Self-segregation: how a personalized world is dividing Americans | Hacker News Reader

Self-segregation: how a personalized world is dividing Americans

theguardian.com

77 pointssergeant378 comments

One of my friends in the military has described to me the role of "acceptable racism", and I find it noteworthy. Many stories he has are of people teasing each other about race. Most of the conversations would be wholly unacceptable in civilian life, but there is a required camaraderie in the military that creates an undertone of understanding and respect. That is, the missing feature of civilian life that prevents this is the implicit understanding that "if shit happens, I've got your back".

The "media" (in quotes because that term continues to grow in breadth) is largely to blame for the toxic culture around diversity of thought and respect for those with different experiences than oneself. It manufactures fear and outrage. People cling to fear and outrage, and the first step to fixing self-selecting segregation is to combat uneducated fear and outrage. I don't mean to say that we all need to love each other and get along, but we do need to engage, and not use headlines/taglines/tweets to inform our outrage at one another.

the role of "acceptable racism"

Coming from experience, there is no alternative to "accepting" racism (or sexism) in the military. If a superior officer or enlisted personnel makes a racist/sexist joke directly at me, I had no option but to take it. Then the others in the platoon see that's perfectly acceptable, and they do it to. Any criticism of this "acceptable" behavior is brutally handled as being as a morale killer (notwithstanding my own morale), and can be responded with everything from minor shunning (no help up a difficult sand hill), through medium consequences (being left alone on post, then blamed by the others for abandoning post, leading to disciplinary action), all the way through courts martial for trumped up charges (because it's your word vs the superior officer's).

implicit understanding that "if shit happens, I've got your back"

Note that this is generally explicit. Unfortunately, it can be more like, "If we're in the field, and shit happens, I got your back, because otherwise we both die, but when we're back at base, you're on your own".

Make no mistake, that "undertone of understanding and respect" comes at a cost, just as many other social circles, it is concreted by pushing out "the other".

> If a superior officer or enlisted personnel makes a racist/sexist joke directly at me, I had no option but to take it

You could report it to their commander. If they don't listen, then report it to their commander, and so on. You could also report it to your named equality officer (that's a UK thing, probably US as well if that's where you're from), or the padre.

Formations also have their own equality officers and padres, so you can go out of the unit if you need to.

In the US we, generally, make Chaplains available.

They are a good option for this sort of thing. Though I would have to agree with dsp1234's overall assessment of the situation with respect to racism and sexism in the military. It is what it is. But there is someone you can speak with about it.

> You could report it to their commander. If they don't listen, then report it to their commander, and so on.

Sounds like a great way to get retaliated against.

We are a pretty diverse group at work and we do a lot of teasing with racial stereotypes. I think it's a lot of fun as long as there is an underlying level of respect. This is much better than the thought policing a lot of people do.

Edit: You also learn a lot about each other this way. A Latino person who grew in an inner city has a different lifestory than someone grew up in the Midwest and it's nice to hear that.

I think it's a lot of fun as long as there is an underlying level of respect. This is much better than the thought policing a lot of people do.

Fun? For whom???

Even among my closest friends I have no time, nor the patience to entertain or accept any amount of racism or racist thought. I tend to think of it less as "thought-policing" and view it more along the lines of "You're my friend and you're carrying about with behavior born from an established history where the roots of that very behavior resulted in people like me (Black people) being treated as second-class at best, sub-human at worst".

A few of them every now and then try to sneak in a black joke when in company and we're having drinks, joking about various absurdities in the world and believe it or not but my friends know me well enough to know all I have to do is glare at them in a certain way-when that glare comes out they know "Okay that comment crosses a line".

You may consider it extreme or a bit "much" because to you it's "a lot of fun", and that's certainly your prerogative but after a lifetime trying to prove not just to myself but people I work with that I am more than my skin color

...well, any amounts of behavior that bucks against that is not any shade of fun, and for someone who embodies the spirit of transcending treating race as something so cavalier, to me it definitely isn't "thought policing". It's asking to be treated like my lived condition matters as much as yours so as not to be reduced to a damn punchline.

(Tangent: https://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/death+of+a+tho...)

From my experience most ethnic groups or countries have some quirky traditions and habits. Germans have weird/funny habits and beliefs, Austrians do, Hispanic people do and all other groups of people do. I have no problem with people asking me what's up with Germans running around naked in parks in Munich or how I feel about the Nazi time and I like to talk to Indians how crazy I think their traffic is or what the deal is with arranged marriage. To me that's showing respect because we treat each other like real people and not some fragile beings that are offended all the time.

To me that's showing respect because we treat each other like real people and not some fragile beings that are offended all the time.

Agreed, and there's definitely a benefit to discussing with members outside of your ethnic/racial/cultural group their traditions comparatively with yours for mutual understanding and respect for the benefit of coming closer together as people.

It's not however the same as "joking" about the delineations between race and culture or otherwise trivializing them in one way or another; and it should be noted, that I make that distinction as a counter-point because while I definitely hear you on this phenomenon and will even go so far as to concede agreement, your point is very-and uncomfortably-often used as a feigned concession when a member of a certain ethnic group or minority points out how instances of out group or members of an out group x talk about unique aspects of said ethnic group/minority either (A) come up offensively short of lived reality or (B) are just prima face offensive.

Edit: I'm not saying that's what you're doing, by the way. That accusation isn't being lobbied, the behavior is being held to a spotlight however for the sake of discussing this further-for which I'm privileged to be doing with you today.

I hear you. Just one point: Keep a sense of humor and cut people some slack.

Well I try my hand at stand-up comedy on the weekends, even got a few chuckles a few times, so no worries there :P

Everything needs balance of course. The problem is that so many people are afraid of the consequences for not being PC enough that conversation just shuts down and everyone goes back into their groups. Sensitivity to a joke can be for everything, from racial attacks to attacking language functional purity. I think when it comes to black people specifically, there is a legacy and history of oppression, so that warrants some sensitivity for certain jokes (hanging from trees, etc.), but as an islander, I don't get too offended when people make silly jokes about it. The importance is that there is, as GP says, an underlying level of respect.

Not that I haven't been in company where I don't feel there is that level of respect, I've been around perfectly PC squeaky clean people who with nicer words and actions motion their lack of respect. A joke is less of a threat to me than a person who fundamentally doesn't respect me as a person.

PC-ness is all about hiding the symptoms and not addressing the cause, and at least in some cases has hurt those who work for social justice.

> Everything needs balance of course.

No, not everything. e.g. scientific facts don't need to be balanced with self-serving quackery.

>PC-ness is all about hiding the symptoms and not addressing the cause

I don't consider myself racist or sexist. I don't believe I've lost anything by being inhibited from making racist or sexist jokes. I've lost literally nothing.

I presume that racists/sexists will continue to be so, whether they make such jokes or not. I also very strongly suspect that they'll still be identifiable as such by their other actions. However, if someone is not acting in any way that could be construed as racist/sexist, then what they are thinking in the privacy of their heads is irrelevant. The important outcome is to ensure that others are not disadvantaged through racism/sexism.

If we are to be judged on our thoughts, then very few would be judged well. That's why we judge on deeds. And speech is a deed.

>We are a pretty diverse group at work and we do a lot of teasing with racial stereotypes. I think it's a lot of fun as long as there is an underlying level of respect. This is much better than the thought policing a lot of people do.

That's the way offices were when I started working, and everyone was happier. If you're doing that in the US today eventually someone's gonna call a lawyer, which is why people do the thought policing.

>I think it's a lot of fun as long as there is an underlying level of respect. This is much better than the thought policing a lot of people do.

That sounds like you're saying "These jokes are fine so long as you have the same worldview underneath". So instead of thought policing, you want to be policing people's underlying attitudes? How is that different?

Regarding racism in the military, I encourage you to read the story of Danny Chen - http://nymag.com/news/features/danny-chen-2012-1/

"Acceptable racism" kills.

It isnt just racism. Sexism is also on the rise. I blame the post-9/11 soldier cult. Soldiers are placed on an increasingly higher shelf. Thier actions are seen as so essential as to be above lay judgement. At a large scale that lack of checks leads to war crimes and other evils, but at an individual scale it gives rise to sexism and racism. Young soldiers come to see their every action as either sanctioned or beyond the standards of public norms. That needs to he quashed.

The canadian military, after several incidents including one base commander/serial killer (google that, it was CFB Trenton) is actively going after sexism and other abuse. Thier second in command was recently suspended over what is presumed to be an abuse allegation. The message is that soldiers actions will be scrutinized to the same or greater extent than civilians, not less. The US needs to follow thier lead by cracking down asap.

That "if shit happens, I've got your back" is so missing from civilian life is what has been so destructive to our societies. We are actually all in this together as a country, and every day our fates grow more entwined as a world, yet we allow ourselves to be divided in so many ways. We need to find a new way to build trust rather then only destroying it as the news media has done. Maybe the problem is of timescales. In the past a lack of trust would spell disaster in short order. The same is true in your example, in the military trust of your fellow soldier is required for survival. But today societies have grown strong and large enough that some can foreseeably survive for a generation or more without widespread trust. So the incentive for individuals to be trustworthy in the broadest sense has diminished immensely.

I am too dump to get through this hipster's mental constructs.

Segregation is a fundamental principle in societies and even nature in general. Likes tend to stay with likes, likes attracts likes. Culture, age, social or professional specialization there are countless ways everything segregates. And segregation and specialization is good. In the social context we see castes and chinatowns since the beginning of time, and in the biological context we see tissues - a homogeneous community of specialized cells.

The utopists (and mere naive idiots) who believe in some voluntarily unsegregated society of brothers and sisters, which never emerged by itself in the history of mankind, are, well, idiots. Even forced unsegregated social groups does not last and always has tensions and issues.

So, why don't we just accept the fact that some academic humanists and social theorists are ignorant, naive self-deluded dreamers, who are ignoring certain aspects of actual reality.

So called self-segregation is a non-term. It is a default, biological norm. Species who do not live in packs and families are self-segregated. Even inside the family there are specialization and segregation by age. What these hipsters are talking about?

They are talking being able to segregate yourselves via the internet - local segregation, while a real thing, still exposes you to a variety of view points. Self-segregation via the internet exposes you to a pool 1000x (very conservative here) or more than what's available locally, without too much effort. It's a problem of both how specialized you can get and how easily it can be achieved.

You could compare normal/traditional self-segregation to approximating a data set. Self-segregation is akin to overfitting a data set.

If every biological norm is a non-term, we might as well stop talking about desire and fear while we're at it.

I buy you argument that self-segregation is in some ways our default, but this doesn't mean we can't exacerbate, and potentially ameliorate it, with technology. Sometimes this has to do with completely new mediums, but even the specific implementation of existing platforms can have a tremendous impact.

Reddit, for example, is completely capable of designing an algorithm that clusters articles by viewpoint and penalizes new posts similar to too many existing ones.

I'm curious how you went from the observation of segregation as a characteristic of nature to the value judgement "segregation and specialization is good" Your entire argument is a naturalistic fallacy -> just because segregation is a human tendency doesn't make it the ideal state; inequality is a human tendency, as is crime. sidenote: drop the superiority complex, labeling those who don't agree with you "naive idiots" and "hipsters?" is just lazy and close minded

Maybe you need to accept the segregation between people who care about these things and yourself?

Segregation can be fine...as long as governance follows. Unfortunately we don't have entities like "Federation of Cities" or "Rural Alliance", or "Republic of r/The_Donald" to provide governance or services, so for the time being we're stuck with each other.

It's a social evolution, sexism, racism, and homophobia are all much less accepted now than they were in the past. Eventually we will get rid of these bad and destructive traits of segregation based on nothing more than looks.

Unfortunately that time is not now.

Everytime this gets brought up, I feel it fails to address the question "How is this overly different than the pre-internet area?". I can understand the disappointment as to the failure of the Internet to deliver on the utopia we expected in the 90s, and there's a fantastic lecture on the idea of "the end of mainstream" (I will edit and add a link if I can dig it up) and how that's removed a lot of the old universal cultural touchstones (which despite being universal tended to be very exclusionary which is what fueled the explosion of niche communities online in the first place).

I wasn't alive to comment, but I can't imagine the second half of the 20th century a booming time where you interacted with people outside of you geographic community (which generally shared your political, religious, and social beliefs). I know many of my parents old friends still live ~20miles from where they grew up and that's not overly uncommon. Put into that context it makes theses pieces on dividing Americans seem a little silly. Divided is the default state and has been since the nation's inception as a loose collection of independent governments.

I don't think it is overly different, but that doesn't mean the magnitude may have changed (and the divide accelerated.)

It's kind of like going from silly Pepsi vs. Coke differences to grouping everyone and everything in your world into a huge group of "us vs. them" - everything is on your side or the other side. Obama and Trump. Second Amendment. Abortion. It's all "us vs. them" in one big foggy war, and the stakes are high for all of us.

I think you make a good point there, and it's something that always bothered me about the typical left-right or urban-rural or facebook-echo-chamber explanation.

I do think all these things play a role, but as you say, it's not like we lived in wonderful diversity before these things.

Personally I think what changed, and the article does a good job highlighting that (which made it refreshing to me), is that the degree of our diversity (or lack thereof) has changed. In the army, or college, or church, you're forced to become close (or at least get to know somewhat intimately) many people who are potentially very different from yourself, lottery-style. There's a whole spectrum between that and the 'bubble' many of us live in these days (in part caused by the internet).

There has always been segregation, we've always had a preference for friends and social groups that are relatively 'close' to us in various aspects. What changed, perhaps, is that we now have to luxury of avoiding 'others' almost entirely, where in past, through church and army and so on, we had to have meaningful (if not close) relationships to those 'others'.

What has changed is social media. Where people used to sit in front of their TV and fed their daily dose of what they believe after an exhausting day at work they no longer do that. Instead they are plugged into their phones all waking hours where people like them are reinforcing their beliefs. So they come to believe that their opinions are not as out there. They feel less aliened and more empowered. So they think they can voice themselves how they want. And for blue collar workers, that has meant that they have taken over politics. And the elite don't know how to stop them. How to control and socially engineer social media. This was not possible without the Internet.

I remember learning about how in its early days, Singapore forced integration in its HDB flats (most of sg's population live in such flats). After attempts at integration in the US, we had white flight and now this as mentioned in the article, while sg is probably the model multicultural society.

I hate it because I am anti-authoritarian as most Americans are, but it's interesting to see the differences in results. Regardless, it's not like multicultural/diverse America is a failure, we are, for example, much more diverse and respecting of other cultures as say Japan or Korea.

If my neighbor is poor or black or gay, I have no or little reason to care; if my neighbor is involved in petty crime or is causing a nuisance I want nothing to do with him. In general black people are/were poorer and poor people (regardless of gender) are more likely to be involved in crime.

My suspicious is that Singapore was able to integrate because they are also super though on crime and the whites who were racists couldn't go anywhere else and so had to deal, while those whites who weren't racists didn't have to deal with increased crime.

Alternatively Singapores reputation as a model multicultural society isn't as true as it seems.

It's interesting how you've followed not one but two lossy indirections here to get to your (implied) comfort with ostracizing black people.

(If I've misjudged the subtext, please both let me know any accept my apologies in advance!)

I see that I wrote regardless of gender, which should have been regardless of race. I don't personally have any issues with people based on the color of their skin, but it would be mindlessly stupid to assume that was generally the case that long ago, when it is not even the case now.

> I remember learning about how in its early days, Singapore forced integration in its HDB flats (most of sg's population live in such flats). After attempts at integration in the US, we had white flight and now this as mentioned in the article, while sg is probably the model multicultural society.

Have you ever met Singaporeans? My best from college was from Singapore (of Indian origin), from what he told me, it's a very culturally segregated society. Keep in mind Singapore supports English, Tamil, Chinese and Malay. Ethnic Malays and Tamils will not learn Mandarin unless they really need to, and govt push for Mandarin could only lead to more resentment among these ethnolinguistic minorities.

Singapore is not a democracy, so that's another reason why you can't or won't see the problems of the society just from the surface.

When the govt forces these measures on the society, the end result is never pretty. When immigrants come to America, they integrate at their own pace. If I came to America with my family, chances are I'd have spoken my mother tongue for a lot longer than I did. I switched to English (speaking, reading, writing, and thinking) within the first two years. My wife on the other hand who came here with her family, she spoke a lot of Russian until she married me (nearly 18 years after being in US). Not just that, her family now speaks a lot more English (and a lot better).

Whenever govt tries to 'impose' integration, people feel threatened that someone else is trying to steal their stuff (in this case, their culture, their identity), whereas under freedom they willingly do things differently, they willingly adopt other values or give away their identity.

President Charles Heston couldn't have sold as many guns as President Obama did. Because of Obama, people suddenly feel that Second Amendment is very precious.

If your son does not have any friends, then by kidnapping some kids from his class and forcing them to attend your son's birthday party won't make them be friends with your son, instead it would simply make them resent him more.

My SO is singaporean. I will admit I've never lived there for more than a month, but I plan on moving there to live with her after I finish my PhD. I don't know what you mean by "very culturally segregated," my experience there the couple of times I've been there is it's not as integrated as say it sounds like it was in the 60's, but it is significantly more diverse and integrated than it is here in the US. Mostly, people of different cultures do interact with each other quite a bit and there is a level of comfort the different races have which each other which is not the case in the US.

This is just me, but I feel more comfortable there. It may sound silly, but people have a nicer and less judgemental stare than what I get in certain neighborhoods in the US. Also, regarding their authoritarianism, what I've learned from my gf is that it just is their culture to be more submissive to authority. I did not get this sense that everyone was on the edge of their seats to start a racewar or revolution or that there were issues "beneath the surface." A couple of people complain about foreigners, but that is mainly non-singaporeans of all races, not really "those Indians" or "those Malays."

I do agree on cultural ground though that an authoritarian state would be counter-productive for the US, as I alluded to earlier.

>Regardless, it's not like multicultural/diverse America is a failure

Increased diversity correlates with a reduction in life satisfaction, national wealth, and life expectancy: http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/11/30/wha...

Correlation vs Causation.

I googled the list of the most ethnically diverse countries:

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

You don't think that having an average income of $1 - $2 thousand a year and living in some of the most dangerous and least developed countries in the world has anything to do with wealth, life satisfaction, and expectancy?

I also notice that the most happy countries in the world are all significantly more diverse than the US, so it would appear that the US needs to double it's diversity index in order to crack the top ten of happy countries if we go by the logic of that hateful and biassed site.

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

>I also notice that the most happy countries in the world are all significantly more diverse than the US

Am I reading the chart wrong? Or do you have a definition for "diversity". At first glance it doesn't look like it would be racial diversity. When one of your countries has a popular "avoid accidental incest" app.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/iceland-incest-app

Iceland is an outlier because the entire country is very isolated and has the population of a small city.

The point I was trying to make is other factors than diversity skew those statistics, not that diverse countries are happier. I was being facetious.

The website that was posted tries to find negative statistics to perpetuate it's agenda and doesn't bother to quantify the information or look for other causes, it's closed minded, hateful, selfish, and harmful.

>I was being facetious.

Ah.

One thing interesting that just now popped out at me while looking at the page for the "Happiness Index". In most ordinary lists, you wouldn't have any graphic, but Wikipedia has put the countries flag as an icon next to the text. Eight of the top ten happiest countries has a flag with a cross in it. The two outliers are Canada and the Netherlands. Apparently the Canadian flag had St. Georges cross on it until 1957.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Canada#Flags_used_in_C...

It's no surprise that the countries which are happiest are either from Northern Europe or are former British colonies. They are all wealthy, developed, educated, have low instances of religion, and are left leaning with tax payer funded healthcare, education, etc.

I wonder how many countries that Queen Elizabeth is monarch of don't have union jacks on their flags. I can think of Canada and Jamaica, but there's bound to be more in the Caribbean and Pacific.

>I also notice that the most happy countries in the world are all significantly more diverse than the US

If you look at the percent of whites that's not anywhere close to true.

Wait, you consider Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Netherlands, NZ, Sweden, Israel, Austria, etc. to be "diverse"? Were they miserable places to live until the last decade of non-European immigration? Of course not, they've been leading the world in quality of life for half a century.

They were always happy and safe. The effects of mass immigration are just starting to show. For example, in Sweden the police advise women to not go outdoors alone: http://newobserveronline.com/swedish-women-dont-go-outside/

Almost half are afraid to go outside after dark now: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/03/04/scared-sweden-alm...

In an Orwellian twist, the Swedish government now refuses to provide crime statistics for immigrants: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/01/18/sweden-blocks-dat...

Such progress!

You think European settlement of New Zealand and Jewish settlement of Israel were not mass migration?

Yes! It's always bad! What's happening in Palestine is unacceptable and it's very obvious what Israel is doing. Same goes for China and Tibet.

So you're saying the mass migration of Europeans to America was bad as well? Glad we've cleared that up.

Bad for whom? I don't think you're going to find any intelligent people who will agree that mass migration of Europeans to the Americas was a good thing for the people living in the Americas at the time. It was a complete disaster for them. What exactly is your point here?

Same thing for New Zealand and Australia: those migrations have not been beneficial to the Maoris or Aborigines.

So you're saying that because you took what you wanted now no one else is allowed any? That is called pulling up the ladder behind you. It is extremely selfish.

I also wouldn't group the Maori with Aboriginies or the Indigenous peoples of America, sure European settlement was bad for them and we as a society are still struggling with the fallout of that, but Maori were always equal under law and could vote from the first elections. Where land was taken by force the government has now redressed the damage and either returned the land, equivalent land, or money and assets of equivalent value.

The American government on the other hand took trillions of dollars worth of assets from the Native American tribes and forced them to live in sub-par reservations, some are still living in third world conditions, they couldn't vote until the 1960s in some states. That is not the way for a civilised society to run.

>So you're saying that because you took what you wanted now no one else is allowed any? That is called pulling up the ladder behind you. It is extremely selfish.

Please point out where I said any such thing.

Edit: stupid Windows cut-and-paste failed on my quoted text, fixed.

Sorry if I misunderstood, I thought it was implied that you were defending the racists from earlier in the conversation.

Call it what you want: I'm both agreeing with you (who said that mass migration by Europeans to the Americas was bad) and with the other guy who said that what's going on in Palestine is wrong.

Simply put, I can't think of a single example where a mass migration of people turned out to be a good thing for the people already living in the destination. If it's "racist" to claim that the Native American societies suffered horribly (and many were completely obliterated) as a result of European colonization, then so be it.

It's weird, I've somehow gone from a leftist to a racist right-winger in just a few years without changing my opinions at all. It used to be that recognizing the tragedy that was European migration to the Americas was more a sign of someone of a more liberal persuasion. Nowadays it seems the opposite is the case, only the "racists" feel a sense of shame about what our European ancestors did to the Natives. Weird.

You're opinion is correct. I completely misunderstood your position based on the previous conversations I have had.

The problem is that you're missing context on the other guys position, and the "conversation" that had gone on between us previously. His idea is that white people are inherently superior and therefore have the right to take what they want at the expense of others. He threw all sorts of nonsense statistics at me in an earlier comment.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I see, sorry for my misunderstanding then.

Personally, I think mass migrations are all bad, and migrations should be controlled to minimize disruption. "Everything in moderation" as they say. I think some immigration is a very good thing, no immigration leads to stagnation, and open-borders leads to too many problems. I definitely don't agree with any racist BS about any group of people having the right to take what they want at the expense of others.

I do still maintain, however, that (this isn't directed at you at all) sometimes when talking to some people on the left, I really do feel like a right-wing extremist... I guess that's the problem with extremism: it happens on both (all) sides, so compared to the true extremist, someone who's a moderate will seem to be on the opposite "side", esp. in this crappy American system where everything is distilled down to only 2 sides.

I agree, although I think that the western countries outside of Europe can do so much more for the humanitarian crisis that's going on and can drastically increase the refugee quotas.

ctrl+f "rural", nothing.

ctrl+f "urban", nothing.

Somehow I doubt this article is going to get into the real drivers behind polarization in American politics.

"...Somehow I doubt this article is going to get into the real drivers behind polarization in American politics..."

What are they in your view?

Serious question. (Not trying to be snarky. Have a genuine interest in figuring out what you mean?)

The internet isn't driving polarization to any meaningful degree. The polarization we see in the US is entirely a result of rural/urban polarization--rural areas vote conservative, urban areas vote liberal. For a while these political differences shook out differently, but now there's a near-total overlap between political alignment and geography.

I see.

But to the point of the article, what about the polarization that existed before the rural/urban divide?

I mean we can go all the way back to slavery, and we still see great divisions recorded in our history. I think people naturally segregate themselves into, "tribes", for lack of a better word. The internet is just one, in a long line, of technologies being used to manifest these divisions. Long before the internet, we had the printing press. Even though we had the printing press and access to many, many books...

the Bible was a good deal more popular in London than the Koran. And Uncle Tom's Cabin was far more popular in the Upper MidWest than in the South.

My own opinion is that every technology can be used to make the world a little bit more personalized. The internet is just another one of those technologies. People are always segregating along multiple axes and dimensions. Urban/rural is only one. And not even the main one. For instance, the religious/non-religious axis is an important one right now. Add to that the fact that all of the different races are always segregating. Additionally, there is STARK segregation along the rich/poor axis.

All of our technologies are being used to serve these divisions, but they are not CREATING the divisions in and of themselves.

At least, that's my two cents.

Oh, sure. I don't believe the internet is doing nothing. It can accelerate certain tendencies. But it really does go both ways. I read a number of bloggers who I strenuously disagree with, for example. I read web forums for my hobbies that aren't as segregated politically as, for example, my neighborhood.

As with most things, largescale demographic and economic changes matter more than "soft" cultural shifts. Or that's how I see it, anyway.

Your point is probably accurate, in a way, though the rural/urban divide already existed, and the internet is just a way to connect "all the rural people" and "all the urban people" in a new way. So instead of having 3 people that live down the street agree with you, you can hop online and see that 100 million people agree with you, and so you're definitely right.

It would be one thing if schools in all parts of the country were held to the same standards with regards to segregation. I bring it simply because the article mentioned the landmark ruling to segregate them all while ignoring the one fact not mentioned, it applied only to select states and mostly Southern states. Segregation has been alive and well in the North and even Malcolm X called them out on it.

The number of highly segregated schools still exists and even the constant hammering of acceptance and "quotas" reinforces the that like people NEED to stay together. So why wouldn't voluntary systems like Facebook merely play that out? Groups are stronger than individuals and the easiest group identification is one that can be seen.

Recent political groups are an example of a media telling us its not only okay to segregate but that some groups must (think #BLM)

Technology is allowing anyone to have a voice. This is a good thing. Whether you are a human rights advocate or the biggest racist, you can now air your thoughts and gather a following. Each of us are becoming a political party of 1.

Think of the alternative; North Korea, where the information received by the masses is controlled by the State. Their lives are no better than un-thinking robots while the leaders live in absolute luxury.

Of course there are dangers in giving each one the power to affect other lives, and if it turns out that that power causes irreparatable segregation then it was a fait de complet anyway. I mean, the ultimate form of democracy is for everyone to have a voice, and if we are doomed because of it, then it shows a fatal flaw in the human species.

Danah Boyd, the author, leads a think tank known as Data and Society. https://datasociety.net/

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