Question for DUers who frequent this forum, Your neighborhood, integrated or segregated?

[roseBudd]

I figure there are 3 possible answers

Majority white

Majority black

And rarest of all

Integrated


I will start.

I live in an urban inner city neighborhood, on a street that is integrated, but the surrounding low income neighborhoods are definitely majority black. The schools are majority black.

The city I live in is considered to be in decline as for the most part white people continue their exodus to the surrounding overwhelmingly majority white exurbs.

High crime and under performing schools are cited as reasons for the migration.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

1. Extremely integrated.

NYC. ;)

[dkf]

2. More than extremely integrated - Hawaii.

[southern_belle]

3. integrated

[Yes We Did]

4. Extremely integrated!

And I LOVE it! Inner city.

[Vinca]

5. Out in the country with no other houses in sight.

No other people of any color. It's wonderful.

[rox63]

6. I technically live in an integrated city

But I'm literally right on the border of a mostly white suburb. The sign saying "Entering <suburb name here>" is right next to my driveway.

[blm]

7. Integrated - and my daughter attends a school that is 75% minority students.

And I drive her 15 minutes every day because I WANT her to be there.

[leftofcool]

8. mine is heavily integrated

Blacks, Whites, Asians, and Hispanics. I am really pissed at the Hispanic couple in the downstairs condo. I can smell it when she cooks what I presume to be some of the most fabulous meals and she has yet to invite us for dinner. She has to go!

[Wickerman]

9. For Southern Minnesota we are pretty integrated

We have Norweigians, Swedes AND Germans in my neighborhood! Actually, we are nearly all white, but have a few families of color in our corner of the small town.

Moving back to MN from South Texas was a real shock to my senses. It is SO incredibly, boringly white.

[LSparkle]

10. Sorry to break the streak but ... pretty segregated

I live in suburban Los Angeles -- my city is majority white but there are
a sizeable number of Latino residents and, over the past few years, I've been
seeing more blacks and Armenians as well.

[tridim]

11. Integrated condo complex in "mostly white" Denver.

We're white, black and Latino (with immigrants and gays too) and we all like each other. It's craziness I tell you!

[sorrybushisfromtexas]

18. integrated probably 65%

white, 20 % Hispanic, 15% black. It is about what each group makes up in the country.
Teach at a magnet school, that is in a hispanic gang area, probably 50% white, 35% hispanic, 15% black.

We beat the other schools in town on our state tests hands down. We do not teach to the test either. We beat the pants off the school that is about 93% white.

[MannyGoldstein]

12. Fairly Integrated

Newton, MA on the Brighton border. We have a little of everything in the neighborhood, ethnic-wise. Our immediate neighborhood is slightly upscale, but a block away is more middle income. Four blocks in one direction is subsidized housing, while four blocks in the other direction are scary mansions. Very, very safe in the neighborhood.

[msongs]

13. how bout the 4th way - including asians and latinos as people too nt

[roseBudd]

22. Because the US's history of segragation & resegregating involving white flight ocuurs at a

black/white proportion tipping point.

Any one know the percentages?

[Breeze54]

31. It's now "poor flight of all colors" due to lack of affordable housing in the cities.

The "all white suburbs" are becoming a thing of the past and the poverty levels in the suburbs is rising.

[Terran]

Somewhat integrated

A rare mixed neighborhood in a mostly white small town.

[DURHAM D]

14. I live in a small integrated suburb /community that mirrors my city.

About 40-45% white, 40% AA, 14% Hispanics, a few Asians and a couple of families from the mideast. No Native Americans that I know of - except when my family comes to visit. Oh, and one lesbian - me.

[snooper2]

15. very integrated..

30 something single white lady next door..

older retired black couple across the street...

Hispanic family with you kids across street from side of house ( I am on the corner )

Old white dude with little yappy puppy caty-corner ( however you spell that )

Hispanic Family behind my house across the Alley...

loud Italian family next door to them...


Oh, This is in East Plano...Medium home $110-150 thousand...

[zabet]

16. Integrated rural.

African-Americans, Hispanics,
Native-Americans and Whites.

[CreekDog]

17. Integrated

has been integrated for 30 years.

[cali]

19. I live in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom

Not a lot of diversity here.

[gaspee]

20. fairly integrated...

as far as my state goes. I'm in a pretty white state, RI. Twenty years ago, my graduating class had two black students (who happened to be my next door neighbors) and zero Hispanics 1 Asian family and 1 East Indian family.

Now, the very same high school (I live around the corner from it) has at least 10% minority students. When I went there, around 25% of the student body was Jewish, that's probably still about the same.

I live in a very blue color suburb of Providence. I don't notice any kind of hostility toward Black people or Asian people, but I do notice all kinds of hostility toward non-English speaking whites.

Quite a difference from San Francisco when I lived by Alamo square Park.

[Skidmore]

21. We live in a group of seven rural villages and total population of about 500 peple.

The villages are majority white, with about 10 black people (a couple families are biracial, mine included), a couple of Hispanic families, and maybe 2 or 3 Native American families. Recently, an Asian family moved in down the road. I've seen them but we haven't had an opportunity to meet them yet. So for rural white Iowa, I'd say we're as integrated as it gets, unless you want to count the ratio of Germans to Czechs.

[roseBudd]

35. But you have to admit some areas of the country ARE overwhelmingly majority white

[BooScout]

23. I live in a village of around 180000....sort of integrated...

We have a majority of white Welsh people here, but also have people from all over - Poland, Italy, English, Pakistan, India, China, and even a few Americans thrown in, etc.

Up until a couple of years ago I lived in Decatur, GA. It was very integrated. African Americans, White Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, etc. It also has a large gay community as well as many others from all over the world. I think Dekalb county in metropolitian Atlanta is listed as one of the most diverse areas in the US.

[SeattleGirl]

24. Very integrated.

Whites, blacks, Hispanics, Philippino's, Vietnamese, Native American, Middle Eastern, East Indian.

[jzodda]

25. Majority white

Hardly any other race lives in this town unless you want to define Jewish as a race over religion as my town is about 40% Jewish. I think the last census in this town that's part of Westchester county NY had a minority population of 4%. The town is considered exclusive I guess, lots of rich snobs living here. The taxes are way to high and people try very hard to move here so they can get into the school district.

[Jamastiene]

26. Where I live now is mostly white.

The neighborhood where I grew up was integrated in about equal parts every race you can imagine. Oddly enough, that neighborhood is only 3 miles away. It's in the city limits. Where I live now is in that 1 mile radius around the city limits that they call EJT. I think that means extended jurisdiction territory or something to that effect.

[Hepburn]

27. I live in a Heinz 57 neighborhood, IMO

This is a seniors development. We have some African Americans, but not a lot ~~ maybe 10% - 15% are AA. However, I would say that we are pretty equally divided among the remainder of the residents who are comprised of whites, Hispanics and Asian Americans. As to religions, there seem to be atheists, Catholics, Jews, Christians, and a few Wiccans.

Kind of a Heinz 57 place, IMO. :hi:

So, I am not sure what to call all us old people living in one Seniors development in South Bay, SoCal, as to integrated or whatever. It has more to do with age around here than with color or religion.

[Breeze54]

28. I guess mine is integrated but the majority are white homeowners.

My place is being sold; so, of the two buildings (6 townhouses each) before people started moving out; the other building had a Muslim family, a Mexican family, a family from Czechoslovakia? and a family from Lebanon in the last 6 years at least. There are AA renters and home owners (right down the street from me - Husband is Rastafarian with dreadlocks/she drives a school bus and both are Dems) and they own a business selling AA Art items, jewelry, and trinkets in town. The town has Greek and Italian (from Italy) pizza shops, a Korean Nail Salon, a Vietnamese restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, three convenience stores run/owned by people from India and Lebanon. I have oriental neighbors in a few houses down the street. For a very small town, I'd say we were integrated. The town also has a Muslim/ Islam worship/commune place, sort of like a temple and they teach Yoga too! Oh, and my mail woman is Muslim (I think?) and wears a turban on her head all the time. She's very sweet. ;) Most towns around me, in the suburbs, seem integrated to me. Some more than others I guess and I've lived in cities on the AA side of town, so I know the difference. I've lived all over the country. Is that integrated enough? :shrug: :P

[EFerrari]

29. My hood looks like the UN. I love it here.

I was raised in a segregated town in Silicon Valley -- and, I didn't even realize it until I was in my 20s.

On the other hand, San Francisco under the present administration is getting increasingly gentrified and we have to fight tooth and nail to keep from losing low income housing. It's a continuing battle as one DUer neighbor of mine knows very well.

THANKS, CHRIS DALY, FOR FIGHTING FOR OUR NEIGHBORS! We owe you, big time.

[XemaSab]

30. Hispanic with white gentrification

:shrug:

[Nay]

32. Suburban Richmond, very integrated. Prob 1/3 white, 1/3 black,

the rest: Vietnamese, Korean, Saudi Arabian, Hispanic. Not all neighborhoods are like this in Richmond, but this one is. We are actually in the county, not the city, because the schools are better -- downtown Richmond suffers from crummy schools, just like most city centers. Some of the other surrounding counties are pretty bad, too.

[cameozalaznick]

33. You forgot one -- plurality white

My community is plurality white at about 40 percent. The other 60 are a mix of black, hispanic, asian and south asian. But no one group is more than 50 percent

[roseBudd]

34. "Segregation is not something that happens by chance, like weather conditions,

http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/09/22/kozol/

"It is the work of men." So it is not without irony that it has taken a hurricane -- and the excruciating images of stranded black faces, beamed across cable airwaves -- for Americans to confront the reality that vast numbers of their fellow citizens live in segregated ghettos and suffer from abject poverty. But for Kozol, who has built his career on exposing the race- and class-based injustices endemic to the United States' educational system, the knowledge that we live in a deeply divided society has long been a foregone -- if heartbreaking -- conclusion.

snip

The America Kozol describes in "Shame" is in essence an apartheid state. White suburban districts receive disproportionate funding and praise, while inner-city schools that serve minorities are denied equitable federal aid, threatened by repressive testing mandates, and drained of creativity and joy. The book is also something of a polemic. Kozol accuses the Bush administration of implementing sinister educational policies in which rote memorization is valued more than imagination and children are treated as capitalist commodities to be molded into an army of obedient entry-level workers. Using the voices of dissatisfied students and teachers as a rallying cry, Kozol calls upon "decent citizens" of all political stripes to rise up against social and educational segregation -- and reclaim the ideals of the civil rights movement.

snip

Do you think the media is afraid of race?

Most newspapers, with a few notable exceptions, have a far greater interest in defending civic image and civic stability than in removing the cancer of segregation from the body of American democracy. It would cause them a lot of problems if they attacked school segregation in their own communities head-on, because then they'd also have to attack residential segregation. That would mean shining the spotlight directly at the prime architects of residential apartheid -- major banks, lending institutions and realty firms. A large amount of the advertising revenues for newspapers comes from real estate.


I couldn't help thinking as I was reading your book that one unexpected outcome of Hurricane Katrina has been that it has revealed to Americans the state of poverty and segregation in their country, and given a pretty clear picture of what happens when the privileged desert the powerless.

Yes, it's a lot easier for white folks of good conscience to acquiesce in the immiseration of thousands of black and Latino children if we keep them at a distance. To me, segregation is not simply a demographic dilemma or some kind of a bureaucratic mistake -- it is a conscious, deliberate and morally intolerable form of social policy. It doesn't happen by accident, it's not like a weather pattern. American segregation has been created by men and will only be undone by the acts of men and women. And that's why this book calls for another passionate political upheaval in this country. I hope I live to see it. I think there is a huge, untapped political restlessness in young people today, especially young teachers. And the teachers are the best witnesses to this crime because they see it in front of their eyes every day. You can't tell them that apartheid is a vestige of the past; you can't buy them off with sentimental stories of black kids crossing the color line 40 years ago.

[robbedvoter]

36. Integrated - NYC. Good mix of everyone in my building, neighborhood, school

[Redstone]

37. The only integrated neighborhood in a lily-white, wealthy town.

Redstone

[anonymeme]

38. Integrated. And One Block Away From An Integrated Middle School.

Integrated. And One Block Away From An Integrated Middle School.

If you take a 10 block square area around my home, the concentration of one race or the other varies from one being dominant to the other, but the overall mixture is just plain integrated.

But I'm curious, why do you ask?

[IndependentDem]

39. lower-middle class apartments-- mostly white i would say 60/40 n/t

[goletian]

40. it can be majority one thing and still be integrated.

my neighborhood is majority white but i consider it integrated.

[zalinda]

41. It's so integrated that it's like living in the UN

It has a cultural fair every year. And, just down the street is just about every nationality of food. It's a real university area.

zalinda

[stillcool]

42. Dalmation...

Clusters of white and black neighborhoods that make up the community. And freckles in some places.