EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Until he was 14, Damontre Moore lived most of his life in a hardscrabble, rough-edged Dallas neighborhood. Then his mother boldly moved the family to a leafy suburb 35 miles to the northeast.

“It was completely my mom’s idea, and I hated it,” Moore, a second-year Giants defensive end and prospective star, said Friday. “I went from a predominantly black area to a community that was predominantly Caucasian. I went from a place where fighting in school was almost an everyday thing to a place where getting in a fight got you suspended and sent to an alternative school.

“I felt so out of place, and I told my mom over and over I didn’t want to be out there.”

Moore’s mother, Detra Johnson, who was 32 at the time, had been determined since Moore’s birth to get her son out of the neighborhood where she and Moore’s father had been raised.

“I wanted him to be well-rounded; I wanted him to go to school and play sports with everybody, not just black people,” Johnson said. “The country, the business world and college campuses are a mix of people, and I wanted him to fit in wherever he went.”