And even weirder was being around so many white Christians.

My current neighborhood is very racially/ethnically diverse. The community center where I work out seems to break down to about 75% black, 25% white. There's also always a lot of kids, because the community center has a teen after-school program, kids' karate and ballet classes, and basketball in the gymnasium.

I didn't realize how accustomed I am to the proportions of races and ages at the gym, until last night. As I was leaving the gym, a bunch of people were arriving for a workshop of some sort, and it was all boomer-age white men and women in business suits, and I thought "What the hell are they doing here?"

My sister lives near Detroit, which has a huge African-American population. But she lives in the 'burbs, and boy howdy, are the 'burbs around Detroit segregated. I've never seen a non-white person in her neighborhood, at her church, or in the nearby grocery store. And she's not in a particularly wealthy area—just really, really white.

While NC is far from a perfect example of racial harmony, the neighborhoods I've seen and lived in haven't been quite that unmixed.

Growing up in the NJ suburbs, just twenty miles outside of NY, ethnic diversity was just as common as racial diversity. When we moved to Wyoming for that year, it was very strange -- everyone was not only white, but Christian and with extremely watered-down European roots. I really missed the Italian bakeries and cooking, and Irish bars, and families of Orthodox Jews walking to services.

It's Wednesday, right? This week feels really long.

boy howdy, are the 'burbs around Detroit segregated

Most segregated area in the US according to a study done a few years ago. You just hop from pocket to pocket of ethnicity, with barely a hint that each exists beyond any given border. Can make for some severe whiplash. And I get the impression that folk don't travel that much, from some of the stares I got.

There's a very low level of ethnic diversity in my life. We used to live a majority black neighbor hood until the kids came along, but the extremely high crime rate and horrific schools (unaccredited, school board disbanded and taken over by the state, shootings at the high school bad) and smallness of house drove us to move. It gave me a an appreciation for structural discrimination. Kids growing up there would have severe disadvantages.

Kansas City is pretty segregated too. You can have that odd effect of everybody being black, traveling a couple blocks and suddenly everybody is white.

But she lives in the 'burbs, and boy howdy, are the 'burbs around Detroit segregated.

I was pretty much born and raised in this part of Michigan and the segregation STILL freaks me out. My Detroit "burb" is pretty diverse, though not as diverse as I once thought once I looked at census data awhile ago. I would have said, and did say, that I thought my town was about 50/50 African American and Caucasian, with some Hispanic and Asian. Turns out, a lot more white folks than I perceived. Which, turned me for a loop for a long time.

Huh. Björk is going to be living about two blocks away from me: [link]

In my town in upstate NY, there were boatloads of people of Italian descent, and so many Catholics that they actually left school early on Tuesdays for Religious Education and there would only be a few people left.

However, I can count the number of non-white families on one hand, and that includes a non-practicing Jewish family, 2 multi-race families, a family of Laotion immigrants sponsored by a church group, and a family who had Black foster children.

And where I went to college, it was so white that my best friend and I felt out of place as dark haired, light skinned Italians. Everyone looked like the Hitler Youth.

But she lives in the 'burbs, and boy howdy, are the 'burbs around Detroit segregated. I've never seen a non-white person in her neighborhood, at her church, or in the nearby grocery store. And she's not in a particularly wealthy area—just really, really white.

Milwaukee's a lot like that.