It seems like there's a business opportunity for someone who wants to set up a lending company that offers black families fair and favorable terms on mortgages.
Why don't black and white Americans live together?
11–20 of 102 posts
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#12The town where I live (SoCal) has 14 elementary schools. Only two of them are between 20% and 80% hispanic student population, with the other 12 in the outer two quintiles.
At least some of this is due to economic reasons. It's about $200k extra on a 3BR house to go from a "bad" school zone to a "good" school zone. That has fall-on effects that includes gerrymandering. The school boundaries are very much not compact. I know of at least one boy who walks through areas zoned for another school to get to his school.
The differences are so extreme, that I have mentioned multiple times that if you were to replace "California" with "Virginia" and "hispanic" with "black" you would have federally mandated cross-town busing of students.
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#13For those who don't live here I'd say a majority of the places, at least here on the east coast, don't follow this trend. This definitely isn't the case where I grew up, in New Jersey, and is absolutely incorrect for New York City. I'd hope that this article would have done a better job in explaining that this isn't the rule but that these are a few exceptions to such.
why would this be incorrect for nyc?
isnt harlem, the bronx, spanish harlem parts of NYC?
i agree nyc is extremely fast in gentrification - but that doesnt make it mixed on the long run
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#14For those who don't live here I'd say a majority of the places, at least here on the east coast, don't follow this trend. This definitely isn't the case where I grew up, in New Jersey, and is absolutely incorrect for New York City. I'd hope that this article would have done a better job in explaining that this isn't the rule but that these are a few exceptions to such.
> absolutely incorrect for New York City
This is a very, very untrue statement. I grew up in New York and both the city and Long Island are pretty heavily segregated by race. Yes, there are areas where there is more integration but by and large blacks live in one area and whites live in another. Housing costs in the city have made it so that integration happens for a while in some neighborhoods but really only when that neighborhood is gentrifying. Post gentrification it ends up being pretty much just white or, if you're lucky, a mix of upper middle class people of varying ethnicity but still majority white.
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#15For those who don't live here I'd say a majority of the places, at least here on the east coast, don't follow this trend. This definitely isn't the case where I grew up, in New Jersey, and is absolutely incorrect for New York City. I'd hope that this article would have done a better job in explaining that this isn't the rule but that these are a few exceptions to such.
You have a point -- I note that you did not argue that there is complete mixing in other cities, just that the examples chosen for the OP are particularly stark.
A larger assortment of maps is here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/721576248126749...
They generally show more mixing than the cities featured in the OP. (Cold comfort if you happen to live in Kansas City, Baltimore, St. Louis, or Chicago.)
I have lived in Kansas City and in St. Louis, and I agree that they are both more segregated than their peer cities in the, say, top 50 US cities. Certainly in Kansas City, the racial covenants highlighted in the article were very much in force when large land developers expanded the city into its suburbs.
It's worth remembering that the racial covenants in force at the time were very popular. Proposition 14 in California, which was specifically written to allow redlining to continue, passed with 65% of the vote in 1964 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_14_(196...).
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#16It seems like there's a business opportunity for someone who wants to set up a lending company that offers black families fair and favorable terms on mortgages.
Why would there be a business opportunity here? Banks can already do this but they don't. Maybe it is more risky so they charge higher rates.
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#17Oak Park is a suburb next to Chicago that managed to integrate fairly well, but when reading how it happened I was struck at how draconian it was handled. They purposefully wanted an integrated city and tried to sotftly limit or "steer" how many Black people moved in, and to spread them throughout the whole city. There were restrictions on who could sell your home. For sale signs were banned even. They expanded the police force to assure people they would still be safe. In short they used quite a bit of government force to establish an integrated city with no noticeable Black or White area. And it worked, even today it's one of the most integrated suburbs of the city. I'm honestly not sure what lesson we should take from it.
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#18If you want to explore more areas than just the 4 cities in the article, this demographic map based on 2010 US Census data has a plot of race:
http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html
(it's zoomable)
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#19It seems like there's a business opportunity for someone who wants to set up a lending company that offers black families fair and favorable terms on mortgages.
This already happened with predatory lending and sub-prime mortgages.
Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?
#20For those who don't live here I'd say a majority of the places, at least here on the east coast, don't follow this trend. This definitely isn't the case where I grew up, in New Jersey, and is absolutely incorrect for New York City. I'd hope that this article would have done a better job in explaining that this isn't the rule but that these are a few exceptions to such.
> absolutely incorrect for New York City.
I disagree. NYC is the same, just at lower resolution. The segregation happens along small blocks and avenues rather than towns. I live along the "tracks" on 4th Ave in Brooklyn. The difference is stark-- both in terms of demographics and steep drop-offs in property prices and rents.
Segregation is not good, but having it at low resolution at least allows some interaction across lines, which is positive. Such interaction is more unlikely when the segregation is at the town or village resolution.