Fellow Black Dude who has lived in King County for the past five years here.

Full disclosure --- I love WA State but I hate Seattle/King County.

Besides the population density, traffic, homeless crisis and progressively worse laws passing every year by inept quasi-do-gooder legislators --- they literally just passed a law decreasing penalties for drug dealers, gang-related violence and mass shooters RIGHT BEFORE an Assault Weapons Ban that the majority of the state does not want --- House Bills 1268 and 1240, respectively --- what I hate most about this area or WA is the daily racism I experience.

Yes, here in the ostensibly progressive-Liberal metropolis of Seattle I experience racism DAILY.

As many other commenters have stated, its a subtle racism --- but that doesn't make it any less insidious or soulcrushing.

People will cross to the other side of the street to avoid walking past me.

Folks will lock their doors as I walk past their vehicles.

Women will clutch their bags or shift their belongs to their opposite hands when I get on elevators with them.

I've been accused of trying to follow a white woman into a restroom at a gym because I had sweat in my eye and took more than a split second to read the signs of the two restrooms to determine which was 'Male'.

I could go on but I imagine you get my point.

Now here is the kicker --- If I go to more rural or at least less urbanized areas of WA --- Lynden, Kingston, Enumclaw, Chehalis, Monroe, etc. --- Folks there treat me just like another person.

After five years I have to have one conclusively racist encounter in any part of WA outside the Greater Seattle Metro area.

The only potential reason for this I can conclude is that population density has a positive correlation with paranoid and tribalistic behavior.

So my unwarranted advice --- Get out of King County as often as possible to remind yourself that real community and HUMANITY still exist beyond its purgatorial expanses.