[lbo-talk] integration by neighborhood higher in south

Joseph Catron jncatron at gmail.com
Thu Apr 29 13:51:46 PDT 2010


On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 4:22 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:

cities with the most integrated neighborhoods are in the south.
>

Did you send that out to brag about living in the most integrated city in the country? ;-)

I'm sure New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are legitimately more segregated than Virginia Beach, Charlotte, or Nashville. However, it seems at first glance that this survey's methodology is deeply slanted in favor of the South:

"[D]iverse urban populations of Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans are not factored into the black-white segregation rankings. First, all Hispanics, regardless of stated race, are excluded. The remaining black-white racial categories reflect 19th century definitions."

One wonders whether the survey authors chose the Southern "paper-bag rule," or the Northern "one-drop rule." But either way, Southern cities, composed overwhelmingly of white and black people, will enjoy an obvious advantage over coastal immigrant magnets, not to mention Southwestern cities, which consist largely of whites and Latinos and predictably come in last. Unless I've missed some important nuance, the study tells us a lot more about ethnic differentiations between cities than within them.

-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."



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