how segregated is your city?/how white is your neighborhood?

today both Gawker and FastCompany came out with the same story: a set of maps designed by Eric Fischer that show the racial diversity or lack thereof in the top 40 cities (presumably population-wise) in america. here is the map for new york:

 

both articles go on to explain the way the maps were created:

Fisher used a straight forward method borrowed from Rankin: Using U.S. Census data from 2000, he created a map where one dot equals 25 people. The dots are then color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green.

For a closer look, you should check out the maps on flicker. if you look at the original size of the maps, you can see the dots much more clearly.

now three small pieces of commentary:

1. I am always careful to consider the ways in which Latinos - black and white - may be misconstrued on the map and also, if we knew their racial identity, what other things the map might illuminate. The census does not count Latino as a race, but using census data the artist had constructed them as a race. but, if you dig below the surface a bit, you can see how this creates an interesting dynamic. what if, for example, all black latinos were concentrated in certain areas of the bronx and white latinos were not? what about all the latinos who weren't sure whether to check "black" or "white" because they were mixed and checked "other" - how might that change the data picture?

2. I thought it was interesting how the titles of the article were changed from source to source. FastCompany, more accurately, asked "How Segregated is your city?" whereas, Gawker (probably in an effort to incite and a nod to that "awkward" hipster irrelevancy/very much relevant manner of speaking) asked "How White is your neighborhood?" However, the choice to talk about whiteness instead of segregation also changes the tone of the entire piece of political to apolitical. Is it not as okay to talk about segregation in this "post-racial" era? Must we reduce it to a discussion on whiteness, that doesn't really bring up segregation? And, what do the viewers of the map suppose the reason for the intense segregation is? I can venture to say most people believe segregation is about preference and comfort. But, most people are wrong. Housing segregation was the result of explicit governmental policies and practices that sought to keep the nation segregated and created a legacy that still affects the housing markets today.

3. so, exactly how segregated is our city? very. in fact, this very question was the subject of an undergraduate research project in my GIS class (basically learning how to use the software that creates these maps. The article acknowledges that New York is not very integrated, but suggest that,

the sheer size of those areas (of extreme segregation) means that the boundary areas because intensely rich areas of cross-cultural ferment.

this, however, is not really the case. when you begin to look deeper into the census data and start plotting race by city block, you see that the boundary areas really are bound. if for instance, you walk up to east harlem and stand on 96th street, the demarcation of white and non-white is stark. though, admittedly, slightly less so than when i wrote the report as an undergraduate because of gentrification and the lack of affordable housing (funny, how quickly the city changes when you aren't looking). what i found is that when you looked at the data block by block, you began to see what looked like integrated census tracks really were segregated blocks even on the border of two neighborhoods. this was all very surprising to me because i thought that moving to new york, i would be in a city full of racial exchange and cultural integration. oh, how naive i was. beyond slumming it to different neighborhoods to taste the "ethnic food" people who truly ventured out of the white bubble surrounding columbia and downtown were few and far between.

the fact that new york city is still an integrated city, coupled with the alarming reversal of brown v. boe (see parents v. seattle schools) makes one wonder just how far we've come and how much further we have to go.