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Why don't black and white Americans live together?

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

#41

Post by smallnamespace »

coldtea wrote: post #32
smallnamespace wrote: post #31

All you need for self-segregation to occur is that individuals don't want to be a small minority in their local area. As people exercise that preference by moving around, they will create enclaves where certain groups dominate. http://nifty.stanford.edu/2014/mccown-schelling-model-segreg... http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/12/an-immersive-game-show...

> All you need for self-segregation to occur is that individuals don't want to be a small minority in their local area. If that was the case (or enough), we wouldn't have this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_steering and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_Uni... I don't think many blacks care of being a "small minority" on a posh white neighborhood...

I'm not arguing that overt discrimination doesn't occur or that it doesn't matter, just that as long as people don't like being a local minority, eliminating explicit discrimination will not be sufficient to integrate neighborhoods.

At that point, you would need to something like the state to force people to mix.

> I don't think many blacks care of being a "small minority" on a posh white neighborhood...

I respectfully disagree. I'm Chinese-American, grew up in the US, but still see definite advantages to living where there are other Asians: better access to food that you grew up with, a doctor who might be more familiar with your genetics, not being the only person in the room who looks different, better access to Chinese school if you want to send your kids there, etc.

My college roommate was black and we went to school in a town that was >95% white (besides the student population). There wasn't a single stylist in town who knew how to cut black people's hair properly, so a few entrepreneurial black students would actually go around cutting their fellow students' hair on campus, like they would show up at your door and cut your hair in the dorm bathroom. They were in such high demand that sometimes it would take a week or two before you could get on their schedule.

It's these sort of minor annoyances that people do take into account when deciding where to live. Constantly feeling like your own needs and preferences are out of the norm can be a stressful experience, even if nobody is being overtly racist.

Would I necessarily mind living in 90%+ white Middle America? Probably not, but it would not be my first choice, and all that's necessary is for a slight preference to exist.

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

#42

Post by aidenn0 »

ryandrake wrote: post #25
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.

In this case I was only including the schools in the town's unified school district, so the tax-base is identical. There are a couple of school districts in affluent areas just outside of town that each have only 1 elementary school. One school is funded to double that of the unified district on a per-student basis, and the other triple. On top of that, a lot of activities at schools are funded from donations from parents, which are obviously higher at the more affluent schools.

[edit] The two schools I mention on the outskirts of town are 6% and 8% hispanic, respectively.

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

#43

Post by bdamm »

ausjke wrote: post #23

it's more about economic status instead of colors? also there is some culture difference as well, “Birds of a feather flock together", maybe it's just natural and has nothing to do with the political pov.

Some places even embrace that approach. Canada, for example.

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

#44

Post by totalZero »

dopamean wrote: post #14
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.

> 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 t…

I always kind of assumed there was a constant gentrification effect in cheap NYC neighborhoods because young people are price sensitive, no matter what their race or profession.

Ethnic neighborhood is cheap -> Young professionals start to move in -> Integration begins -> Businesses that cater to young professionals establish themselves in the neighborhood -> Landlords slowly but steadily increase rent -> New immigrants and children of existing ethnic tenants move to a different, less expensive neighborhood

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

#45

Post by LoSboccacc »

baddox wrote: post #39
coldtea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All you need for self-segregation to occur is that individuals don't want to be a small minority in their local area. If that was the case (or enough), we wouldn't have this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_steering and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_Uni... I don't think many blacks care of being a "small minority" on a posh white neighborhood...

Racial steering could simply be the result of real estate agents recognizing the tendencies of people's preferences and prioritizing the showing of units that are the likeliest to be a good fit.

Also prices

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

#46

Post by wppick »

Did the article answer the question of why black and white Americans don't live together? I didn't seem to see any theories besides saying that real estate agents wouldn't show one black couple houses in the white neighborhoods.

How does black American integration compare with Chinese American integration, and what can we learn from that?

Is there a bigger, subconscious (possibly genetic) reason why black and whites don't live together? Or is it simply due to the the events of American history?

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

#47

Post by nostrademons »

baddox wrote: post #34
nostrademons wrote: post #22

'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 o…

Assuming a simplistic model where households swap locations (without handling population growth and new housing), a black household would have to move for every white household that moves.

Exactly - that's how I got the numbers above. 50% of the black population = 6% of the total population = 8.3% of the white population. My point is to assume self-interest on the part of the publication; it may or may not be representative of deeper unconscious bias in the population (there's no rule against both self-interest and unconscious bias being true), but a simpler explanation is that the Brookings Institute wanted to make their finding sound more dramatic.

Incidentally, phrasing it as "8% of whites need to consciously seek out diversity to end racial segregation" makes the problem seem eminently solvable.

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

#48

Post by mistersquid »

coldtea wrote: post #32
smallnamespace wrote: post #31

All you need for self-segregation to occur is that individuals don't want to be a small minority in their local area. As people exercise that preference by moving around, they will create enclaves where certain groups dominate. http://nifty.stanford.edu/2014/mccown-schelling-model-segreg... http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/12/an-immersive-game-show...

> All you need for self-segregation to occur is that individuals don't want to be a small minority in their local area. If that was the case (or enough), we wouldn't have this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_steering and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_segregation_in_the_Uni... I don't think many blacks care of being a "small minority" on a posh white neighborhood...

A more aggressive form of racial steering is redlining, the difference being that redlining involves active distortion of market prices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

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

#49

Post by awesomerobot »

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.

They might be mixed better overall in specific areas, but there's some significant segregation... anecdotally you can look at Boston and see very clear cross-neighborhood divides.

Some mixed areas like the South End (50% white), but also the North End (90% white) and Roxbury (8% white). Roxbury and the North End are only 4 miles away from each other.

Not to mention the fact that the fact that Roxbury is only 8% white is primarily due to a huge wave of white flight to the metro Boston suburbs. This happened within our parents' lifetimes. In Boston one of the largest periods of white flight happened to coincide with forced school segregation (bussing).

The east coast may be liberal politically, but it's still also racist. You can see similar themes reoccurring with the rate of gentrification and the rise of charter schools in the city.

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

#50

Post by angry-hacker »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #30
jtchang wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think the models for giving loans are racist, they are based on facts and reality.
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