I have become cynical, because there are so many "news" sources that will lie or misdirect to get you to believe things that aren't true.
Yes, i've heard that race relations in the South are better than the North, and what i've read over the years makes me think this is probably correct.
Most of the serious problems I hear about are in places like Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC and Philadelphia.
I've heard of troubles in Atlanta, Houston and New Orleans, but I don't think they compare to the stuff coming out of the Northern cities and Los Angeles.
I only spent a week in NOLA at a bad time in my life when I was not in any mood to engage with the locals so I don’t really know. As for Atlanta, I was only there for a week of training in an unwalkable suburb (I don’t drive) that I spent little time outside the hotel even though I wanted to; the course was in a conference room at the same hotel where I was staying. My only dinner option was in the hotel dining room or a taxi somewhere too far to be practical timewise, and there wasn’t even an outdoor patio or bench to relax in the evening when it was comfortable outside; daytime was worse because it was surrounded by pavement without so much as a tree or lawn to mitigate the daytime heat.
There are cities I’ve been to that are smaller than Toronto that have the potential to be more livable than where I am now. I’m thinking specifically of Cleveland OH and Augusta GA but there are probably many others.
My own experience is that the Buffalo area and Niagara Falls, NY are awful even in daytime but the area near Fort Niagara and much of Lewiston are terrific for a day trip from here but don’t know how it is after dark. I know that the area around the Finger Lakes just south of Rochester and the entire run from the eastern end of Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain are breathtaking and that Plattsburgh’s best-kept secret is a State Park a few miles inland that is only half-full even on the July 4 weekend while the two campgrounds near the lake are booked solid every weekend through the summer.
Don’t even get me started about Detroit; when I went through downtown to get from the border checkpoint to the interstate going west I didn’t stop until I got to the next highway service centre roughly 25 miles from the city. Downtown Detroit is a scary ghost town even during the workday, to the point where whole office buildings are boarded up because the owners gave up on them ever being viable.
By the time I got off the Interstate at Battle Creek, MI to spend the weekend with four other people (only one of whom knew the couple who hosted us) I knew I was going to have fun even though I was first of us to arrive, a stranger to them and they invited me in anyway while we waited a few hours for the rest to arrive. My only regret was that I had to leave on Sunday to get back to my full-time job back home.
I have more but it is probably past my bedtime so I’ll leave off here :-)