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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

>Or Charlotte. Or RTP. Or Austin. Or Phoenix. Or Chattanooga

All of which are wonderful places for a centrist/libertarian/conservative white person to live. I dream all the time of having that luxury. Maybe things will go back to normal some day. But the political climate in this country has made practically any red state unlivable for someone like me.

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Maybe it's not such a bad time to turn into a centrist considering the liberal meccas seem to be the places where people are struggling the most: http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/384536-the-great-exodus-o...

Or, if you really want to influence change and impact the country, staying in a dark blue state and living within an ideological bubble isn't going to change anything. Charlotte has seen a great migration from blue-collar democrats from the Ohio/PA/NY areas, and I believe PHX is seeing the same from Chicago and surrounding areas.

For me personally, virtue signaling do-gooders with billions of dollars that just happen to live in a city with a crippling homeless problem doesn't sound attractive to me.

>Or, if you really want to influence change and impact the country, staying in a dark blue state and living within an ideological bubble isn't going to change anything.

I really don't want to influence or impact anything. I just want to live a happy life where I don't fear getting murdered at a traffic stop for the color of my skin.

Contrary to popular opinion, there are many more people of color being murdered at a traffic stop in blue states than red states, so not sure what you are trying to poke at here. Maybe the KLS shooting? That was the only incident in my entire time living here I can think of. The fact that that was done by an officer of color doesn't seem to dawn on anyone, or that maybe it was actually justified, but anyways, I think you have your mindset made up and there's no point in trying to argue against the narrative. I just want to tell you, being someone not white myself and lived in red states most of my life. You face the occasional ignorant comment ("go back to where you came from, foreigner!") it's nothing compared to the crime that occurs daily in NYC, Chicago, or the Bay Area, so I think your chances are better down here.

Atlanta has shit like this going on.

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/investigations/the-drug...

They train the cop to look for impairment signs of marijuana, and guess what, if the blood test comes back negative, then it's the position of the DA and the police department that it's the blood test that's wrong. Surprise, he primarily pulled over black people.

We've also built a new baseball stadium, but it doesn't have access to the city's public transit system because as the county commissioner said "we don't want to invite a certain kind of person here". The transit system, MARTA, is known as "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta".

And don't get me started if you're Hispanic or Middle Eastern. Brown is the new black is the saying.

I’m sure anyone can find anecdotes anywhere about overzealous cops. But I’m Black live in Forsyth [1] and I’ve never had any issues.

[1] Yes this Forsyth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0

somehow I manage to never visit Cobb

Charlotte has a pretty high rate of violent crime...

Is that statistically a rational fear? You are more likely to die in a car accident than in a traffic stop.

I’m at most centrist definitely not conservative or White and I’ve been a software developer in Atlanta for 20+ years with no issues finding jobs, I just bought a newly built 5 bedroom 3-1/2 bath 3000 square foot house for around $300K in a good school district and I’m 20 minutes away from the northern business district (Alpharetta).

There is life outside of SV and great salary vs cost of living.

Have you actually been to those places before, or are you just assuming they're all saturated with bigots? Austin is known for being a very liberal city.

And Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the country. Black mayor, also a former lesbian mayor. Conservative country leadership, liberal city leadership and it balances out fairly well. You aren’t tripping over heroin addicts shooting up on sidewalks, not are you dodging human shit or getting harassed by mentally unstable homeless people as you might in San Francisco.

I studied in Chapel Hill ~15 years ago and I remember that area as pretty liberal. IIRC, during the Iraqi War when the Congress was busy renaming french fries to freedom fries, the city of Carrboro had a "consume French goods day".

CLT, RTP, and Austin are all fairly liberal leaning.

Denver / Seattle may be alternatives for those looking for blue

Austin is more liberal than San Jose.

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