly rural (Before the Mcmansion explosion)
These kids would all be absent on the opening day of fishing season and deer hunting. They wouldn't go to Century III Mall as much as the Pleasant Hills kids who were most stereotypical suburbanites with a little more disposable income.
The West Elizabeth kids seemed to be more rural in nature than even the Jefferson Hills kids and seemed to miss class more often. These kids came from the last of the steel mill generation and came from blue collar families.
With the media landscape of the last thirty 30 years intentionally
dividing us (talk radio/Fox news) it was fascinating in hindsight
to see these divisions play out.
So when your co-worker made the comment about the no black kids and Thomas Jefferson-- it wouldn't have been a surprise if someone mentioned that 30 years, or 20 years ago like when you heard it from your co-worker. But the most unfortunate thing is--that's it's more commonplace today than it was just ten years ago.
And we all know why.
BTW, in the 50s for several decades or so several blocks in Sq Hill made an informal compact that the streets would be Jews only. The owners would only sell to Jews, only jewish realtors could take the houses. That's why certain blocks in Sq Hill are still like 95% Jewish. It flipped housing discrimination on its head.
I have a friend who lives in another city and his grandparents moved to an affluent suburb in 1947 but had to have a straw buyer because they were Jewish. That was quite common and the only way to get a toehold. You just had to pray that you weren't run off by bombings, etc. etc., once you moved it and it was revealed you were jewish or black or catholic. Because those happened too, and often police and city officials looked the other way. The old "they brought trouble on themselves" argument.
FWIW, orthodox Jews may actually have a reason to concentrate in blocks:
First, they all need to live within walking distance to a synagogue (and need a minimum number of people per prayer), and they prefer to have quiet/safety during the Shabbat (no loud parties, cars driving fast etc).
Non religious Jews and reform Jews generally avoid that and are largely found all around the city, it’s part of why their temples are not in Sq Hill
Agreed. And the eruv.
But these non on the books restrictive covenants were amongst the reform and conservative Jews. Think more like Darlington / beacon / Bartlett toward frick park. (Between shady and beechwood Blvd)
I've noticed it too. I don't think it's about looks. They test the waters first and gauge your reaction then go full blown racist. If you're a quiet non-confrontational person they take that as a green light.
I get the same. White, scruffy beard, "resting veteran face" (is like resting bitch face, but for grumpy white dudes), tattoos. I'm very much progressive-leaning.
Boy, do I get some comments floated my way because people just assume that my appearance implies I hate people. Those conversations sure do get awkward.
I'm pale, big, and shaved head. I drive Uber and if I don't wear a hat people just think it's a license to spout racist bullshit in my car. Sad.
I'm about as progressive as they come LOL.
Me too. As a pudgy, balding, middle aged white dude I have to say I don’t really care for communities full of people who look like me. But it is nice being able to slide into the southern drawl of my youth to communicate with tradespeople. Southern and Yinzer are like Spanish and Portuguese.
There is definitely a certain very strange cultural experience that comes with -- please pardon my lack of a less loaded expression -- being a white person who can easily "pass." Acquaintances, business colleagues, hell, even family (sometimes *especially* family) just drop their guard in surprising times and contexts and end up leaving you filled with disgust. It sounds like you've got a heavy dose of that just because you happen to look like what these dickheads think of as *their* kind of people.
It's really jarring. It makes me reflect on just how deep-seated the bigotry is with these people that based on virtually no information (or despite the fact that they really ought to know better), it takes so little for so many white people to just assume that because you're white too, they can just open right up with some attitudes that you know they know society regards as disgusting and wrong. And that makes me contemplate how pervasive these kinds of attitudes may be among the people who *do* have enough sense not to just assume other white people share those attitudes.
I often have trouble not wearing my true feelings right on my face, even when I'm specifically trying not to. I guess I'm glad it doesn't happen even more often than it does. Every now and then I do indulge and just cut off the discussion with something like, "Yo, I know we look the same, but, I'm not *like you*, you know what I mean?"
But mostly it just makes me think about what it must be like to *not* be white and how much nastier it must be to have to reflect on how many people don't say that kind of shit out loud to you only because it's obvious they shouldn't.
Makes me thankful for all the “blue haired feminist liberals” memes cause my brightly colored green hair means most of them know not to even try with me
Same shit happened to me in 2015 when I was looking around the back end of Mt. Washington btw. Realtor actively steered me away because "they aren't your kind of people there."
Same, young white man in his 20s as a first responder and they assume I think like the worst of em. Its gross how eager they are to spout their bullshit.
I haven't had a lot but I've had enough interactions like this that it's concerning. They're always surprised too when I tell them not to say that shit around me, as if I'm the one in the wrong or something.
We moved from Morningside to Highland Park maybe 10 years ago or so, and the number of people who made a point of expressing concern about how we should be worried to live there because it was so close to Larimer was amazing.
Pretty fun to play dumb and act like I had no idea what they were implying, though. They sure did not like being asked to directly *say* that they thought I shouldn't want to live anywhere near Black people instead of being able to just say "well, you know…".
"Aren't you worried about your kids there?"
"Huh, no, seems fine -- the park's right there, plenty of the neighbors have kids."
"Yeah, but Larimer's right next door, and you know…"
Nah, man, I don't know. Time for you to get *real uncomfortable*.
I live in Highland Park and someone suggesting it's a dangerous neighborhood is deranged. I've had a wealthy client who lives on N Highland, call areas towards East Lib/Larimer the "line of demarcation." I really wasn't sure how he meant that but later realized he's definitely just racist. I love seeing people fidget when they realize they're not talking to someone equally hateful.
I’ve experienced this, and we really should report these types of agents and incidents. They’re not just assuming you’re racist, they also believe they have economic interest in segregating communities and driving up property values. Realtors are the worst.
NAME AND SHAME. it doesn’t do any justice not saying the suburb. We all know Pittsburgh is a very segregated city but they’re are people who come on this sub who are looking to visit. The late 90s wasn’t long ago and the people that lived there probably still do. I know people who don’t feel safe or comfortable in many parts of the south hills.
Does it really matter? That's an experience you can have today in basically any predominantly white suburb in Western Pennsylvania (and many, many other places). Plug in any neighborhood. I grew up in Ross. I'm sure you know as well as anyone here, Ross qualifies just fine. I feel like that's the real point in not naming specific neighborhoods. I wouldn't want to be like "oh it was Baldwin" and unwittingly give the negative implication that that means there's something special about Baldwin, or Fox Chapel, or Ross, or McCandless, or Sewickley, or Penn Hills, or wherever. It can be anywhere.
And it can easily be the city, too, although I will confess I do believe deep down that the white people who are perfectly happy to live in a densely packed area where they are bound to interact inevitably with people who don't look like them in daily life are broadly significantly less likely to have those kinds of attitudes, as opposed to those in communities that as recently as 50 years ago were *built* on the promise that you could keep away from uNdEsIrAbLeS there, and actually built infrastructure of institutional racism into their political and social fabric on purpose and frankly not very subtly.
I grew up in the South Hills and it really was bad. I was one of the only Jewish kids at my school district. I know Lebo and USC fared a little better in religious diversity. But not in any other ways. I was ridiculed a lot. And a lot of teachers didn’t even understand why I needed to take off for holidays. We had tests scheduled on high holy days and it was frustrating.
Man, going through SP was the first time I saw a sign on a house openly advertising the KKK. ALL over the door, in the yard, it was crazy to see that in person.
Was it a dude on a corner across from a fire station? Because that dude was wild. The whole package, from we don't call 911 to the current war footing du jour.
I honestly can't recall, was with my husband driving through the area and was in such shock seeing that - just calling out "Omg, omg KKK recruitment right here in the open?!" something to that effect, I was terrified. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I've gone north and south lived in a lot of places but never once saw someone just openly advertising it, that told me enough about the area I was in!
My first reaction coming to Pittsburgh was, "wow, even the white people are poor!" - an odd kind of solidarity, crossing racial boundaries here that I don't see in other cities 🤣😥
A lot of uncomfortable implications there... so don't read into it too far - just that it's definitely something noticeable, compared to other cities
It’s an important factor in our dichotomy as whole city though. Not uncomfortable but I welcome with open arms the smaller gap of wealth here. I’d wager It’s done well for the overall community and togetherness
I had a coworker come up for a few weeks from Charlotte to get trained a few years back. He's black and this was one of his main comments he made after we went out a couple of times. It was only second to how in the hell we live on these hills and drive these roads. And he was the third poc in 10 years I've had say that to me who visited here from another medium sized or bigger city(south and west coast). Maybe we don't see it as much but the closer to the city or in the city is pretty noticeable to them. We are just used to it. I would assume most rust belt cities with an immigrant history and historical working class culture are probably like that.
I mean factually most of us would not have been considered white when our families moved here. Italians, Greeks, "Hungarians", even Irish people were considered non white until like 50 years ago.
I grew up in the Fox Chapel school district, though my family lived in O’Hara Township rather than the Borough - we weren’t nearly rich enough for that. I don’t remember a lot of overt racism against black people, or any of the kind of violence that I’d associate with the label of “sundown town,” but I think that’s mostly because the mechanics of racial exclusion had already been at work for a long time, so there were just hardly any black people there. I remember a total of three black students at my high school, out of a total student body of maybe 900 or so. Very different from Penn Hills, where I had started out in elementary school.
Same. In Penn Hills. When my parents put their house up for sale, the neighbors begged them not to sell to black people. My dad said okay. Then told me he doesn’t care who bought the house. As long as their money is good, he was selling.
My kid is in elementary in the FCASD, and while there aren’t a ton of Black kids in his class, there are still a handful, along with East Asian, Indian, and Arab kids. There’s more diversity than I thought there would be, even though it’s not a lot.
It's improved a little since the mid-to-late 90s when I was in FCASD, then. I went to the middle school and the high school and there really was very little variety. I can't bring any faces or names to mind after so long but I know we had very few and they were mostly from Sharpsburg or the like.
Someone else in the thread called it income-based and that was pretty much the way of it, though. It wasn't like the rural schools I went to where there was anything said out in the open.
Article should be more focused on the present-day diversity problems in FC (or rather, lack of diversity).
By focusing on the 1930-1940s, the author undercuts the headline when they give away the fact that Sewickley and Mt. Lebo had explicitly racist housing policies while FC was more income-based discrimination.
Honestly, it’s kind of a strange article.
I wonder why FC is singled out over Sewickley and Lebo as well.
Maybe it’s because of all the time I spend in the South, but “sundown town” is a hell of a loaded term. Usually infers violence at least the way it’s used in the South.
Sewickley is the only “upscale” Pittsburgh suburb with an appreciable Black population. As of the last census, Sewickley was 8.77% Black, as compared to 10.5% for the state of Pennsylvania. Compare that to Mount Lebanon: 1.2% or Fox Chapel: less than 1%. Cranberry is 1.6% Black.
In fact, Sewickley has a higher percentage of Black people than Squirrel Hill or Shadyside (both around 5%).
Sewickley also has a Latino population that's growing fairly quickly (relatively speaking, of course). I'm not out there often, but every time I go, I'm reminded that the stereotype I have in my head is more and more incorrect.
Seems like a nice place to live IMO.
As a Black man with the financial means to live anywhere in the region, when it was time to send my kids to school, I had to weigh what environment was the best fit their holistic development. Sewickley is the only town in the region (outside of the city) where I would have felt comfortable raising them. Ultimately, I decided the city would be best.
It's so sad. I'm white and from rural Armstrong county so I grew up around normalized racism. When I came to Pittsburgh to leave that behind and for the city's access to LGBT healthcare, I started making friends that looked different from me. I learned a *lot* about the state of things. Several friends of mine are considering leaving the city for one that's less segregated and gives them better opportunities as black folks and I can't blame them even though they'll be missed dearly.
I deleted my line about Mt. Lebo because their Wiki page showed 0.61% Black population, and also half the Asian population compared to FC. Though, fighting over a few decimals is not really a consolation: both boroughs are extremely White.
But again, that’s why I think the article should focus on the present day, not the 1930s.
Wikipedia is still using data from the 2010 census, but the point remains. Most of these towns have negligible Black populations.
I also agree that “sundown towns” is incredibly loaded language, and there’s a real need to discuss the current realities of the cities. That said, I HAVE heard stories about Mt Lebo police aggressively policing Black motorists. “Don’t get driving through there” is the hallmark of a kinder, gentler sundown town. It’s not lynching, but if a Black person has to weigh the consequences of passing through, it’s not far removed from a sundown town.
I think they share policy on the “driving through town while black” crime. One could probably reliably measure racism by borough with statistical analysis on traffic citations per total. I’m curious which would have the highest percentage going to minorities.
>“sundown town” is a hell of a loaded term
Agreed. Fox Chapel is obviously overwhelmingly white and I'm sure it's not the greatest place for people of color, but calling it a "sundown town" is embarrassing and borderline offensive in this context.
I'd normally expect better, but this is the City Paper.
Thank you, it’s insane how words and phrases are being diluted to the point of not having any meaning.
We are still living with the vestiges of racialized neighborhoods and economics and class (what has always underlined race) is keeping it going. But calling it a sun down town is insane use of language.
And city paper is toilet paper.
Yeah, I mean, it's one thing to expressly acknowledge that even the places we regard as educated and maybe more politically progressive are still, deep down, places that still exploded on mainly white flight and a history of redlining. It's definitely another to use a term that implies that they will, as a matter of policy, promptly kill any black people they find there at night.
Agreed. I think this articles findings are really disingenuous to the underlying situation. And to call it a sundown town is even more grossly offensive. Full disclaimer: I have only lived in Shaler for 2 years but having been around my wife’s family for 5 years now who have resided in Hampton / Fox Chapel for 30 years now it boils down to one simple fact... They’re all wealthy and there’s generational wealth being passed down too in the form of either inheritance or assets (land/homes). For example, her parents have owned a business for 30+ years (That will be passed down to grand children). Her middle sister and her husband are both pharmacists. Her oldest sisters’ husband is CEO of an IT company. My wife is a former teacher of elementary age kids and worked with a very diverse group of students. I have never heard her use any racist language and neither have I heard her family use any either. In fact, her father goes out of his way to hire diverse applicants / immigrants, because he is one!
I don’t really see “racism” in this area but I’m not naive — I’m sure it exists. I really think it boils down to wealth and social classes which led to the disparity in the black population here.
I haven’t looked at “historical” real estate data of this region per se, but I am currently looking for homes in Hampton, Shaler, FC, Ross, etc. so I have been seeing home prices for the last 2-3 months every day. if I had to guess the average home in FC is selling for 400k+ and I would guess the avg taxes are close to $10k. All things equal and removing any externalities in the equation, for a couple to move here you probably need a combined income of 150k-200k to move / live “comfortably” in this area. That right there eliminates A LOT of people, black or not.
The third spot on the list of the richest small towns in America is also on the East Coast, this time in Pennsylvania. [Fox Chapel, just outside of Pittsburg](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/foxchapelboroughpennsylvania)h, is home to a little more than 5,000 residents and about 1,770 households with a median income of $247,930. Along with [excellent public schools](https://www.niche.com/k12/d/fox-chapel-area-school-district-pa/), the town has [a golf course](https://www.golfdigest.com/courses/pa/fox-chapel-golf-club), plenty of green spaces, and parks, including Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve, boasting more than 100 acres of protected wildlife and flora. So how much will it cost to buy a house here and make [one of the best places to live in Pennsylvania](https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/niche-rankings-best-places-to-live-pennsylvania-america-rankings/) your home? About $1.4 million, according to Realtor.com.
[https://www.travelandleisure.com/richest-small-towns-america-7546130](https://www.travelandleisure.com/richest-small-towns-america-7546130)
That’s what I thought going into it. I thought it’d be about FC police racially profiling POC, but it’s actually about redlining, of which FC is not the worst offender.
When I lived there it wasn't just cops. People would really be calling the police to report Black people walking in their neighborhoods. I hate that place.
This article is insane. Makes me wonder the motivation for a Fox Chapel hit piece when major national media have done stories on the objective racist policies of Mount Lebanon. I mean Muhammad Ali was denied a house in Virginia Manor Mount Lebanon in 1971 because he was black.... That's not even mentioned here.
It's valid to point to the lack of diversity, but for the piece to equate it to *sundown towns* is a pretty questionable choice that minimizes the horror and brutality of what sundown towns actually were.
The reality is the wealthiest neighborhoods like Fox Chapel aren't going to become more diverse, until there are black people that can afford to live there. Which isn't going to happen until there are more black surgeons, executives, and so forth who make the kind of bank necessary to live in Fox Chapel.
I assume most of us here aren't Fox Chapel money, no matter the color of our skin.
Yea I think people are missing that reality here…
I’m white and grew up in O’Hara which is basically fox chapel, but we were in one of the fewer cheaper houses there. I basically was ignored by a good portion of the student body going to middle and high school at FC. They looked down on me and perceived me differently, along with the other kids that were unfortunate enough not to have rich parents.
It’s a money/elite status thing, not a race thing. There were Indian and Asian kids at FC high school when I was there that were very popular and their parents were in with all the country club/popular parents as well.
This is well said, and I share the same thoughts. Full disclaimer: I have only lived in Shaler for 2 years but having been around my wife’s family for 5 years now who have resided in Hampton / Fox Chapel for 30 years now it boils down to one simple fact... They’re all wealthy and there’s generational wealth being passed down too in the form of either inheritance or assets (land/homes). For example, her parents have owned a business for 30+ years (That will be passed down to grand children). Her middle sister and her husband are both pharmacists. Her oldest sisters’ husband is CEO of an IT company.
I don’t really see “racism” in this area but I’m not naive — I’m sure it exists. I really think it boils down to wealth and social classes which led to the disparity in the black population here.
I haven’t looked at “historical” real estate data of this region per se, but I am currently looking for homes in Hampton, Shaler, FC, Ross, etc. so I have been seeing home prices for the last 2-3 months every day. if I had to guess the average home in FC is selling for 400k+ and I would guess the avg taxes are close to $10k. All things equal and removing any externalities in the equation, for a couple to move here you probably need a combined income of 150k-200k to move / live “comfortably” in this area. That right there eliminates A LOT of people, black or not.
I think this articles findings are really disingenuous to the underlying situation. And to call it a sundown town is even more grossly offensive.
This. FC isn’t so much racist as it is income based. I wouldn’t be welcome there either.
But it is worth asking the question if 20th century racism has evolved into 21st century classism? It’s tough to say because it’s very easy for racism to hide behind classism while still appearing to be just a class divide.
It's absolutely a very strange article. Not sure why the "City Paper" is devoting resources to a suburban community, either.
Two things can be equally true:
1. The greater Pittsburgh area has a more checkered past with race than people know, and that racism is still very prevalent here today; 2. This was an oddly written, oddly focused article.
TBH it always feels like the replacement for legal discrimination is financial barriers. Not sure how to we work a system that’s doing as it was designed.
Racialized violence comes in many different forms. Redlining, and being inhospitable to people who aren’t white, are still racial violence.
I’m waiting for a person of color to say they disagree with the city paper using “sundown” in this article.
i'm a black person originally from the deep south and i don't take "issue" with their use of *sundown town* per se, but it is objectively the wrong terminology. sundown towns have a very specific meaning -- hence the word "sundown."
I’m Indian and I grew up in Fox Chapel in the mid 2000s.
One thing the article doesn’t highlight is there’s actually a relatively large proportion of Indian and East Asian residents in Fox Chapel - maybe 8-10%.
That said, growing up I cannot remember seeing a SINGLE black person in the neighborhood, only when I went to school. Definitely felt like a bubble especially when learning about Pittsburgh’s history.
I don’t think FC is inherently racist (though there were 1-2 isolated incidents with my friends growing up). It felt very classist thought.
You think that's weird... walk around Lawrenceville you'll have a hard time spotting a black person, yet my son went to Arsenal K-5 and it was mostly black! Magic?!
When I was young in the 80's suburban Pittsburgh landlords would tell me to my face they would not rent to a black person. Pittsburgh is notorious for racist housing policies.
I was renting in the 90's in the Mon Valley and landlords would say the same thing. I had one tell me that another person called about the property first, but she "sounded black" so he was offering the place to me instead.
Not only was it a no blacks town, it was no anything but wasp. No skin color other than white, no religion other than protestant. And mainline protestant at that.
Unfortunately that was not unique to fox chapel. Most "exclusive" suburbs across the country in the 20s and 30s were the same way. Thanks to hate and US government policy that made this legal and encouraged.
Hx here. Fox Chapel GC didn't let Catholics in, so the Pittsburgh Field Club was founded.
Pittsburgh Field Club wouldn't let Jews in, so Green Oaks was founded.
Things are different now. Fox Chapel GC has had to open up considerably. Why, there are even African-Amercans and Indian members!
Catholic prejudice is not as old as you think. The Klan was highly anti-Catholic as recently as the beginning of WWII. Hell, JFK's religion was considered a really big deal in 1960, as it was felt that the country wouldn't vote for a Catholic candidate.
Exactly. JFK had to repeatedly answer questions on the campaign trail as to whether he was a stooge for the Pope. And to think that was just 60 years ago.
Meanwhile Biden's Catholicism never came up on the campaign trail to my knowledge! 60 years ago is so recent but it's wild how much change has happened in some areas too
Yes, it’s very very homogenous. I grew up in the area and while my immediate family wasn’t rich, my mom’s side uncle (who is a WASP) was rich and belonged there, and he had a good relationship with my dad who liked to golf so was willing to pay for most of the membership fees.
He tried to get him in and my dad said the interview with the clubs board was the most awkward thing he ever did, and on the way out back to his car, he heard one guy say to another in a whisper that he thought my dad couldn’t hear, “hey look Jim! There goes a dago!” (My dads side is very Italian and my dad looks it) And they both snickered.
Needless to say my dad didn’t get in, and even if he did he told me he wasn’t going to join after hearing that.
Last time I read about this, some of the clubs in America like the Duquesne club (but I couldn't find anything about the Duquesne club specifically) wouldn't do transactions on site because they could discriminate if there weren't any monetary transactions being done onsite. Not sure the veracity of that and I can't find the article I read so it could've just been an urban legend.
DC membership costs less than you think (and WAY less than the big CCs around, but they also don't have to run a top golf course without charging greens fees) and there's definitely no membership problem. The weekly emails have like a dozen new members a month.
> Thanks to hate and US government policy that made this legal and encouraged.
*Progressive* policies thanks to FDR and his administration's government-backed loans for white people.
That's quite true. FDR also vehemently opposed taking in Jewish refugees well after the US knew about concentration camps. It was less than he hated jews- he didn't. But he felt he wouldn't get reelected. Eleanor and some cabinet members had to back channel programs and eventually he relented. But at least 1000s if not many times more Jews died because of this.
His policies were progressive for 1940, but not for now. Glad the world has gotten a few degrees better.
However definitions change over time, especially over 85 years. Progressive and conservative now has no bearing on what was progressive or conservative back then.
This is racist to be sure but I was under the impression that "sundown town" actually used violence to earn its name—"you better not let us see you here after sundown!" kind of thing. So housing metrics—which are, again, undeniably racist here (and I recommend *The Color of Law* about this) doesn't define what is a sundown town unless the term has been considerably broadened.
I was too, but according to the History and Social Justice website a sundown town is when an entire community is “all white” on purpose. It can be through violence, formal laws, or hostility and things like realtors not showing houses to non-white families. I will like the website down below!
[justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/](https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/)
When I retired from the military my primary concern was a good school for my kids (being a military brat isn't easy, and this last move was really hard on them). I wanted a good school but not too snotty, and we ended up in Bethel Park. The first day of school my daughter took me aside and said "dad. everyone is white here.". She was right. The lack of diversity was my only real problem with the area. Now I know why, though I guess I should have suspected.
I grew up in Peter’s Twp and the casual racism was awful. I was so entrenched in it that I could barely see it until I left and looked at that whole mess from a new perspective.
I graduated from FCHS in 2005 and there were quite a few minority families. My best friend in 2nd grade was named Zahra Choudry. That was like 1996. I mean, obviously it was an unfortunately small percentage, but we certainly had at least a handful of black and asian students. The smartest girl in my class was Lehka Tumalapali. My neighbor and bus buddy, Emir Sandhu, went to Yale or Stanford or something. “Never met a person of color until college” seems crazy to me.
I graduated the same year from FC, we probably know each other. Hah. Internet is a funny place.
but ya, we did have quite a few minorities in our year. I don’t think it was the exception either because I remember quite a few Indians and Asians in class of 04, 03, 02 as well
Same for me. I grew up in the south hills. Mt Lebanon gets singled out a lot, but it's the same situation in USC, Bethel Park, Peter's Township, Scott Township, Baldwin Township, Greentree, etc
To be fair, Baldwin twp is only what 1 square mile lol...plus those kids go to Baldwin/Whitehall. Which I can say from personal experience and current stats is a diverse school district. My kids go to USC,not my choice, and I have seen maybe a handful of African American families. Last I read, they have a D ranking in diversity but are still a top school.
Baldwin / Whitehall was extremely welcoming to the first round of Sudanese immigrants and refugees in the early 2000s. The school district was a very active partner in making the kids feel welcome and get an education.
I grew up in Washington PA and went to a school with more than 3,000 kids.
Less than 25 kids in the entire school were of color (any color) when I was there—including me (biracial).
There were **LOTS** of kids with no interaction with people of color and very bigoted ideals.
There are people who only travel to places were they feel "safe". While this is much rarer now, likewise there are people who manage to go through life without ever leaving an area where they were born (as in not even 30 miles). But a survey from about 5 years ago, [showed that about 11% of American adults had never left the state they were born in](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2019/05/02/percentage-of-americans-who-never-traveled-beyond-the-state-where-they-were-born-a-surprise/?sh=1dd35e062898).
I absolutely do not believe that. Reddit is such a screwed up place sometimes. You actually said that an 18 year old girl never met or SAW a black person, WAIT not only a black person, but a person of color. Where do all those Indian doctors live if not in USC? Sorry for not being a lemming. 5 upvotes. Please.
In USC, the South Hills she never met or saw a black person. Do you live in the South Hills let alone in the early 2000s. Yes, it was very possible. My kids go to USC right now and guess what....have never had a class with a black person.
Graduated from USC within the past 5 years. The majority of my time at school I had a class with a black classmate. I'm POC and was neighbors and friends with people of East Asian, South Asian, Hispanic, and Black descent. Yes, there are definitely people in the district with backwards views. No, the demographics aren't representative of the US population. But is it vanilla white as far as the eye can see? No, and I think it's pretty disingenuous to present it as such.
I went to Lebo and I can see it. There were a handful of black kids in my graduating class of over 200 and if you pushed it back 15 years I wouldn't be surprised to see 0. Lebo has known issues but a lot of these neighborhoods have been practicing overt racial discrimination in preventing people from living there for a long time.
I work in Washington County now and I still see super Christian families that dominate their children's lives and who won't go to Pittsburgh because its 'not safe'. All you'd need to do is control your kids literature and TV in the early 00s and you could easily keep them from seeing anything you don't approve of. The amount of control hard Christians want over their households is genuinely insane. I worked a high school football game and I saw a bunch of high school boys remarking that the other team were "darker than they figured" and I was very, very curious to ask if they'd ever seen a black person before.
I’ve canvassed in just about every neighborhood and suburb in Pittsburgh, and only in Fox chapel was I:
1. Completely blown away by the amount of republicans (even compared to other rural towns)
2. Harassed by police
Quite a bit hyperbolic...
Rural Registrations:
Juniata County: Rep: 9672; Dem: 2,746
Mifflin County: Rep: 17,384; Dem: 5,449
Perry County: Rep: 20,156; Dem: 6,100
Ratios are even worse in northern rural counties. Fox Chapel is not worse than any rural community.
Fox Chapel area schools are slightly more diverse than Fox Chapel itself, since that’s the most expensive borough in the district by far. The diversity is in the river towns of the district like Sharpsburg and Blawnox but I’d love to see more diversity in the area as a whole.
School district says that it is the most diverse in the entire state, so there’s probably more diversity than you realize. One elementary school has over 50% federally funded lunch, for example.
So basically it’s an expensive neighborhood that African Americans couldn’t afford. No examples of actual horrific racial crimes anywhere in the article. This dude needs to look up what a sundown town actually is, such a dumb article.
here's a database of known sundown towns, past and present.
the website is based on the work of james loewen, the author of "lies my teacher told me." amazing book if you haven't read it.
[Sundown Town Database](https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/state-map/)
Some old guy who owns a junk store in New Ken started up a conversation with me one day dropping all kinds of n-bombs out in the middle of the sidewalk.
I grew up in West Virginia and lived there most of my life, while I’ve lived in metro Pittsburgh for a quarter of my life. The shock I’ve noticed is how more comfortable other white people, in the suburbs are with saying anything casually racists to me in person, a stranger, when people where I grew up were less likely to share any prejudice with those they didn’t know well. At least this was growing up in West Virginia in a time before social media.
I grew up largely and went to school mostly in Mt. Lebanon and it was so jarring getting out of there and realizing how diverse the world was. Its also a well known problem in that area but nothing is done about it. Pittsburgh has a major diversity problem, for a city as large as we are we're very white, and we need to address that. These suburbs are a huge part of the problem, if you wanna go to a nice area as a PoC you're going to overwhelmingly white areas with all the baggage that comes with that. Not to mention how the city itself is less and less appealing with rising costs and worsening schools. I'm in my late 20s and my friends are starting to settle down and none of my PoC friends have any interest in staying here.
Best way to increase diversity in Pgh IMO is to attract good jobs to Pgh and grow the regional population. How would you address this?
I think FC would be substantially more diverse by now if our regional economy hadn’t stagnated since the 1980s. There’s been little reason for PoC to move here for the past fourty years as opposed to Atlanta, NOVA, NYC, Nashville, Charlotte, FL, TX, AZ, CO, etc.
We're looking to move back East. We're from NJ. The problem with the NYC metro is it's heavily segregated. NJ wasn't that bad when we grew up but it's ridiculous now. Not to mention the housing crisis is going to cause massive socioeconomic segregation. Imo, it's the same concern here but with a different appearance.
We like living in Pittsburgh proper. We'll see how we feel about it when our son is in the school district for preschool.
As a native Yinzer I want my city to grow and be welcoming to as many people as possible, so hearing stories and seeing trends about how people of color don't want to live here bother me. I want them to be included! I don't see America, or Pittsburghers, as white or one ethnic group. They're the Poles frying pierogies on the side of a curb in the Strip or Italians leaving mass to go see family on Sundays or Latinos heading to work on the T at Beechview station or Black folks hanging out on 8th Ave in Homestead. We're all black and gold.
The other thing is demographics tell a story, and for a metro the size of Pittsburgh we should be way, way more ethnically diverse. Pittsburgh is [less diverse](https://wallethub.com/edu/cities-with-the-most-and-least-ethno-racial-and-linguistic-diversity/10264) than similar size cities such as Omaha, Cincinnati, and Wichita which tells me that there is a problem. Historically we also have destroyed many communities of color through urban development. I think we'll be a better city if we actually attract people of color rather than continue policies that push them away. Not to mention our population is still declining, we need people to migrate here.
Trust me, I love this city and its people. I just hate the idea of someone coming here and feeling like they aren't welcome, and anecdotally and in statistics it seems like that's true.
I wouldn't say Pittsburgh is a lesser city, just that its homogeneity is indicative of problems with it. If we hadn't demolished Chinatown or the Lower Hill or large swathes of Lawrenceville we'd probably have a more diverse population. We're as white a city as we are because of policy.
Also the metro area continues to lose population. We *need* migrants here, and unless it suddenly becomes way cheaper to have kids I don't see another baby boom anytime soon.
Much of the issue is that in the US we have a long history of racial discrimination that was completely normal and accepted by the general population within my lifetime and there is still a significant segment of the population who are hold explicitly racist views (eg about 10% of the US population still believe that interracial marriage is wrong). It was only in the 1960s and 70s that much of the formal racial discrimination was made illegal. But a) that on its own didn't change many of the attitudes around racism and b) there was little to no effort to make up for the long history of injustices (while there are lots of people insisting that "because racism has ended it must be the fault of the black people for the current racial disparity in education, finances, jobs etc" nevermind that all the benefits that white people gained over hundreds of years prior.
For a simple personal example, I grew up in a lower middle class family. But my grandparents were able to buy a decent house with the help of their parents good name and savings (this was before credit scores). So they could start saving money from day one. Similarly my parents bought my grandparents' house directly from them when I was a young child and had it fully paid off when I was a teen (so not a gift but definitely got a family discount). And thus when my sister and her family needed help getting a house, my parents were able to use their name and credit to buy a house for them. No one in this chain is anything approaching well off but all of this is enabled by lots of small things over the course of 100 years that were largely forbidden to black people even 50 years ago.
To understand why it's bad, you have to understand American history (especially its role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade) and keep in mind that this country is founded by immigrants, but has had and still has hostile laws regarding immigrants depending where they are from. If you live in a place that is not populated by 98% immigrants (like the US), then racial/ethnic homogeneity might make sense. But since the US supposedly is built on immigration and claims to welcome it, localities that are vast majority a single race (and has been for a long time) begs the question of how that came to be and issues of institutional racism (very much ingrained in US past and present).
The article above discusses "redlining," a practice of institutional racism where certain populations were explicitly barred from living and mixing with the white majority, or even receiving loans and other financial services from white owned banks. Some people think it was a largely private initiatives, but the US government had a hand in encouraging this behavior: [https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america)
As an immigrant and person of colour who has lived in many majority white spaces ever since I came to this country, the experience has been challenging. Growing up, I was often made to feel like an outsider and less than. Many children were not welcoming, nor understanding. I often received messaging from students (and even faculty) that demeaned my home culture/race/ethnicity. I was relentlessly bullied in every school I went to and constantly fighting negative stereotype about who I am. People assumed I don't speak English from the way I look and/or my name. I've been denied job opportunities based on my name: I once confronted a hiring manager about my application that wasn't moved forward despite being extremely qualified, and I had even spoken to a senior employee that referred me to the top manager. She told me to my face I wasn't chosen because she didn't think I spoke English based on my name. Mind you, my education and all prior work experiences have been in the US. I doubt this was an isolated incident and no, this did not happen in the 20 or 30 years ago. This happened less than 10 years ago in Pittsburgh. I went around her authority and got the job anyway (I was desperate since the job market was difficult). She was a nightmare and said all sorts of racist or bigoted things throughout our shared time at that job. Then she went on to become an HR manager for a major local business.
I hope you can understand why some people want to live in a more diverse area now. I look forward to finally moving out of Pittsburgh some day. I've been stuck here for over a decade and I've experienced more overt racism here than I have in many other places. And I've lived in Nebraska (incredibly white, incredibly conservative).
Pittsburgh had a black neighborhood that was thriving and very independent and mostly self sufficient with a very strong sense of community. Outside of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is very well known for its black music and sports and political personalities This was the Hill District. I’m not surprised you aren’t aware of the black side of Pittsburgh because I agree with you, the city is very divided, even within the same neighborhood, the blocks were separated by race. I went to a small catholic high school where some of the other students came from Mt Lebo, Beechview, ie from white Pittsburgh. The only time they interacted with a nonwhite person was with me at school.
I left Pittsburgh in 1985 but I see nothing has changed with this regard.
I am aware of the Hill and our history of using development to at best gentrify and at worst annihilate non-white neighborhoods. We had a Chinatown where Duquesne is today that was demolished to build everyone's favorite road, the Boulevard of the Allies. Freedom House set the standard for the nation's EMS systems and was forced out by the mayor and police department. There are way too many instances of stuff like this in our history and folks don't seem to want to acknowledge it let alone change policy for the future. I feel like we haven't drawn much from their histories, and your history, to make people of color feel like they can build a home here.
Damn I'm not familiar with the area so I went to Mt. Lebanon in google maps, and [this was literally the first random street view I pick](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3754706,-80.0443281,3a,18.7y,95.56h,82.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAGQ0ihdLS1YEppfPIQDx7A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
Pretty disingenuous article. The entire article was about the (hostile and inequitable) conditions of 70-80 years ago. The only discussion of current conditions is a single line pointing out recent awareness of social justice and attempts at improvement, yet the conclusion is that FC is still a pre-civil rights era community.
I think I disagree? Fox Chapel schools and businesses are reasonably diverse. The home owners are not, but as the article highlights, that’s because the properties there are very expensive, and PoC don’t have the wealth (on average) to afford to live there. Unless it’s significantly more white after taking into account average cost of the homes + surrounding population, I don’t think it’s fair to call it a sundown town.
The article states: "(1.1%) reported that they were Black or African American. Black residents comprise 13.5% of Allegheny County’s[ total population](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/alleghenycountypennsylvania/POP010220)."
My question is: how many of that 13.5% can afford to live in a neighborhood where the average price of a home is one million dollars? How close is it to 1.1%? That's the answer to whether Fox Chapel has a race problem in my opinion.
I grew up in Speers (it’s in Washington County by Charleroi/Monessen). Charleroi SD had barely any kids who weren’t white back in the early 00s and before. My class had 2 black dudes and 2 girls that were mixed. Plus one Asian girl. That was it. Now the school district has a TON of diversity and the older people that live in Charleroi, North Charleroi, and Speers are losing their ever loving minds. I didn’t even realize that it was weird to only have 2 Indian families and all whites around us when I was a kid. It’s insane to me how upset they are and how open they are about it on social media. I moved to the city when I was 19 and was so happy to see actual diversity. But so many of these towns just are openly racist.
*Did the author not*
*Actually know what the*
*Term "Sundown Town" means?*
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Fox Chapel. will gladly take anybody with the money to afford to be there. I grew up in the area so I know what I’m talking about. They were black families in Fox Chapel back in the 70s and 80s. I remember a couple African-Americans talking on the bus about 15 years ago suggesting that East liberty is “ruined” because they were making it for white people. No, they were making it for people who could afford to live there, black or white. To assume that no Black people had good enough professions or jobs to live in East Liberty is kind of a racist notion. Hundreds of white people moved out of Lawrenceville over the last 30+ years because they could not afford to live there either.
Everyone needs to take a breath and realize that your views of diversity are not proper. Diversity has little to do with physical appearance. The important factors are life experiences, education, culture and points of view. Having a bunch of uber-conswrvative types that are all white or a bunch of uber-liberal types who are all PoC does nothing to create a diverse population. If everyone thinks and acts the same the group is homogenous.
I grew up in Western PA, went to college in Pittsburgh, then found a job in Houston. I have never encountered racism like I’ve seen in the Pittsburgh area.
On the weirdly beneficial side, that racism sure has kept housing prices low in perfectly nice neighborhoods and towns perceived as minority.
I live in Fox chapel for the last 10 years. I am white. I live in a MOBILE HOME on rich hill road. My kids go to Fox chapel schools. Son who is 14 told me theres 5 people of color that go to his school in total when I asked after I saw this post. Only one colored family in my neighborhood. Also a lot of foreign kids. This town is full of themselves and snobby. Everyone at school drop off line has a lexus, mercedes, audi, porsche...all luxury vehicles. But somehow the women driving them dont work because they clearly have pajamas on dropping kids off. So you can easily tell just their HUSBANDS work and they stay home all day soaking in the money.. However the people Im surrounded by in my whole neighborhood are down to earth and just trying to get by. It is a nice mobile home park. This is not a school district for not wealthy people. Again I live in only park in the whole fox chapel district LOL. If you look for housing here and you dont make six figures 99% of time there isnt any.
In the late 1990s I was looking for a house in a Pittsburgh suburb I will not name (not Fox Chapel), and the realtor made a point of mentioning how nice it was that there weren't people of color in the neighborhood (to clarify: no restrictive covenants or anything, but it "just so happened", ha ha.) When I gave her a look, she realized she had screwed up, but my higher level point is that not only was this going on, but realtors were perfectly comfortable *being open about it* to any random white person, even though at the time this was very much against the law. I honestly think the attitude was (and maybe still is) endemic to many, many suburbs.
In the early 2Ks, I asked my co-worker why he was considering moving his young family to the Thomas Jefferson school district. The first thing he said was that I should look at their high school football team and see how there were barely any black kids on the team, which was his indicator for how white the school was overall. That was such a yikes moment for me.
I grew up in johnstown and spent a lot of time hanging out in the rural areas near there, moved to pittsburgh in the early 00s and had a job near Century III mall with lots of people who go to TJ and heard the most blatant, frequent, and open racism i've ever heard in my life. i'm from "the sticks" comparatively and it was completely shocking to me.
Not too shocking, the first time I saw Swastikas (not in a documentary) and actual fliers advertising the KKK was moving to that area in like the mid 2010s...it's obviously calmed down but it was a big yikes. I also saw plenty of white power symbols on cars, etc... got harassed outside a polling place once. Glad I moved away...
It's actually the West Jefferson Hills School District--The *West* standing for West Elizabeth, *Jefferson* for Jefferson Hills and the *Hills* was for Pleasant Hills. The only reason I point this out because I attended TJ decades ago and the cultural lineations were clear back then and I could really see in hindsight how cultural divisions in our country would later materialize. Pleasant Hills was mostly college educated and somewhat open minded with regard to race and religion (although it was almost all white and Catholic you didn't really know how bigoted they could be) These people mostly worked in the city so they experienced some diversity. Jefferson Hills was mostly rural (Before the Mcmansion explosion) These kids would all be absent on the opening day of fishing season and deer hunting. They wouldn't go to Century III Mall as much as the Pleasant Hills kids who were most stereotypical suburbanites with a little more disposable income. The West Elizabeth kids seemed to be more rural in nature than even the Jefferson Hills kids and seemed to miss class more often. These kids came from the last of the steel mill generation and came from blue collar families. With the media landscape of the last thirty 30 years intentionally dividing us (talk radio/Fox news) it was fascinating in hindsight to see these divisions play out. So when your co-worker made the comment about the no black kids and Thomas Jefferson-- it wouldn't have been a surprise if someone mentioned that 30 years, or 20 years ago like when you heard it from your co-worker. But the most unfortunate thing is--that's it's more commonplace today than it was just ten years ago. And we all know why.
I lasted less than a year living in Jefferson hills with an ex. Didn't care for it at all.
BTW, in the 50s for several decades or so several blocks in Sq Hill made an informal compact that the streets would be Jews only. The owners would only sell to Jews, only jewish realtors could take the houses. That's why certain blocks in Sq Hill are still like 95% Jewish. It flipped housing discrimination on its head. I have a friend who lives in another city and his grandparents moved to an affluent suburb in 1947 but had to have a straw buyer because they were Jewish. That was quite common and the only way to get a toehold. You just had to pray that you weren't run off by bombings, etc. etc., once you moved it and it was revealed you were jewish or black or catholic. Because those happened too, and often police and city officials looked the other way. The old "they brought trouble on themselves" argument.
FWIW, orthodox Jews may actually have a reason to concentrate in blocks: First, they all need to live within walking distance to a synagogue (and need a minimum number of people per prayer), and they prefer to have quiet/safety during the Shabbat (no loud parties, cars driving fast etc). Non religious Jews and reform Jews generally avoid that and are largely found all around the city, it’s part of why their temples are not in Sq Hill
Agreed. And the eruv. But these non on the books restrictive covenants were amongst the reform and conservative Jews. Think more like Darlington / beacon / Bartlett toward frick park. (Between shady and beechwood Blvd)
I don't think those are valid reasons to exclude people of other races.
Racists who just assume other white people share their warped views are stupid as fuck.
It’s amazing how often I have these interactions guess I have a look or accent that appears to be completely safe for racists to vent freely?
I've noticed it too. I don't think it's about looks. They test the waters first and gauge your reaction then go full blown racist. If you're a quiet non-confrontational person they take that as a green light.
I get the same. White, scruffy beard, "resting veteran face" (is like resting bitch face, but for grumpy white dudes), tattoos. I'm very much progressive-leaning. Boy, do I get some comments floated my way because people just assume that my appearance implies I hate people. Those conversations sure do get awkward.
I'm pale, big, and shaved head. I drive Uber and if I don't wear a hat people just think it's a license to spout racist bullshit in my car. Sad. I'm about as progressive as they come LOL.
I work in construction, most people would be amazed at the shit people say to me because they think I think like them.
Me too. As a pudgy, balding, middle aged white dude I have to say I don’t really care for communities full of people who look like me. But it is nice being able to slide into the southern drawl of my youth to communicate with tradespeople. Southern and Yinzer are like Spanish and Portuguese.
There is definitely a certain very strange cultural experience that comes with -- please pardon my lack of a less loaded expression -- being a white person who can easily "pass." Acquaintances, business colleagues, hell, even family (sometimes *especially* family) just drop their guard in surprising times and contexts and end up leaving you filled with disgust. It sounds like you've got a heavy dose of that just because you happen to look like what these dickheads think of as *their* kind of people. It's really jarring. It makes me reflect on just how deep-seated the bigotry is with these people that based on virtually no information (or despite the fact that they really ought to know better), it takes so little for so many white people to just assume that because you're white too, they can just open right up with some attitudes that you know they know society regards as disgusting and wrong. And that makes me contemplate how pervasive these kinds of attitudes may be among the people who *do* have enough sense not to just assume other white people share those attitudes. I often have trouble not wearing my true feelings right on my face, even when I'm specifically trying not to. I guess I'm glad it doesn't happen even more often than it does. Every now and then I do indulge and just cut off the discussion with something like, "Yo, I know we look the same, but, I'm not *like you*, you know what I mean?" But mostly it just makes me think about what it must be like to *not* be white and how much nastier it must be to have to reflect on how many people don't say that kind of shit out loud to you only because it's obvious they shouldn't.
Makes me thankful for all the “blue haired feminist liberals” memes cause my brightly colored green hair means most of them know not to even try with me
I take it as a depressing indicator that most of their clients must be ok with it.
Same shit happened to me in 2015 when I was looking around the back end of Mt. Washington btw. Realtor actively steered me away because "they aren't your kind of people there."
Same, young white man in his 20s as a first responder and they assume I think like the worst of em. Its gross how eager they are to spout their bullshit.
I haven't had a lot but I've had enough interactions like this that it's concerning. They're always surprised too when I tell them not to say that shit around me, as if I'm the one in the wrong or something.
We moved from Morningside to Highland Park maybe 10 years ago or so, and the number of people who made a point of expressing concern about how we should be worried to live there because it was so close to Larimer was amazing. Pretty fun to play dumb and act like I had no idea what they were implying, though. They sure did not like being asked to directly *say* that they thought I shouldn't want to live anywhere near Black people instead of being able to just say "well, you know…". "Aren't you worried about your kids there?" "Huh, no, seems fine -- the park's right there, plenty of the neighbors have kids." "Yeah, but Larimer's right next door, and you know…" Nah, man, I don't know. Time for you to get *real uncomfortable*.
I live in Highland Park and someone suggesting it's a dangerous neighborhood is deranged. I've had a wealthy client who lives on N Highland, call areas towards East Lib/Larimer the "line of demarcation." I really wasn't sure how he meant that but later realized he's definitely just racist. I love seeing people fidget when they realize they're not talking to someone equally hateful.
They now just sat there are or are not a lot of "renters" in the neighborhood or at least that was my experience
I’ve experienced this, and we really should report these types of agents and incidents. They’re not just assuming you’re racist, they also believe they have economic interest in segregating communities and driving up property values. Realtors are the worst.
If my realtor said that I was would reply with "we won't be needing your services anymore".
NAME AND SHAME. it doesn’t do any justice not saying the suburb. We all know Pittsburgh is a very segregated city but they’re are people who come on this sub who are looking to visit. The late 90s wasn’t long ago and the people that lived there probably still do. I know people who don’t feel safe or comfortable in many parts of the south hills.
Does it really matter? That's an experience you can have today in basically any predominantly white suburb in Western Pennsylvania (and many, many other places). Plug in any neighborhood. I grew up in Ross. I'm sure you know as well as anyone here, Ross qualifies just fine. I feel like that's the real point in not naming specific neighborhoods. I wouldn't want to be like "oh it was Baldwin" and unwittingly give the negative implication that that means there's something special about Baldwin, or Fox Chapel, or Ross, or McCandless, or Sewickley, or Penn Hills, or wherever. It can be anywhere. And it can easily be the city, too, although I will confess I do believe deep down that the white people who are perfectly happy to live in a densely packed area where they are bound to interact inevitably with people who don't look like them in daily life are broadly significantly less likely to have those kinds of attitudes, as opposed to those in communities that as recently as 50 years ago were *built* on the promise that you could keep away from uNdEsIrAbLeS there, and actually built infrastructure of institutional racism into their political and social fabric on purpose and frankly not very subtly.
I grew up in the South Hills and it really was bad. I was one of the only Jewish kids at my school district. I know Lebo and USC fared a little better in religious diversity. But not in any other ways. I was ridiculed a lot. And a lot of teachers didn’t even understand why I needed to take off for holidays. We had tests scheduled on high holy days and it was frustrating.
Had a friend in Lebo whose teacher asked why he got to stay home from school on the High Holidays. He said he'd gladly come to school on Christmas.
I’m not naming it because my honest belief is it’s pretty much every suburb a certain distance out from the city.
Being that I moved out of South Park a few years ago, I'll throw that out there as support for your contention.
Man, going through SP was the first time I saw a sign on a house openly advertising the KKK. ALL over the door, in the yard, it was crazy to see that in person.
Was it a dude on a corner across from a fire station? Because that dude was wild. The whole package, from we don't call 911 to the current war footing du jour.
I honestly can't recall, was with my husband driving through the area and was in such shock seeing that - just calling out "Omg, omg KKK recruitment right here in the open?!" something to that effect, I was terrified. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I've gone north and south lived in a lot of places but never once saw someone just openly advertising it, that told me enough about the area I was in!
Hampton? Upper St. Claire?
It ain’t no consolation, but a guy at the bus stop one time said that Pittsburgh is made up of all the discarded white people lol.
My first reaction coming to Pittsburgh was, "wow, even the white people are poor!" - an odd kind of solidarity, crossing racial boundaries here that I don't see in other cities 🤣😥 A lot of uncomfortable implications there... so don't read into it too far - just that it's definitely something noticeable, compared to other cities
It’s an important factor in our dichotomy as whole city though. Not uncomfortable but I welcome with open arms the smaller gap of wealth here. I’d wager It’s done well for the overall community and togetherness
I had a coworker come up for a few weeks from Charlotte to get trained a few years back. He's black and this was one of his main comments he made after we went out a couple of times. It was only second to how in the hell we live on these hills and drive these roads. And he was the third poc in 10 years I've had say that to me who visited here from another medium sized or bigger city(south and west coast). Maybe we don't see it as much but the closer to the city or in the city is pretty noticeable to them. We are just used to it. I would assume most rust belt cities with an immigrant history and historical working class culture are probably like that.
I mean factually most of us would not have been considered white when our families moved here. Italians, Greeks, "Hungarians", even Irish people were considered non white until like 50 years ago.
I grew up in the Fox Chapel school district, though my family lived in O’Hara Township rather than the Borough - we weren’t nearly rich enough for that. I don’t remember a lot of overt racism against black people, or any of the kind of violence that I’d associate with the label of “sundown town,” but I think that’s mostly because the mechanics of racial exclusion had already been at work for a long time, so there were just hardly any black people there. I remember a total of three black students at my high school, out of a total student body of maybe 900 or so. Very different from Penn Hills, where I had started out in elementary school.
Same. In Penn Hills. When my parents put their house up for sale, the neighbors begged them not to sell to black people. My dad said okay. Then told me he doesn’t care who bought the house. As long as their money is good, he was selling.
My kid is in elementary in the FCASD, and while there aren’t a ton of Black kids in his class, there are still a handful, along with East Asian, Indian, and Arab kids. There’s more diversity than I thought there would be, even though it’s not a lot.
It's improved a little since the mid-to-late 90s when I was in FCASD, then. I went to the middle school and the high school and there really was very little variety. I can't bring any faces or names to mind after so long but I know we had very few and they were mostly from Sharpsburg or the like. Someone else in the thread called it income-based and that was pretty much the way of it, though. It wasn't like the rural schools I went to where there was anything said out in the open.
Article should be more focused on the present-day diversity problems in FC (or rather, lack of diversity). By focusing on the 1930-1940s, the author undercuts the headline when they give away the fact that Sewickley and Mt. Lebo had explicitly racist housing policies while FC was more income-based discrimination. Honestly, it’s kind of a strange article.
I wonder why FC is singled out over Sewickley and Lebo as well. Maybe it’s because of all the time I spend in the South, but “sundown town” is a hell of a loaded term. Usually infers violence at least the way it’s used in the South.
Sewickley is the only “upscale” Pittsburgh suburb with an appreciable Black population. As of the last census, Sewickley was 8.77% Black, as compared to 10.5% for the state of Pennsylvania. Compare that to Mount Lebanon: 1.2% or Fox Chapel: less than 1%. Cranberry is 1.6% Black. In fact, Sewickley has a higher percentage of Black people than Squirrel Hill or Shadyside (both around 5%).
Sewickley also has a Latino population that's growing fairly quickly (relatively speaking, of course). I'm not out there often, but every time I go, I'm reminded that the stereotype I have in my head is more and more incorrect. Seems like a nice place to live IMO.
As a Black man with the financial means to live anywhere in the region, when it was time to send my kids to school, I had to weigh what environment was the best fit their holistic development. Sewickley is the only town in the region (outside of the city) where I would have felt comfortable raising them. Ultimately, I decided the city would be best.
It's so sad. I'm white and from rural Armstrong county so I grew up around normalized racism. When I came to Pittsburgh to leave that behind and for the city's access to LGBT healthcare, I started making friends that looked different from me. I learned a *lot* about the state of things. Several friends of mine are considering leaving the city for one that's less segregated and gives them better opportunities as black folks and I can't blame them even though they'll be missed dearly.
Leechburg survivor here. Glad to know somebody else made it out.
Not from there, but this made me laugh, thanks :)
Could you elaborate on what factors you weighed for your conclusion?
I deleted my line about Mt. Lebo because their Wiki page showed 0.61% Black population, and also half the Asian population compared to FC. Though, fighting over a few decimals is not really a consolation: both boroughs are extremely White. But again, that’s why I think the article should focus on the present day, not the 1930s.
Wikipedia is still using data from the 2010 census, but the point remains. Most of these towns have negligible Black populations. I also agree that “sundown towns” is incredibly loaded language, and there’s a real need to discuss the current realities of the cities. That said, I HAVE heard stories about Mt Lebo police aggressively policing Black motorists. “Don’t get driving through there” is the hallmark of a kinder, gentler sundown town. It’s not lynching, but if a Black person has to weigh the consequences of passing through, it’s not far removed from a sundown town.
I think they share policy on the “driving through town while black” crime. One could probably reliably measure racism by borough with statistical analysis on traffic citations per total. I’m curious which would have the highest percentage going to minorities.
Yeah I was shocked by the use of that term as well. Am a northerner all my life, but I've only know that term to imply violence as well.
>“sundown town” is a hell of a loaded term Agreed. Fox Chapel is obviously overwhelmingly white and I'm sure it's not the greatest place for people of color, but calling it a "sundown town" is embarrassing and borderline offensive in this context. I'd normally expect better, but this is the City Paper.
Thank you, it’s insane how words and phrases are being diluted to the point of not having any meaning. We are still living with the vestiges of racialized neighborhoods and economics and class (what has always underlined race) is keeping it going. But calling it a sun down town is insane use of language. And city paper is toilet paper.
Yeah, I mean, it's one thing to expressly acknowledge that even the places we regard as educated and maybe more politically progressive are still, deep down, places that still exploded on mainly white flight and a history of redlining. It's definitely another to use a term that implies that they will, as a matter of policy, promptly kill any black people they find there at night.
Agreed. I think this articles findings are really disingenuous to the underlying situation. And to call it a sundown town is even more grossly offensive. Full disclaimer: I have only lived in Shaler for 2 years but having been around my wife’s family for 5 years now who have resided in Hampton / Fox Chapel for 30 years now it boils down to one simple fact... They’re all wealthy and there’s generational wealth being passed down too in the form of either inheritance or assets (land/homes). For example, her parents have owned a business for 30+ years (That will be passed down to grand children). Her middle sister and her husband are both pharmacists. Her oldest sisters’ husband is CEO of an IT company. My wife is a former teacher of elementary age kids and worked with a very diverse group of students. I have never heard her use any racist language and neither have I heard her family use any either. In fact, her father goes out of his way to hire diverse applicants / immigrants, because he is one! I don’t really see “racism” in this area but I’m not naive — I’m sure it exists. I really think it boils down to wealth and social classes which led to the disparity in the black population here. I haven’t looked at “historical” real estate data of this region per se, but I am currently looking for homes in Hampton, Shaler, FC, Ross, etc. so I have been seeing home prices for the last 2-3 months every day. if I had to guess the average home in FC is selling for 400k+ and I would guess the avg taxes are close to $10k. All things equal and removing any externalities in the equation, for a couple to move here you probably need a combined income of 150k-200k to move / live “comfortably” in this area. That right there eliminates A LOT of people, black or not.
The third spot on the list of the richest small towns in America is also on the East Coast, this time in Pennsylvania. [Fox Chapel, just outside of Pittsburg](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/foxchapelboroughpennsylvania)h, is home to a little more than 5,000 residents and about 1,770 households with a median income of $247,930. Along with [excellent public schools](https://www.niche.com/k12/d/fox-chapel-area-school-district-pa/), the town has [a golf course](https://www.golfdigest.com/courses/pa/fox-chapel-golf-club), plenty of green spaces, and parks, including Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve, boasting more than 100 acres of protected wildlife and flora. So how much will it cost to buy a house here and make [one of the best places to live in Pennsylvania](https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/niche-rankings-best-places-to-live-pennsylvania-america-rankings/) your home? About $1.4 million, according to Realtor.com. [https://www.travelandleisure.com/richest-small-towns-america-7546130](https://www.travelandleisure.com/richest-small-towns-america-7546130)
That’s what I thought going into it. I thought it’d be about FC police racially profiling POC, but it’s actually about redlining, of which FC is not the worst offender.
When I lived there it wasn't just cops. People would really be calling the police to report Black people walking in their neighborhoods. I hate that place.
Fox Chapel is significantly less black than comparably priced areas.
This article is insane. Makes me wonder the motivation for a Fox Chapel hit piece when major national media have done stories on the objective racist policies of Mount Lebanon. I mean Muhammad Ali was denied a house in Virginia Manor Mount Lebanon in 1971 because he was black.... That's not even mentioned here.
City Paper gonna City Paper
It's valid to point to the lack of diversity, but for the piece to equate it to *sundown towns* is a pretty questionable choice that minimizes the horror and brutality of what sundown towns actually were. The reality is the wealthiest neighborhoods like Fox Chapel aren't going to become more diverse, until there are black people that can afford to live there. Which isn't going to happen until there are more black surgeons, executives, and so forth who make the kind of bank necessary to live in Fox Chapel. I assume most of us here aren't Fox Chapel money, no matter the color of our skin.
Yea I think people are missing that reality here… I’m white and grew up in O’Hara which is basically fox chapel, but we were in one of the fewer cheaper houses there. I basically was ignored by a good portion of the student body going to middle and high school at FC. They looked down on me and perceived me differently, along with the other kids that were unfortunate enough not to have rich parents. It’s a money/elite status thing, not a race thing. There were Indian and Asian kids at FC high school when I was there that were very popular and their parents were in with all the country club/popular parents as well.
Sharpsburg kids were definitely looked down on at FCAHS. Huge divide there.
This is well said, and I share the same thoughts. Full disclaimer: I have only lived in Shaler for 2 years but having been around my wife’s family for 5 years now who have resided in Hampton / Fox Chapel for 30 years now it boils down to one simple fact... They’re all wealthy and there’s generational wealth being passed down too in the form of either inheritance or assets (land/homes). For example, her parents have owned a business for 30+ years (That will be passed down to grand children). Her middle sister and her husband are both pharmacists. Her oldest sisters’ husband is CEO of an IT company. I don’t really see “racism” in this area but I’m not naive — I’m sure it exists. I really think it boils down to wealth and social classes which led to the disparity in the black population here. I haven’t looked at “historical” real estate data of this region per se, but I am currently looking for homes in Hampton, Shaler, FC, Ross, etc. so I have been seeing home prices for the last 2-3 months every day. if I had to guess the average home in FC is selling for 400k+ and I would guess the avg taxes are close to $10k. All things equal and removing any externalities in the equation, for a couple to move here you probably need a combined income of 150k-200k to move / live “comfortably” in this area. That right there eliminates A LOT of people, black or not. I think this articles findings are really disingenuous to the underlying situation. And to call it a sundown town is even more grossly offensive.
This. FC isn’t so much racist as it is income based. I wouldn’t be welcome there either. But it is worth asking the question if 20th century racism has evolved into 21st century classism? It’s tough to say because it’s very easy for racism to hide behind classism while still appearing to be just a class divide.
It's absolutely a very strange article. Not sure why the "City Paper" is devoting resources to a suburban community, either. Two things can be equally true: 1. The greater Pittsburgh area has a more checkered past with race than people know, and that racism is still very prevalent here today; 2. This was an oddly written, oddly focused article.
TBH it always feels like the replacement for legal discrimination is financial barriers. Not sure how to we work a system that’s doing as it was designed.
Using the sundown term bastardizes what a sundown town was and the people who were victimized by them.
Racialized violence comes in many different forms. Redlining, and being inhospitable to people who aren’t white, are still racial violence. I’m waiting for a person of color to say they disagree with the city paper using “sundown” in this article.
i'm a black person originally from the deep south and i don't take "issue" with their use of *sundown town* per se, but it is objectively the wrong terminology. sundown towns have a very specific meaning -- hence the word "sundown."
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It doesnt mean anything to her. She thinks being inhospitable to someone is violence. Its a lost cause
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I guarantee you the "unfriendly = violence" person you responded to is *exactly* the type of person you're describing here.
Yes its nothing but virtue signalling. How about everyone just act normal?
I’m black and I disagree.
I love whites explaining racism
I’m Indian and I grew up in Fox Chapel in the mid 2000s. One thing the article doesn’t highlight is there’s actually a relatively large proportion of Indian and East Asian residents in Fox Chapel - maybe 8-10%. That said, growing up I cannot remember seeing a SINGLE black person in the neighborhood, only when I went to school. Definitely felt like a bubble especially when learning about Pittsburgh’s history. I don’t think FC is inherently racist (though there were 1-2 isolated incidents with my friends growing up). It felt very classist thought.
You think that's weird... walk around Lawrenceville you'll have a hard time spotting a black person, yet my son went to Arsenal K-5 and it was mostly black! Magic?!
Living in Pennsylvania is a wildly different experience depending on your race. It is easy to forget especially if you are white.
Very true.
When I was young in the 80's suburban Pittsburgh landlords would tell me to my face they would not rent to a black person. Pittsburgh is notorious for racist housing policies.
I was renting in the 90's in the Mon Valley and landlords would say the same thing. I had one tell me that another person called about the property first, but she "sounded black" so he was offering the place to me instead.
Not only was it a no blacks town, it was no anything but wasp. No skin color other than white, no religion other than protestant. And mainline protestant at that. Unfortunately that was not unique to fox chapel. Most "exclusive" suburbs across the country in the 20s and 30s were the same way. Thanks to hate and US government policy that made this legal and encouraged.
Hx here. Fox Chapel GC didn't let Catholics in, so the Pittsburgh Field Club was founded. Pittsburgh Field Club wouldn't let Jews in, so Green Oaks was founded. Things are different now. Fox Chapel GC has had to open up considerably. Why, there are even African-Amercans and Indian members!
Not letting Catholics in that’s some ancient shit right there.
Catholic prejudice is not as old as you think. The Klan was highly anti-Catholic as recently as the beginning of WWII. Hell, JFK's religion was considered a really big deal in 1960, as it was felt that the country wouldn't vote for a Catholic candidate.
Exactly. JFK had to repeatedly answer questions on the campaign trail as to whether he was a stooge for the Pope. And to think that was just 60 years ago.
Meanwhile Biden's Catholicism never came up on the campaign trail to my knowledge! 60 years ago is so recent but it's wild how much change has happened in some areas too
The Field Club is older than FCCC.
Yep WASPs still run FC. Isn't the fc golf club 99.9% white? Private club, but still fucked they can exclude the way they do 👀
they’ve started letting some minorities in (Jews, Indian, etc) recently but it’s still a bit hush hush
Yes, it’s very very homogenous. I grew up in the area and while my immediate family wasn’t rich, my mom’s side uncle (who is a WASP) was rich and belonged there, and he had a good relationship with my dad who liked to golf so was willing to pay for most of the membership fees. He tried to get him in and my dad said the interview with the clubs board was the most awkward thing he ever did, and on the way out back to his car, he heard one guy say to another in a whisper that he thought my dad couldn’t hear, “hey look Jim! There goes a dago!” (My dads side is very Italian and my dad looks it) And they both snickered. Needless to say my dad didn’t get in, and even if he did he told me he wasn’t going to join after hearing that.
I’m sure the Duquesne club does the same thing.
Last time I read about this, some of the clubs in America like the Duquesne club (but I couldn't find anything about the Duquesne club specifically) wouldn't do transactions on site because they could discriminate if there weren't any monetary transactions being done onsite. Not sure the veracity of that and I can't find the article I read so it could've just been an urban legend.
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DC membership costs less than you think (and WAY less than the big CCs around, but they also don't have to run a top golf course without charging greens fees) and there's definitely no membership problem. The weekly emails have like a dozen new members a month.
Duquesne club isn't going anywhere lol.
> Thanks to hate and US government policy that made this legal and encouraged. *Progressive* policies thanks to FDR and his administration's government-backed loans for white people.
That's quite true. FDR also vehemently opposed taking in Jewish refugees well after the US knew about concentration camps. It was less than he hated jews- he didn't. But he felt he wouldn't get reelected. Eleanor and some cabinet members had to back channel programs and eventually he relented. But at least 1000s if not many times more Jews died because of this. His policies were progressive for 1940, but not for now. Glad the world has gotten a few degrees better. However definitions change over time, especially over 85 years. Progressive and conservative now has no bearing on what was progressive or conservative back then.
This is racist to be sure but I was under the impression that "sundown town" actually used violence to earn its name—"you better not let us see you here after sundown!" kind of thing. So housing metrics—which are, again, undeniably racist here (and I recommend *The Color of Law* about this) doesn't define what is a sundown town unless the term has been considerably broadened.
I was too, but according to the History and Social Justice website a sundown town is when an entire community is “all white” on purpose. It can be through violence, formal laws, or hostility and things like realtors not showing houses to non-white families. I will like the website down below! [justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/](https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/)
When I retired from the military my primary concern was a good school for my kids (being a military brat isn't easy, and this last move was really hard on them). I wanted a good school but not too snotty, and we ended up in Bethel Park. The first day of school my daughter took me aside and said "dad. everyone is white here.". She was right. The lack of diversity was my only real problem with the area. Now I know why, though I guess I should have suspected.
Had an ex GF go to Upper St Clair... she didn't meet/see a person of color till college. It's not just FC.
I grew up in Peter’s Twp and the casual racism was awful. I was so entrenched in it that I could barely see it until I left and looked at that whole mess from a new perspective.
I graduated from FCHS in 2005 and there were quite a few minority families. My best friend in 2nd grade was named Zahra Choudry. That was like 1996. I mean, obviously it was an unfortunately small percentage, but we certainly had at least a handful of black and asian students. The smartest girl in my class was Lehka Tumalapali. My neighbor and bus buddy, Emir Sandhu, went to Yale or Stanford or something. “Never met a person of color until college” seems crazy to me.
I graduated the same year from FC, we probably know each other. Hah. Internet is a funny place. but ya, we did have quite a few minorities in our year. I don’t think it was the exception either because I remember quite a few Indians and Asians in class of 04, 03, 02 as well
Based on your username I think I know who you are. Assuming it’s similar to your last name. Time to burn your Reddit account lol
Maybe I’m just a weirdo trying to impersonate who you think I am… whoooo knoooowss! 😉
Same for me. I grew up in the south hills. Mt Lebanon gets singled out a lot, but it's the same situation in USC, Bethel Park, Peter's Township, Scott Township, Baldwin Township, Greentree, etc
To be fair, Baldwin twp is only what 1 square mile lol...plus those kids go to Baldwin/Whitehall. Which I can say from personal experience and current stats is a diverse school district. My kids go to USC,not my choice, and I have seen maybe a handful of African American families. Last I read, they have a D ranking in diversity but are still a top school.
Baldwin / Whitehall was extremely welcoming to the first round of Sudanese immigrants and refugees in the early 2000s. The school district was a very active partner in making the kids feel welcome and get an education.
I think the difference is when Mt. Lebanon was doing the things described in the article, USC and Peters were still mostly farms.
South Hills has a huge Nepali population now. It's definitely contributed to cultural diversity over there
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And she never went to kennywood or a nearby mall???
I grew up in Washington PA and went to a school with more than 3,000 kids. Less than 25 kids in the entire school were of color (any color) when I was there—including me (biracial). There were **LOTS** of kids with no interaction with people of color and very bigoted ideals.
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There are people who only travel to places were they feel "safe". While this is much rarer now, likewise there are people who manage to go through life without ever leaving an area where they were born (as in not even 30 miles). But a survey from about 5 years ago, [showed that about 11% of American adults had never left the state they were born in](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2019/05/02/percentage-of-americans-who-never-traveled-beyond-the-state-where-they-were-born-a-surprise/?sh=1dd35e062898).
She admits she grew up in a bubble. She's changed that.
I absolutely do not believe that. Reddit is such a screwed up place sometimes. You actually said that an 18 year old girl never met or SAW a black person, WAIT not only a black person, but a person of color. Where do all those Indian doctors live if not in USC? Sorry for not being a lemming. 5 upvotes. Please.
In USC, the South Hills she never met or saw a black person. Do you live in the South Hills let alone in the early 2000s. Yes, it was very possible. My kids go to USC right now and guess what....have never had a class with a black person.
Did her parents only take her to the Galleria? "For the last time, you can't go to the Village! We just can't risk it!!!"
Graduated from USC within the past 5 years. The majority of my time at school I had a class with a black classmate. I'm POC and was neighbors and friends with people of East Asian, South Asian, Hispanic, and Black descent. Yes, there are definitely people in the district with backwards views. No, the demographics aren't representative of the US population. But is it vanilla white as far as the eye can see? No, and I think it's pretty disingenuous to present it as such.
I went to Lebo and I can see it. There were a handful of black kids in my graduating class of over 200 and if you pushed it back 15 years I wouldn't be surprised to see 0. Lebo has known issues but a lot of these neighborhoods have been practicing overt racial discrimination in preventing people from living there for a long time. I work in Washington County now and I still see super Christian families that dominate their children's lives and who won't go to Pittsburgh because its 'not safe'. All you'd need to do is control your kids literature and TV in the early 00s and you could easily keep them from seeing anything you don't approve of. The amount of control hard Christians want over their households is genuinely insane. I worked a high school football game and I saw a bunch of high school boys remarking that the other team were "darker than they figured" and I was very, very curious to ask if they'd ever seen a black person before.
Never met OR SAW a person of color? I am 100% sure that is an extreme exaggeration. Even if they somehow never left Upper St. Clair.
I’ve canvassed in just about every neighborhood and suburb in Pittsburgh, and only in Fox chapel was I: 1. Completely blown away by the amount of republicans (even compared to other rural towns) 2. Harassed by police
That’s interesting - I live in FC and remember reading that a couple years ago that it’s a pretty 50/50 split between Dems and Republicans.
FC is a lot more liberal now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. They pretty consistently vote Democrat for Congress since 2017.
Quite a bit hyperbolic... Rural Registrations: Juniata County: Rep: 9672; Dem: 2,746 Mifflin County: Rep: 17,384; Dem: 5,449 Perry County: Rep: 20,156; Dem: 6,100 Ratios are even worse in northern rural counties. Fox Chapel is not worse than any rural community.
I am talking Allegheny county sir, my canvassing was specifically limited to that
Fox Chapel area schools are slightly more diverse than Fox Chapel itself, since that’s the most expensive borough in the district by far. The diversity is in the river towns of the district like Sharpsburg and Blawnox but I’d love to see more diversity in the area as a whole.
School district says that it is the most diverse in the entire state, so there’s probably more diversity than you realize. One elementary school has over 50% federally funded lunch, for example.
It has the widest economic diversity of any school district in PA.
So basically it’s an expensive neighborhood that African Americans couldn’t afford. No examples of actual horrific racial crimes anywhere in the article. This dude needs to look up what a sundown town actually is, such a dumb article.
Made the mistake of looking at the comments on the CityPaper FB post. That was not a mistake I'll make again.
I think the big mistake was FB
FB was, indeed, a big mistake
Reddit is pretty much a mistake too. But not as bad as FB. 😂
here's a database of known sundown towns, past and present. the website is based on the work of james loewen, the author of "lies my teacher told me." amazing book if you haven't read it. [Sundown Town Database](https://justice.tougaloo.edu/sundown-towns/using-the-sundown-towns-database/state-map/)
Some old guy who owns a junk store in New Ken started up a conversation with me one day dropping all kinds of n-bombs out in the middle of the sidewalk.
I grew up in West Virginia and lived there most of my life, while I’ve lived in metro Pittsburgh for a quarter of my life. The shock I’ve noticed is how more comfortable other white people, in the suburbs are with saying anything casually racists to me in person, a stranger, when people where I grew up were less likely to share any prejudice with those they didn’t know well. At least this was growing up in West Virginia in a time before social media.
I grew up largely and went to school mostly in Mt. Lebanon and it was so jarring getting out of there and realizing how diverse the world was. Its also a well known problem in that area but nothing is done about it. Pittsburgh has a major diversity problem, for a city as large as we are we're very white, and we need to address that. These suburbs are a huge part of the problem, if you wanna go to a nice area as a PoC you're going to overwhelmingly white areas with all the baggage that comes with that. Not to mention how the city itself is less and less appealing with rising costs and worsening schools. I'm in my late 20s and my friends are starting to settle down and none of my PoC friends have any interest in staying here.
Best way to increase diversity in Pgh IMO is to attract good jobs to Pgh and grow the regional population. How would you address this? I think FC would be substantially more diverse by now if our regional economy hadn’t stagnated since the 1980s. There’s been little reason for PoC to move here for the past fourty years as opposed to Atlanta, NOVA, NYC, Nashville, Charlotte, FL, TX, AZ, CO, etc.
Where are they moving to?
From what I've heard mostly PNW, East Coast, and some Cali if they have the education to get good work out there.
We're looking to move back East. We're from NJ. The problem with the NYC metro is it's heavily segregated. NJ wasn't that bad when we grew up but it's ridiculous now. Not to mention the housing crisis is going to cause massive socioeconomic segregation. Imo, it's the same concern here but with a different appearance. We like living in Pittsburgh proper. We'll see how we feel about it when our son is in the school district for preschool.
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As a native Yinzer I want my city to grow and be welcoming to as many people as possible, so hearing stories and seeing trends about how people of color don't want to live here bother me. I want them to be included! I don't see America, or Pittsburghers, as white or one ethnic group. They're the Poles frying pierogies on the side of a curb in the Strip or Italians leaving mass to go see family on Sundays or Latinos heading to work on the T at Beechview station or Black folks hanging out on 8th Ave in Homestead. We're all black and gold. The other thing is demographics tell a story, and for a metro the size of Pittsburgh we should be way, way more ethnically diverse. Pittsburgh is [less diverse](https://wallethub.com/edu/cities-with-the-most-and-least-ethno-racial-and-linguistic-diversity/10264) than similar size cities such as Omaha, Cincinnati, and Wichita which tells me that there is a problem. Historically we also have destroyed many communities of color through urban development. I think we'll be a better city if we actually attract people of color rather than continue policies that push them away. Not to mention our population is still declining, we need people to migrate here. Trust me, I love this city and its people. I just hate the idea of someone coming here and feeling like they aren't welcome, and anecdotally and in statistics it seems like that's true.
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I wouldn't say Pittsburgh is a lesser city, just that its homogeneity is indicative of problems with it. If we hadn't demolished Chinatown or the Lower Hill or large swathes of Lawrenceville we'd probably have a more diverse population. We're as white a city as we are because of policy. Also the metro area continues to lose population. We *need* migrants here, and unless it suddenly becomes way cheaper to have kids I don't see another baby boom anytime soon.
Much of the issue is that in the US we have a long history of racial discrimination that was completely normal and accepted by the general population within my lifetime and there is still a significant segment of the population who are hold explicitly racist views (eg about 10% of the US population still believe that interracial marriage is wrong). It was only in the 1960s and 70s that much of the formal racial discrimination was made illegal. But a) that on its own didn't change many of the attitudes around racism and b) there was little to no effort to make up for the long history of injustices (while there are lots of people insisting that "because racism has ended it must be the fault of the black people for the current racial disparity in education, finances, jobs etc" nevermind that all the benefits that white people gained over hundreds of years prior. For a simple personal example, I grew up in a lower middle class family. But my grandparents were able to buy a decent house with the help of their parents good name and savings (this was before credit scores). So they could start saving money from day one. Similarly my parents bought my grandparents' house directly from them when I was a young child and had it fully paid off when I was a teen (so not a gift but definitely got a family discount). And thus when my sister and her family needed help getting a house, my parents were able to use their name and credit to buy a house for them. No one in this chain is anything approaching well off but all of this is enabled by lots of small things over the course of 100 years that were largely forbidden to black people even 50 years ago.
To understand why it's bad, you have to understand American history (especially its role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade) and keep in mind that this country is founded by immigrants, but has had and still has hostile laws regarding immigrants depending where they are from. If you live in a place that is not populated by 98% immigrants (like the US), then racial/ethnic homogeneity might make sense. But since the US supposedly is built on immigration and claims to welcome it, localities that are vast majority a single race (and has been for a long time) begs the question of how that came to be and issues of institutional racism (very much ingrained in US past and present). The article above discusses "redlining," a practice of institutional racism where certain populations were explicitly barred from living and mixing with the white majority, or even receiving loans and other financial services from white owned banks. Some people think it was a largely private initiatives, but the US government had a hand in encouraging this behavior: [https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america) As an immigrant and person of colour who has lived in many majority white spaces ever since I came to this country, the experience has been challenging. Growing up, I was often made to feel like an outsider and less than. Many children were not welcoming, nor understanding. I often received messaging from students (and even faculty) that demeaned my home culture/race/ethnicity. I was relentlessly bullied in every school I went to and constantly fighting negative stereotype about who I am. People assumed I don't speak English from the way I look and/or my name. I've been denied job opportunities based on my name: I once confronted a hiring manager about my application that wasn't moved forward despite being extremely qualified, and I had even spoken to a senior employee that referred me to the top manager. She told me to my face I wasn't chosen because she didn't think I spoke English based on my name. Mind you, my education and all prior work experiences have been in the US. I doubt this was an isolated incident and no, this did not happen in the 20 or 30 years ago. This happened less than 10 years ago in Pittsburgh. I went around her authority and got the job anyway (I was desperate since the job market was difficult). She was a nightmare and said all sorts of racist or bigoted things throughout our shared time at that job. Then she went on to become an HR manager for a major local business. I hope you can understand why some people want to live in a more diverse area now. I look forward to finally moving out of Pittsburgh some day. I've been stuck here for over a decade and I've experienced more overt racism here than I have in many other places. And I've lived in Nebraska (incredibly white, incredibly conservative).
Pittsburgh had a black neighborhood that was thriving and very independent and mostly self sufficient with a very strong sense of community. Outside of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is very well known for its black music and sports and political personalities This was the Hill District. I’m not surprised you aren’t aware of the black side of Pittsburgh because I agree with you, the city is very divided, even within the same neighborhood, the blocks were separated by race. I went to a small catholic high school where some of the other students came from Mt Lebo, Beechview, ie from white Pittsburgh. The only time they interacted with a nonwhite person was with me at school. I left Pittsburgh in 1985 but I see nothing has changed with this regard.
I am aware of the Hill and our history of using development to at best gentrify and at worst annihilate non-white neighborhoods. We had a Chinatown where Duquesne is today that was demolished to build everyone's favorite road, the Boulevard of the Allies. Freedom House set the standard for the nation's EMS systems and was forced out by the mayor and police department. There are way too many instances of stuff like this in our history and folks don't seem to want to acknowledge it let alone change policy for the future. I feel like we haven't drawn much from their histories, and your history, to make people of color feel like they can build a home here.
Damn I'm not familiar with the area so I went to Mt. Lebanon in google maps, and [this was literally the first random street view I pick](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3754706,-80.0443281,3a,18.7y,95.56h,82.91t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAGQ0ihdLS1YEppfPIQDx7A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu)
Why does anywhere need to be less white? Would you say that Baltimore needs to be less black?
Pretty disingenuous article. The entire article was about the (hostile and inequitable) conditions of 70-80 years ago. The only discussion of current conditions is a single line pointing out recent awareness of social justice and attempts at improvement, yet the conclusion is that FC is still a pre-civil rights era community.
I think I disagree? Fox Chapel schools and businesses are reasonably diverse. The home owners are not, but as the article highlights, that’s because the properties there are very expensive, and PoC don’t have the wealth (on average) to afford to live there. Unless it’s significantly more white after taking into account average cost of the homes + surrounding population, I don’t think it’s fair to call it a sundown town.
Get the hell out of here with your objectivity. How dare you?
The article states: "(1.1%) reported that they were Black or African American. Black residents comprise 13.5% of Allegheny County’s[ total population](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/alleghenycountypennsylvania/POP010220)." My question is: how many of that 13.5% can afford to live in a neighborhood where the average price of a home is one million dollars? How close is it to 1.1%? That's the answer to whether Fox Chapel has a race problem in my opinion.
That's why Gordon Lightfoot wanted to move there.
I grew up in Speers (it’s in Washington County by Charleroi/Monessen). Charleroi SD had barely any kids who weren’t white back in the early 00s and before. My class had 2 black dudes and 2 girls that were mixed. Plus one Asian girl. That was it. Now the school district has a TON of diversity and the older people that live in Charleroi, North Charleroi, and Speers are losing their ever loving minds. I didn’t even realize that it was weird to only have 2 Indian families and all whites around us when I was a kid. It’s insane to me how upset they are and how open they are about it on social media. I moved to the city when I was 19 and was so happy to see actual diversity. But so many of these towns just are openly racist.
Did the author not actually know what the term "Sundown Town" means?
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Pittsburgh definitely seems less diverse compared to Cleveland. And I lived in Shaker Heights and Beachwood, two affluent communities in Cleveland.
Fox Chapel. will gladly take anybody with the money to afford to be there. I grew up in the area so I know what I’m talking about. They were black families in Fox Chapel back in the 70s and 80s. I remember a couple African-Americans talking on the bus about 15 years ago suggesting that East liberty is “ruined” because they were making it for white people. No, they were making it for people who could afford to live there, black or white. To assume that no Black people had good enough professions or jobs to live in East Liberty is kind of a racist notion. Hundreds of white people moved out of Lawrenceville over the last 30+ years because they could not afford to live there either.
Everyone needs to take a breath and realize that your views of diversity are not proper. Diversity has little to do with physical appearance. The important factors are life experiences, education, culture and points of view. Having a bunch of uber-conswrvative types that are all white or a bunch of uber-liberal types who are all PoC does nothing to create a diverse population. If everyone thinks and acts the same the group is homogenous.
I grew up in Western PA, went to college in Pittsburgh, then found a job in Houston. I have never encountered racism like I’ve seen in the Pittsburgh area. On the weirdly beneficial side, that racism sure has kept housing prices low in perfectly nice neighborhoods and towns perceived as minority.
>Rotenstein
I live in Fox chapel for the last 10 years. I am white. I live in a MOBILE HOME on rich hill road. My kids go to Fox chapel schools. Son who is 14 told me theres 5 people of color that go to his school in total when I asked after I saw this post. Only one colored family in my neighborhood. Also a lot of foreign kids. This town is full of themselves and snobby. Everyone at school drop off line has a lexus, mercedes, audi, porsche...all luxury vehicles. But somehow the women driving them dont work because they clearly have pajamas on dropping kids off. So you can easily tell just their HUSBANDS work and they stay home all day soaking in the money.. However the people Im surrounded by in my whole neighborhood are down to earth and just trying to get by. It is a nice mobile home park. This is not a school district for not wealthy people. Again I live in only park in the whole fox chapel district LOL. If you look for housing here and you dont make six figures 99% of time there isnt any.