Why don't black and white Americans live together? | Hacker News Reader

Why don't black and white Americans live together?

bbc.co.uk

29 pointsgadders16 comments

The article seems to suggest that latent racism from the banks, real estate agents and white buyers remains the main engine for segregation even today.

While I haven't lived in US, it seems to me segregation can persist in an unequal society even if racism is marginal: it's enough that buyers of all races observe that higher blackness is correlated with poverty. If that's the case, buyers will rationally flee black areas for the sake of property value. Black affluent buyers will flee to white areas for the same reasons, but if they are a minority they can't balance out. So depending on the correlation of home ownership with wealth (strong in the US), you get a vicious circle where black areas get blacker and their initial majority black residents become trapped there due to declining property values, with the banking and commercial sector entrenching the segregation due to risk aversion.

So once initiated, ethnic polarization is self sustaining even if the initial instigators (racism) become largely irrelevant. Poverty itself becomes the engine of segregation, so the only way to break the cycle is to promote equality.

"It may seem odd because we have stereotypes of the South, but residential segregation levels are lowest in Southern cities such as Atlanta, Houston and Dallas," she says.

...so they live together, but just in the South?

This piece had a lot to say about historical prejudice, but doesn't adequately explain why segregation persists. A single anecdote and a throw-away stat about profiling prospective home buyers don't explain things well at all.

Having lived in Baltimore for 10 years, I can say that there are multiple causes for continuing segregation. There is no satisfying way to explain it and no end in sight.

You are right that this about far more than realtors steering people one place or another.

There are historical reasons, e.g. racism embodied in the 3/5ths clause of the US Constitution. There's American mythology that racism is principally a southern flaw even though there were no Major League Baseball teams in the south when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier...unless one considers Washington D.C. a southern city and it is and was directly under the control of Congress in which since the US Civil War legislators from southern states have been in a distinct minority.

But even with free choice, it is worth considering the effects of Schelling's segregation model. Across a large population small preferences go a long way.

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

http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/demos/schelling/schell...

This article is on point.

One only needs to go to NYC's Upper East Side to see this in action. Right above the UES (Yorkville, specifically) is Spanish Harlem.

Before 96th Street? Multi-million dollar penthouses and rentals abound that will impress your friends and family guaranteed. "Gourmet organic" bodegas. Expensive-looking restaurants. Upper-middle-class creature comforts all around.

After 96th Street? Projects. Junk-food bodegas. Domestic abuse shelters. Police cameras. Unmistakeable poverty oozing through the sewers. It's frustrating to watch.

(This contrast is even more stark in much of America. My girlfriend and I went to Memphis during a road trip last year. She went to college there and wanted to show me how quickly Memphis goes from "filthy rich asshole" to "filthy shithole".

There was an approximate 2 block radius of really expensive-looking homes and tree-lined streets that bordered the college. Outside of it? Endless projects.)

It's sad but some older minority folks grew up fearing white racism or hating whites, and never wanted to integrate. Maybe it's just a small irrelevant data point, but a friend's grandmother went to her grave hating whites because her white teachers from elementary through high school would tape her mouth, and her sister's, with duct tape for hours for speaking Spanish.

The reality is that we live in a racist world, which continues to perpetuate because blacks / Browns and whites are divided, for the most part, across economic lines that will take a long time to be erased, and those economic lines create cultural lines that are harder to bridge.

According to Schelling's model even slight preference to be with your own color leads to segregation http://nifty.stanford.edu/2014/mccown-schelling-model-segreg...

Here's an interactive link illustrating the same phenomenon: http://ncase.me/polygons/

related article that I stumbled upon the other day http://goplifer.com/2016/01/02/why-i-live-in-a-white-neighbo...

"For there to be complete integration in the United States, more than half of black Americans would need to move."

...or, you know, half the white people. Or a mix of both, and maybe throw in other groups besides black and white.

I imagine it's because of fear and inconvenience.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/white-philly/?all=1

Let's not leave out the history of Sundown Towns[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

Is this a trick question?

I'm gonna go for "because the US is still a massively racist country."

Is the South less racist because it's more integrated?

The actual quote is "residential segregation levels are lowest in Southern cities such as Atlanta, Houston and Dallas" not "the South" generically.

Its easy to conclude that but suppose you're a white high-income professional who is looking for a home in Baltimore city. You have your pick of any neighborhood. Would you choose....

A) A rowhome in a squalid neighborhood beset with heroin dealing, unsupervised youth, poor upkeep, and median household income of 10K, a main street of furniture rental shops, cellphone stores and liquor stores that sell mostly "40's".

B) A gorgeous house in a neighborhood of other professionals with meticulously maintained and upgraded houses, a mainstreet with a wine bar and coffee house that makes cappuccino's with the fancy swirly foam.

Whether you're black or white, you WILL choose B if you can at all afford it. The sad truth is there aren't enough African americans who can choose B enough to change the optics of this situation.

The pattern persists partly because large cities in the united states consist of the poor or the wealthy with very little inbetween. Middle income folks go to the exburbs because they can't afford the nice parts of the cities and can't afford private school for their kids (sending your kids to public schools in the cities is completely out of the question for any family that values education).

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