Why don't black and white Americans live together? • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by acchow » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 8:57 PM UTC

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.

This is why schools should be funded evenly per student by the state or federal government. Not municipal.

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

#72

Post by neaden » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

dismantlethesun wrote: post #69

neaden wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if there is another way. It's a worthy goal, and I'm not opposed to the government being involved. The part that seems the most questionable to me was the steering of Black families to not live next to each other, spreading them out in the city. I understand why it was done but it just seems so controlling and paternalistic.

That's how desegregation of schools occurred---bussing black children to far off neighbourhoods. It was paternalistic, but I think it was less looked down upon because it acted on actual children instead of adults.

Agreed. It is also amazing to think about what would happen if a city were to try to do something like this today. I think it could never happen and it would be all over the national media.

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

#73

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

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.…

The above post was with somewhat old data; I downloaded the relevant database from california, and using the most recent numbers (2014) updated things[1]. There are fewer schools because I originally included schools that were not geographically based, as we are talking about geographic segregation. The blue dots correspond to % hispanic students, the pink is % qualifying for free/reduced school lunch, and yellow is % English learners. The Y axis is state standardized test scores.

There are now not any schools with less than 20% hispanic student populations (there is still a charter school with under 20% hispanic, but it was excluded per above), but there is a huge hole between 45% and 75% hispanic, and 6 out of 10 are 80% or more hispanic. If children were assigned randomly to these schools, one would expect a normal distribution around the population mean.

And to clarify, all of these schools are within a single school district and pull from the same funding source.

1: http://imgur.com/a/8iLt9

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

#74

Post by clock_tower » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 9:56 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #2

The maps led me to wondering what a similar diagram of cities in the UK would look like, and I found a map of England and Wales with dots coloured by race. It's much more mixed. Where black/white/asian areas still exist the boundaries tend to be pretty blurred. http://projects.andrewwhitby.com/uk-ethnicity-map/

In the UK's case, I'd think that you'd see relatively little race-based self-segregation but a lot of class-based; I've always heard that the UK is classist but not very racist, and that non-whites tend to be higher-class than a lot of the locals.

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

#75

Post by clock_tower » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

wppick wrote: post #46

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…

Genetic? Cultural is more likely. American blacks are mostly descended from Ibo and Ibibo from Biafra -- the best peoples in Black Africa, the market-dominant minority of the whole Gold Coast, a dynamic, energetic, ambitious group -- but they came down with a case of redneck-ism in their long stay in the South, and middle- or upper-class whites don't live among rednecks any more than they live among blacks.

You see a lot of white-on-white conflicts that look almost exactly like white-on-black ones wherever hillbillies and non-hillbillies try to coexist -- particularly in the southern Rust Belt, where it's common for Catholic ethnics to be the middle class and hillbillies/rednecks the former factory hands. I'd recommend reading _Hillbilly Elgy_, Thomas Sowell's _Black Rednecks and White Liberals_, and of course _Albion's Seed_ for details. Jim Webb also had some essays on this subject, before he was elected to Congress; he had plans to unite hillbillies and blacks as a single interest group, and I'm not sure if that would have been a good idea or a bad one.

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

#76

Post by clock_tower » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 10:32 PM UTC

awesomerobot wrote: post #49

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…

Nitpick: "White" is too coarse-grained for the North End; it's an ethnically mixed area near the end of gentrification, with SWPL elites displacing the native South Italians...

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

#77

Post by Larrikin » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 11:12 PM UTC

wppick wrote: post #46

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…

That article doesn't address other racial groups, but I found this article just as interesting since many of the reasons for white/black racial segregation in the US are pretty well studied.

https://psmag.com/ghosts-of-white-people-past-witnessing-whi...

White flight happens the other way as well when there are "too many" Asians in a neighborhood.

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

#78

Post by slededit » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 11:13 PM UTC

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/

This analysis clearly doesn't explain everything. If you move bias over to 100% and run the random move simulation segregation quickly falls below 10%. If the simulation were an accurate view of the world the take-away would be everyone should become more biased to prevent segregation, a nonsensical result.

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

#79

Post by gravypod » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 11:20 PM UTC

andreasklinger wrote: post #13

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.

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

I have relatives who have lived in Harlem and Bronx. I'd say that NYC and NJ aren't separated by race but by economic status.

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

#80

Post by gravypod » Thu, Sep 22, 2016, 11:22 PM UTC

Acanthae wrote: post #26

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.

Yes that is where my comment stems from: my personal experience. On my street alone I have black, Hispanic, Italian, Muslim, and Asian neighbors of approximately even distributions. In my school the mix was similar.