How many people here live in a racially integrated neighborhood

[CatsDogsBabies]

and, if you belong to a church go to a racially integrated church? Children go to a racially integrated school? I live in a neighborhood that has probably equal numbers of whites and blacks and then a smaller number of hispanics. My church (Catholic) is probably 2/3 - 3/4 white to 1/3 - 1/4 African American. Public schools in my area are predominantly black. Most whites and many blacks in my immediate neighborhood send their children to private schools. My daughter is still too young for school, but we will have to send her to private school. We want racially integrated, all girls school.

By the way, I am a white middle-aged woman with a terminal degree (Ph.D.) in my field.

[Bullet1987]

1. It seems like all my life I have...

[Flabbergasted]

47. Neighborhood similar to yours. Schools are mixed except for the HS which at least

95% AA. My church is very small and almost all white.

Oops meant to respond to OP.

[mythyc]

74. neighborhood same here. In northern Oakland, where the splits

are about even between AA and White, with a good portion of Asian and some Hispanics mixed in. most diverse locale I've ever lived in, and I moved here from SF (central CA before that, South Florida before that, NY burb before that, and Edmonton burb first)

[UALRBSofL]

2. I do on both of those questions

However, I havn't been to church in a good while. I go to MCC. I need to get back though.

[ColbertWatcher]

3. Lives in racially integrated neighborhood...

...but I don't think religion should be part of a rational discussion.

[OzarkDem]

4. I do

In addition to caucasians, it also includes African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics and people from the ME (Indians, Pakistanis, etc)

Imagine it would be difficult to find any neighborhood these days that isn't racially integrated.

[tekisui]

9. Come down to Western NC.

Many remain. They are fewer now. Many Hispanics have moved into the area over the past 10 years.

[OzarkDem]

30. Not surprising, I suppose

No doubt there are some areas of the country where neighborhoods are caucasian only. These days, as you say, with increased immigration, there's more racial and cultural diversity than even 5 or 10 years ago.

I also happen to live in a northern metropolis where the AA community began advancing economically and politically during WWII and where a lot of southern African American families moved for better jobs and opportunities after the War.

Its interesting to have lived in both kinds of places and seen what striking differences there are across the US.

[Sequoia]

32. Where in Western NC?

[tekisui]

35. Everywhere in WNC.

Most neighborhoods, and small towns still seem segregated. A lot of the schools, mine for instance, still have not a single black student in them. THe black kids go to the city schools, the white and Hispanics go to the county.

[Sequoia]

57. Really?

I grew up in Western NC and we had all races going there, but I don't recall any Hispanic or Asians at the high school. Although...chuckle....some kids thought I was Japenese! Lord have mercy...with my black hair and sort of blue eyes! Others have thought I was Jewish. And then, because of my name, others thought I was black. So, I guess I was just a universal student.

[CatsDogsBabies]

12. Really?

I grew up in a lower middle class neighborhood that was all white and still is.

[cali]

19. Please. You stated that you live in a gated communitiy that

"keeps the riff raff out".

[Kukesa]

60. Yes she did.

She also said there were no crowds and no traffic at the Cleveland Obama rally.

Go figure.


:crazy:

[blonndee]

70. Wow.

:thumbsup:

[tekisui]

5. I live in a nearly completely gentrified neighborhood.

Some blacks remain, but they have been forced out over the years. THe "projects" are a couple of blocks away, with one bridge as the only way in and out.

I don't go to church, so I don't know about that.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. I don't go to church, but my neighborhood is intergrated and my son's school is.

Fort Worth, Texas. White,Latino, Black. It is also one of the few Democratic strongholds. Why do you ask? I think anyone who lives in a city probably lives in a mixed community--unless they specifically choose to pay lots of $$$ to find an all White enclave somewhere.

[CatsDogsBabies]

17. I was just curious with all the discssion

these past few days, what people's actual real life experience is.

[Iris]

7. I do.

whites, blacks, and latinos.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

8. My apartment building by itself is like the U.N.

Of course, I live in NYC. ;)

[UALRBSofL]

20. Starbucks, you live in NYC

Ok, I'm waiting for an invitation from you to visit one of these days. :bounce:

[mmonk]

10. My neighborhood is racially mixed

and national origin mixed. I go to a Catholic Church and thus is also mixed.

[NightWatcher]

11. I live in a mixed neighborhood

white, black, latino, young, old, families, singles, working moms, retired old peeps, working class...

We all get along real nice. The kids play along very well together and seem to have tons of fun.

When our neighborhood grills food it smells better than anyone anywhere else

[azmouse]

13. I do.

Many people here of different races including black, white and hispanic.
It's a great neighborhood.

[angie_love]

14. I do, I have all my life...first NYC now Boston, guess thats why

I don't get why ppl freak out so much over race. I grew up in a very very diverse city and never understood what the big deal was.

[Critters2]

65. Where do you live in Boston? My experience there, years ago,

was that it was VERY segregated. That was a surprise to me.

[angie_love]

68. Cambridge...there are lots of young diverse ppl around me but yes Boston

is not as racially diverse as NYC. Even though it is more so than other cities. I miss that about NYC.

[uponit7771]

15. I do now, my "hood" in Kansas was all white with 3 black families

[olkaz]

16. My neighbors are black.

And they didn't mind even though my new years party was really really loud.

They're awesome.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

18. Not now

I live in the country, but all close neighbors are white. Some Native Americans do live in the county, but not near me. Have lived in racially integrated neighborhoods in the past. My Order has people of all colors.

[goldcanyonaz]

21. I live in a racially integrated household. I'm very lucky.

My neighborhood is mostly older folks, I'm in Arizona after all.

I think I'm the only Black person on the block, but some get pretty close with all the sun they soak up out here.

I was born with a tan so I don't have to try to look sun kissed, G-D did it for me.

:loveya: Arizona!

[exsoccermom]

Both

Both church and neighborhood are integrated.

[exsoccermom]

22. Both

Both church and neighborhood are integrated.

[papau]

23. Always as to church - and home

[Ayesha]

24. I do

My neighborhood is probably half white, 1/4 Hispanic and the rest African American, Asian, etc. I'm in San Diego. SoCal as a whole seems pretty integrated to me racially, but segregated economically. I lived in a wealthy neighborhood in LA and it was diverse racially, but the rental units were rapidly being converted to condos and the poorer residents forced out. That didn't change the racial makeup much, however. In my condo building there were 3 Middle Eastern families and an African American woman - out of 9 units.

[LynzM]

25. We do now.

The neighborhood I grew up in was (as far as I remember) all caucasian and seems to have remained that way (suburban). The church I attended growing up was the same.

We now live 4 miles from there, in an area that is mixed caucasian, hispanic and black. We are atheists, so I can't speak for the church aspect, but around here churches are divided at least by language, if not race (Spanish and English speaking).

[cloudythescribbler]

26. Yes on neighborhood (multiracial), no on religion -- don't participate actively in any ...

my focus is in politics, where I have tried to raise, in the face of serious resistance from some, no doubt reflecting underground enforcement (in the real America), the issue of too great an ethnic homogeneity in sds/mds (students for a democratic society/movement for a democratic society) where I am active in the ways possible for me.

In the real world, going beyond the superficiality of events, there is powerful enforcement of these patterns, and only the acknowledgement and abolition, the insistence on defiance of the supposed "wisdom" of the machine, can really make headway in the teeth of the new racism.

Unfortunately, most Americans are too concerned with "serving" and avoiding the consequences of not doing so to challenge the FORBIDDEN to challenging fences. That is the REAL issue.

[Horse with no Name]

27. I live in a racially integrated town

50-50

[Blue_In_AK]

28. Our neighborhood is very diverse

both my immediate neighborhood and my city. Anchorage schools are now 50-50 Caucausian/minority, with almost 100 languages spoken. I haven't attended church in quite a while, but when I did (Methodist), it was mostly Caucasian, although there were AA families who were members and a good number of Filipinos.

[Texas Hill Country]

29. I do. Catholic as well.. in Tx = 50/50 white/hispanic

and white middle age male with terminal degree in my field as well.

[TexasLady]

31. very much so, all my life

But Id say half and half hispanic-white, now.

[Skidmore]

33. Begs the question about why there is an insistence that

our politicians are somehow expected to look like the families of the founding fathers. there is a political mythology that we preserve in our selection of candidates, what their families should look like, and how they should live. I love it that Obama doesn't fit the political myth for image. It is time for America to grow up.

[totodeinhere]

34. My neighborhood is almost 100% white.

And so is this county. And Obama won it with better than 75%.

[EffieBlack]

36. You should probably define "integrated"

Some people think that 1 black person among 99 white people is "integrated."

And funny, some of those same people think that 51 black people and 49 white people is "predominantly black" or even just "black."

[CatsDogsBabies]

39. I don't know how I would define racially integrated

How would you define it? Maybe no more than ___% of a single race or ethnicity. I don't think one black family in a neighborhood makes that neighborhood integrated.

[apocalypsehow]

37. Being honest, my neighborhood is not very diverse. I, too, am a Catholic and our church is much more

diverse than my neighborhood, largely due to the number of Hispanics who attend.

A few years ago some of my neighbors were running around with a petition to stop a Section 8 housing development somewhere close to our housing addition. I told them they should be ashamed of themselves when they knocked on our door, that it was thinly veiled racism (they were babbling about "property values"). Their petition deal fizzled out, but for some reason the housing development was never carried forward. :shrug:

[ccpup]

38. I live in NYC in Greenwich Village

Jewish, Black, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, Thai, Chinese ... name it, we got it. :evilgrin:

[PylesMalfunction]

40. Knoxville, TN

I live in a historic neighborhood that is located in a fairly poor area. The local Krogers is always packed when welfare checks come out and over 89% of the students in our nearby schools qualify for the free lunch program. Our neighborhood has become somewhat gentrified due to soaring property values. It's not as out of reach as another popular historic neighborhood here but there isn't as much racial diversity in our actual neighborhood as I'd like. :( I looked up the stats for our zip code and it's 83% white, 13% black and less than 2% hispanic/latino.

However, I live in a virtual melting pot compared to the suburbs that surround this city. You'd be hard pressed to see more than one or two black people out shopping. :( As you get further out, the number of hispanics increase because of the farms here.

I haven't visited a lot of the churches in our area but the ones that are near downtown tend to have mainly white parishoners with a decent amount of minorities. Out in East Knoxville, you see more typically black churches. Out in the suburbs, the churches are almost exclusively white.

[uponit7771]

41. I Feel left out, a lot of you have lived in mixed nieghborhoods all your life...sigh...

[hfojvt]

42. my neighborhood is partly racially integrated

Given that two or three houses on my block are rentals, it's not a neighborhood that really stays constant. The churches are not very integrated. The nearby Methodist and Presbyterian churches are almost all white. However, until he retired, the pastor at one was Indonesian.

There's a "black" church nearby, and I went there once, but can't make a habit of it. Their service is just too darned long. I am not sure about the Catholic church.

[CatsDogsBabies]

43. Depending on where you live in the

country, the question may not be relevant. Some areas of the counrty are sparsely peopulated and do not have diverse populations. I guess what I am asking is how many people live in racially diverse neighborhoods who could do so?

[AngryAmish]

44. I live in maybe the most diverse neighborhood in the world

Uptown, baby. I go to a mostly white church in another neighborhood (my wife's, I'm not really religious). My tot is too young for school. I don't care about the diversity of the school, I care about academics. We are going to move when she gets to be of age because the public schools in Chicago are wretched. We may stay if I make enough for a private school.

[CatsDogsBabies]

45. IDepending on where you live in the

country, the question may not be relevant. Some areas of the counrty are sparsely peopulated and do not have diverse populations. I guess what I am asking is how many people live in racially diverse neighborhoods who could do so?

[tishaLA]

46. I do. And have most of my adult life

[Adelante]

48. I currently live in Mexico

But I grew up and lived (mostly) in racially mixed neighborhoods in NYC. I always went to integrated schools. I remember when I moved to the Jersey Shore when I was 50, my first day on the boardwalk, I couldn't believe how much white skin I was seeing. It seemed so odd to me, though I am white.

[JenniferJuniper]

49. The percentages on my street are easy

because it's 10 houses.

10% Vietnamese natives
10% Russian natives
20% Portuguese natives
10% Cape Verde natives
30% African American natives
20% Caucasian American natives

No problemo-s except no one likes the Russians because they don't landscape and have a tattered New York Yankees flag hanging in the doorway. Take yer pick - either one's a fatal flaw.

[kwassa]

50. Racially integrated house, neighborhood, church.

DC suburbs

I'm white, my wife is black. The entire region has undergone a demographic change with immigration, and it is not unusual to have children from 90 different nations in the local schools. National Geographic actually did a story on a local Virginia school that had this extreme diversity.

Our Episcopal church has immigrant members from all over the globe, including a large contingent of emigrees from Liberia. Historically, Episcopal was white, white, white, but former English colonies send us their Anglicans of color.

There is still a slow-motion white flight out of the central part of the county to it's most outlying edges. None of the schools is that bad, though and the public school system is one of the best in the country.

[kwassa]

51. dupe

[JuniperLea]

52. I do... very diversified...

Neighbors on either side of me are black, then there's a couple from India, one other white family, three Latino families on the block, Pacific Islanders, a Korean family on one corner... across the street is basically the same.

I went to school with many black and latino people too... one of my black classmates was voted into local city goverment... one is a doctor... I've kept in touch with a lot of people I went to school with, and many still live in my home town which is only 12 miles from where I live now.

We saw racial tensions in our parents, and our grandparents, and we chose to ignore them and carry on with our lives. We said many times that we don't have to allow those thoughts into our lives if we don't want to... and we did a good job, if I do say so myself. We are all human beings first... then you can stack on any other name you want to attribute. We even refused to note race on the school cards that we had to fill out every year... a tradition I continued with my own kids. Under race, we put "human". We lived through the looks we all got walking through each other's neighborhoods, we went to battle with our folks. We survived nicely.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

53. We live in an 85% "Desi" neighborhood

I am white, my husband Pakistani. Neighbors across both streets (we live at the entrance to our subdivision) are Desi. Family next door is Chinese. I am definitely a minority in our neighborhood, and I wouldn't have it any other way! I don't want to live where everyone looks and thinks like me.

[Withywindle]

54. I do.

Mixed-income (mostly lower-middle-class), mixed-everything neighborhood in Chicago. Latinos probably outnumber everyone else in my neighborhood, but there are lots of black and white people as well.


Not at all like where I grew up - very small mountain town in SW VA. I never met a black kid my own age until I was 10 years old, and I had to go to a summer camp for the gifted at UVA for that! However, my own family and myself are bi-ethnic (white/Latina), so I couldn't say my childhood experience was "all white."

[Two Americas]

55. a segregated nation

The United States is still largely segregated. For example, I have worked in hundreds and hundreds of churches all around the country, and there are very few that could be called "integrated" by any stretch of the imagination, and the churches reflect the neighborhoods they are in.

It is true that a certain small percentage of minority people are now tolerated in white neighborhoods - about 8% if I recall the statistics from studies that have been done on this - before white flight sets in and a fire sale on real estate starts with collapsing property values and re-segregation as a result.

I know that many whites congratulate themselves on the progress we have supposedly made on this, and are proud of their role in that supposed progress. While that may make people feel good, I would strongly caution against using that to deny the persistent and vicious racism and segregation that is all around us and that still dominates our culture.

I think that tokenism has run amok - and tokenism is a way to deny racism, not overcome it - and that meaningful racial reconciliation and true integration are still a long way off. Tokenism works against achieving racial reconciliation and true integration, and we should not ignore that.

[NDambi]

56. I live in a mixed upper middle class neighborhood, mostly

blacks and whites, with a few latinos and asians in the mix. I don't do church, so I can't tell you the mix and I have no kids, so I can't tell you the mix in the schools either.

[XemaSab]

58. I've lived in all kinds of neighborhoods

Mixed Chinese/Black/White.

Totally White.

Beautifully racially integrated with a Hispanic family, Japanese family, Chinese family, White family, Black dude, and White couple as our immediate neighbors. They all hated each other, of course. :P

Mixed Hispanic/White.

Totally White.

Totally White.

Nazi freaks.

Mixed Hispanic/White.

:thumbsup:

[HughMoran]

59. I grew up in a completely integrated neighborhood

This was in Boston - we had 20+ nations represented in our neighborhood - many were fresh immigrants. I wish everyone could be raised in a similar environment.

[SeattleGirl]

61. I do, and my daughter went to an integrated school.

I moved here from Whitebread, America (when I was in high school, there were a total of TWO black families in the town).

On my little dead-end street, the house at the end is empty right now; the house next to it used to belonged to a biracial couple who eventually moved, and is now occupied by a white man; the house next to that is occupied by a family from the Philipines; the one next to that by an extended Vietnamese family; the home across the street from them is occupied by a black family, as is the house next to that (and my house is on the other side.

Just around the corner from me are 3 black families, a Hispanic family, and three white families (one of which is a lesbian couple).

I love my neighborhood.

My daughter moved here in the middle of her junior year in high school (she had been living in Whitebread with her dad until then). It was a bit of a culture shock to her when she first started school up here, but she got used to it very quickly, and was just fine with it.

Edited to add: I don't go to church any more, but the church I used to go to was probably 60% white, 40% blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Middle Eastern, etc.

[rainbow4321]

62. Mine is as mixed as they come

AA, Hispanic, Russians(Jewish), white, Asian, Middle Eastern, Indians and no telling how many more cuz I've taken walks around all the cul de sacs in my neighborhood over the years and have heard people talking in their native tongues that I don't even recognize.

So diverse that when I ended up adopting a stray dog who showed up on my doorstep a few months ago, as it looked at me kinda crazy when I kept asking it "You gotta go out?" the first thing I worrried about was "uh-oh, what are the odds that the former owner spoke English and this dog actually understands what I am saying". My dogs bolted for the backdoor, the newcomer just sat upstairs and only seemed to go for the door cuz the other 2 were headed there.

Church-wise, my kids and I are Unitarian Univeralists so they were around/learned about lots of different cultures. At one point my youngest was going to the weekly UU youth meetings, going to a weekly Christian youth group meeting with one of her friends, and then going with yet another friend to the friend's synagogue get togethers.


Stark contrast to my childhood school where we didn't have a single AA student in ANY of our classes til 6th grade. None. Still remember her name (Michelle) and how scared/quiet she looked the first few days.
And there were only 2 religions followed in the township (or so it felt at the time): Catholics and Baptists.

[meow mix]

63. Very Mixed and High Percent of GLBT

as a straight white male im in the extreme minority =)

[Critters2]

64. Integrated neighborhood. Church largely (not 100%) white, but

quite a mix in terms of straight/glbt.

[goodgd_yall]

66. I've lived in racially integrated neighborhoods

for most of the past 16 years. Sometimes predominantly Hispanic, sometimes about equally split between white, black, and hispanic. I lived in San Jose and San Francisco in the early to mid 80s; some of the places I lived in those cities were diverse and some less so. (I've moved a lot in my life, so I've lived in many neighborhoods.)

The church I go to, when I do go to church, is racially diverse. Public schools in my area seem to be about equally split between white, hispanic, and black children.

I moved last year to the neighborhood I spent most of my youth in, in order to take care of my elderly mother. It used to be almost exclusively white, due to housing discrimination practices in this area in the early 1960s. It is now a diverse neighborhood, mostly white but with a sprinkling of hispanic and black people within close proximity to where I'm living. I am happy this change has come to my old neighborhood. In other areas close by, there are many blacks and hispanics (mostly the apartment complexes). This place that used to be so lily-white now has a "reputation" with some out-of-towners as being "not so nice" but that's just code talk for "integrated."

[annie1]

67. i do, but i hate it when i go to a bar and it's all white people. :(...

b/c it just doesn't make sense that out of 50-100 people everyone but me is white. my white male friend and i (black female) go to bars in soho, or the east village (nyc) and so many are just all white. it's really weird.

[Chovexani]

69. I do.

Just in my building in the complex, there are blacks, whites, Mexicans, South Asians and Navajo.

Across the hall from me is a white guy and his Japanese girlfriend. They helped me get a queen mattress up a flight of stairs the day I moved in, so they can do no wrong by me. :)

Edit to add that this is Tempe, AZ.

[mopinko]

71. i picked my neighborhood because of it's diversity. it was the tail end of the

great white flight out of chicago, i considered the all white neighborhoods to be unstable. to say nothing of populated by assholes, mostly.
the elementary school here has kids who speak 34 languages.
don't do the church thing, but most of them here are at least integrated enough to have services in several languages. not prefect, but something.

[Hardrada]

72. All white neighborhood

All white church my wife goes to (I am a lapsed Lutheran). My high school was all white in the sense that it was almost all Norwegian-American so it was also almost all Nordic. I don't feel I really missed anything growing up since we had our own culture and ways and version of Lutheranism and it was cheerfully self-contained. The high school in this town is nearly all white also. Iowa does not have a small town black population to speak of but some towns have Mexican American sections. (Mainly ones with meat packing industries). I avoided bigotry because of my liberal grandparents though I had some quite conservative aunts and uncles.

[latinolatteliberal]

73. Yes, integrated. But still mostly republican. Ugh.

Next-door neighbors are Persian, next to them black, across the street white, next to them Sino-Indonesian, and on the other side of us another Latino family, but the kind that no longer speaks Spanish. The neighborhood is a recent development, very exurb. Our congressman is a republican.

I don't go to church, but when I go to events with religious components during the holidays it is usually not near home. And as most of our family members are Catholic, those events are almost exclusively attended by Latinos.

[quantass]

75. I am Black and Live in a Very White Neighborhood w/ 1 Asian Family and 1 Arab Family

My family (black) and the 1 asian family, and the 1 arab family are the only non-whites in our upper-class neighborhood...Everyone else is white. In my neighborhood at least noone cares about color at all (but then again, maybe they are thinking it behind closed doors). Outwardly everybody are great neighbors. Interestingly, the Asian and Arab family are very close to us personally...it might be because we subconciously see each others as the only minorities or something but regardless i see everyone in the same way (no color)...fun closely nit neighborhood.

I was talking to a bunch of our neighbors and we all got to joking about our places being so closely nit that we could all leave our front doors open on vacation with no concern of robbery or anything....i guess our neighborhood hasnt got its cherry popped yet :shrug:

[Why Syzygy]

76. I've lived in racially diverse neighborhoods since 1968.

When I did live in a somewhat segregated town, I prefered ethnic neighborhoods to the dough white side of town. I'm Caucasian.