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.

By the same token it can get really old when you're the racial education task force again.

amen.

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.

Maybe it's just because I live in DC, but wealthy does not always equal white around here.

It gave me a an appreciation for structural discrimination.

what exactly is that and why can you appreciate it?

racial education task force

When I lived in Cincinnati, there was a wickedly funny and sometimes deep column in the city paper called Your Negro Tour Guide (by a black woman, natch.)

what exactly is that and why can you appreciate it?

People are stuck in neighborhoods with terrible schools and don't have the opportunities of people who can move out. I understand it happens, but I can appreciate it because I was living right there in the midst. The kids in those neighborhoods are going to go to schools that are run more like political footballs than places of education. I didn't live it because I had the financial means to move out when it became an actual issue, but I got a glimpse.

What I meant by structural discrimination is that here you have this neighborhood where there is abundant crime and horrible schools. The kids there (not all of them, but probably many) are going to lack the opportunities needed to have the financial means to afford something other than the same kind of neighborhood and so the cycle continues.