Segregation

So here's a real post...

Usually I write about things somewhat comical, but I've got a serious topic. Segregation. After growing up in the North, I assumed that the South was still a pretty backward place where segregation was rampant. After living in Raleigh for 2 years, I can say that while some aspects of society remain segregated, it's not anything as I had imagined. Yeah a lot of the African Americans who worked at the library hung out with other African Americans at lunch, and the same with the whites, but I think that had a lot more to do with their jobs and less to do with their actual race. As a library assistant myself, I didn't spend a lot of time with actual librarians, so why would I go around talking to them at social events? They didn't even know my name...

On to other aspects... so now we've moved back North. I'd recently heard a professor mention that segregation in Northern cities was actually more pronounced in the South because many African Americans who had once been slaves remained on land near where they had been slaves, thus remaining near whites. I don't have a lot of experience with Northern cities, so I didn't know what to make of it. But after living here for a little while, I wonder if it might be true. We rode the train into the city on Saturday. At nearly every stop the people getting on the train were one race or another. Or at least a large majority. Maybe that has to do with the fact that there are some pretty rough neighborhoods between here and downtown (thank goodness it's an elevated train) and maybe some of the other neighborhoods are well integrated. I don't know. But I do know that 90% of the faces walking around downtown Oak Park (about 3 blocks north of our apartment) are just as pale as mine (ok, maybe not that pale), but if you go just 1 block south of our apartment, the numbers are reversed. It's something interesting that I don't think I would have noticed if I hadn't lived in the South. After being surrounded by people of all different ethnicities, it's odd to feel so homogenous. Food for thought.