In many houses throughout the country, residents receive a letter saying that the applicant is eligible for housing subsidies. According to a report from nytimes.com, many families dream of owning a single family rental home in the suburbs, far away from the urban blight besetting many cities throughout the United States.
One incident though had put all these well-meaning programs as well as the possible recipients of these benefits into a bad light. The recent fatal shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson caused the melting pot to boil over. Brown, a young 18 year old unarmed at the time was shot to death by Wilson, a white police officer.
Now, questions as to the benefits minorities receive, access to jobs, good performing schools and low crime neighborhoods have become the objects of debate. Like Ferguson Missouri, where the incident occurred, segregation and discrimination still occur every day in many neighborhoods.
The facts bear out the truth, according to a recent study published in the American Sociological Review. The study, headed by Sociology Professor Kyle Crowder from the University of Washington, "We pay a lot of attention to the proliferation of multiethnic neighborhoods, but they are still only a small part of the overall inter-neighborhood mobility picture for blacks and whites."
He added, ""Blacks tend to originate in neighborhoods with very high concentrations of blacks and, when they move, they tend to move to other places that have very high concentrations of blacks. Their typical destination is not a multiethnic neighborhood. The same is even more true for whites."
The conclusion of the study, Crowder said, " "It's a story that counters this idea that we should stop paying attention to residential segregation. The truth is, when it comes to eliminating residential segregation, we still have a long way to go. This becomes particularly clear when we look at the high percentage of black families from predominately black neighborhoods and the even higher percentage of white families from predominately white neighborhoods who wind up in homogeneous communities when they move."
