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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

Not the person you responded to, but I'll bite. I live in an affluent nearly all-white suburban neighborhood. I know everyone within two houses in any direction, and a few that are even farther than that. We have one recluse and one Karen, but everyone else is super laid back. It's delightful.

I've lived in a range of neighborhoods over my life, and I haven't really seen a pattern. My gut instinct is that attitude is contagious, and friendly neighborhoods have (or had) someone who spreads the love. People reflect the way they are treated.

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No shade but I'd like to hear from one of the non-white neighbors about how delightful it is? I do generally assume the white people living in all-white places are having a good time with it.

I'm non-white. My friendliest and kindest neighbor is white, an old timer who has been in the same house for over 50 years. His wife bakes cakes for us and they share produce from their vegetable patch. The only other neighbor who talks to me regularly is also white. He is also from an "older" generation with grown up kids who have moved away.

The rest of the neighbors are a younger and more diverse crowd who have moved here within the last decade. A few of them will wave hi occasionally. More commonly they will avoid eye contact.

IMO it is a generational thing and not racial.

I've never felt quite that comfortable that I'd ask. Our token black family is a pair of lawyers who seem plenty affluent and comfortable, and they certainly socialize with the rest of the neighborhood as much as anyone else. Are they consciously aware of their minority status? I imagine so. I feel the same way when I'm the only white person in a black neighborhood. It's a pretty laid back neighborhood, and I've seen zero indication that anyone here is racist.

But this is the PNW, and while our history is far from crystal clean, we mostly don't have anything like the tension that is normal in areas of the country farther south.

I'm a brown man living in an extremely wealthy, extremely white pocket of Portland Oregon (whitest city in the country) in my mixed race marriage

No one cares.

Racism exists but most white social activists way overemphasize the role it plays in my life.

White people, like all races, are extremely friendly. All Americans are really.

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