Sadly, St Louis is a city still has lots of racial divide issues. It is not very racially integrated at all, and there is still a "voluntary segregation" going on in the neighborhoods. Whites tend to live in the more affluent West and South parts of town, and blacks are in the poorer North and East parts of town (of course, including the infamous "East St Louis"). The "interface" areas tend to have a more progressive population, and are generally gentrification areas with lots of investment even though there is still significant property crime. However, there are many "pocket neighborhoods" that contain large amounts of non-common races (including many ethnic neighborhoods in South St Louis).

Kirkwood City is towards the Southwest section of the St Louis area, and is generally considered a fairly run-of-the-mill white area. However, this a neighborhood in Kirkwood called "Meacham Park" that is almost completely black, and has a long history (both good and bad, but primarily bad in the news). Some years ago, there was a notable killing of a police officer in Meacham Park, which turned into a rather nasty racially-divided issue. Then shortly after that, there was the murder of pizza delivery driver which prompted a local pizza chain to ban deliveries to Meacham Park. This prompted a lawsuit by Meacham Park residents ("we're being oppressed of our right to pizza"), that the pizza chain sadly lost resulting in them being forced to deliver their pizza (and cash through regular muggings) to the place.

Meacham Park was then in the news due to very vocal opposition to the City's use of eminent domain to transform some of their neighborhood into strip shopping centers while other local "white" neighborhoods were spared the bulldozer. This may or may not have been ethical, but I bet anything that the whole damn neighborhood get eminent domain'ed in the next year after this incident, and a nice developer gets some nice TIF'ed and newly-vacated land to build what they please.

The Kirkwood City area is just a microclimate of the race issues that occur all over St Louis. While this particular incident was total BS, I'll say that I'm fairly ashamed of the majority of St Louis' residents of ALL colors. I grew up in the "white" part of town (and still live there, although now in a more urban, developed part of town), and have been sickened by the racist attitudes of both blacks and whites. In fact, local politicians have even been successfully elected on a very-thinly-veiled platform of racial division.

I visit the stereotypically-racial South frequently, and often marvel at how little racial tension there is in Alabama as opposed to right here at home. Come on folks, the Civil War ended over 140 years ago. There are people around with different skin pigment than you, and you have to live with them. F*cking get over it.