Residential (Racial) Preference

I'm so grateful and mindful of the privilege and opportunity I was given to go to Race Forward conference in Raleigh, North Carolina this week. It was inspiring, humbling, overwhelming, daunting, and nurturing. 

It was lovely to be a distinct minority as a white person at this conference. I believe I stayed humble, present, and open. I learned so much and tried to show up when asked. 

It got me thinking about the journey of intercultural competence from IDI, with additions/explanations from the wise and generous Julica de la Fuente. 

In our Community and Regional Planning Masters program in 2002, we were asked to think about how we wanted to work in the planning paradigms. At the time, at age 30, and maybe in my wishful heart, I was a "Social Learner" who wanted to do the work for Social Justice by bringing people together and working to even the playing field (to the extent that that was possible) so that everyone can contribute to solutions. (The Social Mobilizer works outside the system to change it, because there's no way to even the playing field, so ... build something new [and tear down the old]. The other 2 on the spectrum were Social Reformers [we will help you be more like us because you need our help and how you are is not ok] and Technocrats [if our models / technology get good enough, outcomes will be better for everyone])..

(Shout out to high school honors English teacher Debbie Firstenberg who asked seniors to write essays supporting Edmund Burke [reformer] or Jacques Rousseau [revolutionary], which started me thinking about how the world gets better and what methods seemed to fit me best.)

The Achilles Heel of Social Learners is minimization. The mission and strategy to bring everyone to the table tends to assume or gloss over difference, or relies more on what brings us together versus what different strengths make our collaboration and solidarity and conflict so powerful and generative. 

It's all got me thinking about the studies of residential preference as a proxy to how comfortable people are in multiracial spaces. One study in 2009, Black people report that the ideal neighborhoods are 50-50 white and some other mix of races. White people only feel comfortable (or at least say they are comfortable) with 80-20 neighborhoods (although patterns show significant moves by 12-15%). People of color are expected to blend in to white spaces. White people walk into non-white spaces and expect to be accommodated and embraced (even welcomed / celebrated). 

That's why neighborhood stability has been hard to keep balanced. White discomfort keeps them moving or displacing "others."

But here's the kicker. Integrated neighborhoods have better outcomes for everyone. As of 2022, in a Johns Hopkins University study, 70 percent of people across different races who live in multi-racial neighborhoods report high levels of health, happiness, and stability. 

I forget which speaker at this conference talked about how proximity leads to tolerance, acceptance of difference, and then the value of intercultural experiences and learning. And because cities bring us into that proximity more than rural living, cities are (can be?) anti-racist crucibles. 

I'm feeling that at this conference. I'm loving it.