Moving to Diversity: Narratives of Racial Integration in a Diverse Neighborhood

• In Event: 174 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Neighborhoods and Residential Patterns

Abstract

Little is known about why people of different racial groups increasingly choose to move to or remain in ethnoracially diverse communities. In this paper, I draw on interviews with 30 black, white, and Latinos/as in a racially diverse neighborhood in Milwaukee, WI and a year of ethnographic fieldwork to examine the different motivations for residents living or staying in a racially diverse neighborhood and their understanding of their individual roles [or lack thereof] in racial integration. I find that neighborhood racial diversity is actually desired by neighborhood residents from different racial groups. However, within the discourse on neighborhood diversity, its goals, methods, and effects differ by racial group membership. In particular, whites seek to exemplify their values of racial tolerance with their diverse neighborhood-based identity, while black respondents follow a more pragmatic pursuit of safety from areas of concentrated poverty and crime that are mostly black and also white discrimination and prejudice more prevalent in white-dominated neighborhoods. I also found that residents view neighborhood integration as primarily the result of a structural forces outside of their control, and secondarily as the result of a couple of activist campaigns against racism from neighborhood non-residents. What is notably absent in residents' narratives on ethnoracial neighborhood diversity is a connection to racial social integration as an individual or collective goal or value.

Author

• Gina Spitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison