Maybe somewhere in this country there is a truly diverse neighborhood in which a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who lives next to an Asian short-order cook, who lives next to a professional golfer, who lives next to a postmodern-literature professor and a cardiovascular surgeon.
I have never heard of that neighborhood.
Instead, all around the country, people are making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves.
Human beings are capable of drawing amazingly subtle social distinctions and then shaping their lives around them.
In the information age, every place becomes more like itself. People are less often tied down to shops, factories or mills, and they can search for places to live on the basis of cultural affinity.
Once they find a locale in which most people share their values, they flock there, and reinforce whatever was distinctive about the area in the first place.
The choices we make toward that end lead to the very opposite of diversity.
The United States might be a diverse nation when considered as a whole, but block by block and institution by institution it is a relatively homogeneous nation.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/09/people-like-us/302774/
I have never heard of that neighborhood.
Instead, all around the country, people are making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves.
Human beings are capable of drawing amazingly subtle social distinctions and then shaping their lives around them.
In the information age, every place becomes more like itself. People are less often tied down to shops, factories or mills, and they can search for places to live on the basis of cultural affinity.
Once they find a locale in which most people share their values, they flock there, and reinforce whatever was distinctive about the area in the first place.
The choices we make toward that end lead to the very opposite of diversity.
The United States might be a diverse nation when considered as a whole, but block by block and institution by institution it is a relatively homogeneous nation.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/09/people-like-us/302774/