Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why don't black and white Americans live together?

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 102 posts

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#21

Post by kasey_junk »

neaden wrote: post #17

Oak 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 p…

Hyde Park on the cities south side is similar. It started out in a draconian battle against integration, and then switched to a draconian battle for integration.

It didn't hurt that the University of Chicago drove most of the land ownership and maintained a massive private police force.

I'm with you, not sure what the lesson was, but it led to an integrated neighborhood.

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#22

Post by nostrademons »

'According to the Brookings report, "more than half of blacks would need to move to achieve complete integration". Some have pointed out that the wording of this part of the report itself highlights the challenges in these issues - why can't this be measured in the number of whites who would have to move?'

Because that would be a much less catchy soundbite. Assuming a 1:1 black-white switch, and that the population of the U.S. is 12% black and 72% white, then roughly 8% of whites would have to move to achieve racial integration.

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#24

Post by negamax »

neaden wrote: post #17

Oak 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 p…

Same policy in Singapore. All government houses is distributed as such that people from all backgrounds (religions) get intermingled.

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#25

Post by ryandrake »

aidenn0 wrote: post #12

The 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.…

It's a vicious cycle: good schools -> increase demand -> high home prices -> affluent residents -> more tax revenue -> better schools -> repeat

The reverse happens with bad schools.

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#26

Post by Acanthae »

gravypod wrote: post #4

For 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.

I don't know about NYC, but in terms of east coast, I've noticed my neighborhood in Philadelphia is incredibly racially diverse. I honestly can't say I see more of any one race than another here. I can only speak for one neighborhood, however.

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#27

Post by deaddodo »

aidenn0 wrote: post #12

The 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'm guessing either Riverside or MoVal?

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#28

Post by baddox »

sp332 wrote: post #3

Vi Hart and Nicky Case made an interactive demonstration of how easy it is to accidentally create segregated neighborhoods: http://ncase.me/polygons/

And even very slight preferences for living near people who look like you can lead to intense segregation:

http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2008/10/28/game-theory-and...

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#29

Post by iamdave »

new_hackers wrote: post #19
Kluny wrote: post #11

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.

This already happened with predatory lending and sub-prime mortgages.

Unless I misunderstood various explanations of the sub-prime crisis, this is a Mount Olympus sized characterization is it not? "Favorable terms" doesn't implicitly mean a repeat of the multivariate conditions that caused the housing collapse, just as the housing collapse can't be strictly pinned on "favorable" mortgages.

Welcome to correction here from a more informed perspective.

Re: Why don't black and white Americans live together?

#30

Post by maerF0x0 »

jtchang wrote: post #16
Kluny wrote: post #11

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 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.

Or maybe racism falsely informs that risk model? If that's the case then one can likely deploy capital like its low-risk to "higher-risk" (and thus higher APR) loans. Of course competition will eventually destroy this model, but initially it could be profitable.
Post reply on HN