Diversity in Black and White: Divergent Narratives of Racial Residential Integration

• In Event: 452 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 08. Race and Space

Abstract

Previous studies have found that whites have become increasingly tolerant of minority neighbors, even if they still prefer a majority-white neighborhood, while blacks have always preferred diverse neighborhoods. But, are the motivations for wanting neighborhood diversity the same? This study combines a year of ethnographic fieldwork with in-depth interviews with 30 people in a racially diverse neighborhood in Milwaukee, WI to examine this question. The study found that white and black residents reasons’ for valuing diversity differed by race in ways that were structured by experiences of inequality in the Milwaukee metropolitan area as a whole. White residents valued diversity as a symbolic good that bolstered their identities as progressive and cosmopolitan. By contrast, black neighbors appreciated neighborhood diversity because it was one of the few places in the city that afforded them everyday tolerance and decency. The findings suggest that the broader context of structural racial inequality that creates disparate embodied experiences of urban places contributes to racial differences in reasons for liking integration.

Author

• Gina Spitz, Loyola University Chicago