Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Racial Integration in America

I'm a white chick from Utah.

In case you've never been to Utah, let me paint you a picture. According to the US Census Bureau Utah is almost 90% white, the other ten percent consists of a sprinkling of pretty much every other race but overall Utah is a very pale state. Growing up I knew exactly two black people, a handful of Natives, three people of Asian decent and a Hispanic family. I was exposed to very little racism because, quite frankly, there was no one around to be racist against. Racism was something I learned about in school, on TV and from eavesdropping on adult conversation. It was more a concept to me than an actual social problem.

I first encountered hard-core racism in the person of a bitter old veterinarian after Scott and I moved to Phoenix in 1993. I had the extreme misfortune of being employed by this man and had to endure his bitter diatribes every time a client would come in who was not lily white. I only worked at his hospital for 2 months, but the experience opened my eyes to the kind of hatred that some people could hold in their hearts for no apparent reason.

When I first learned that I would be moving from Phoenix to Houston, I was really excited. I figured I would be living in a fully integrated city, a city that had been so racially mixed for so long that race would be a non-issue. Boy was I naive.

Houston is a very racially mixed city but despite the fact that there are people of all rainbow shades, there is very little mixing among the groups. White people stick with white people, black people stick with black people, Asian people stick with Asians. I think there is more integration among the Hispanic population here than in any other group, but there is still a definite line that is seldom crossed. These are just my personal observations, if Scott or HP happen to read this post, they may have another take on race in Houston and I'd be very interested in hearing it.

So, I have a question for all of you out there in bloggerland. What is the state of racial integration where you live? Do you personally experience racism on a daily basis, either as an observer or worse, as a victim? What do you see as the major problems in race relations among our citizens?
posted by GodlessMom, 6:02 AM

16 Comments:

Blogger Lila said:

I live on a racially integrated street. Things on the street seem okay, race wise... But overall there's still plenty of de facto segregation going on in this city. Unfortunately, I think that's pretty common.
Posted at 7:36 AM  

Blogger Meegan said:

I agree with Aral -- I think it's pretty common no matter where one lives. I live in New York City so of course we have all shades of people living in a fairly small space together. But I know that racism exists. Being lily white myself, I am sure that I am completely oblivious to many things when it comes to race.
Posted at 8:53 AM  

Blogger BarbaraFromCalifornia said:

I live in a racially integrated neighborhood which is why we moved here. It is upscale, and Asians outnumber whites, blacks and Hispanics, but there is a good mixture and blend here. That being said, I want to move to New York.
Posted at 9:29 AM  

Blogger United We Lay said:

I'm white, married to a Colombian, and in VA and FL people have been very rude to us about our mixed marriage.
Posted at 12:06 PM  

Blogger Shirley said:

I live in a demographically diverse area, but people pretty much stick to their own kind.
Posted at 12:30 PM  

Blogger dddragon said:

Tan Lucy & dad raised us to be so color-blind that it was a shock when we moved to Pennsylvania. We moved from Los Angeles - integrated neighborhoods & schools.

Unfortunately our town is extremely WHITE. Very few people of color, which is more than there were 30 years ago. Back then, a friend's father (Sanford Johnson) tried to set up, over the phone, appointments with real estate brokers to look for a house in our town. They wouldn't give him the time of day. When he showed up in person and they saw that he was white, they were all over him to help out.

After almost 20 years of living on this street, a black man with a white girlfriend has moved in. One of our neighbors, who was here before we moved in, has gossiped about it w/ other neighbors. "Not that there's anything wrong with it..." Yeah, right, that's what she's thinking. After all these years, her true "colors" have come out. Burns me up.
Posted at 12:46 PM  

Blogger TLP said:

As dddragon said, our small town is about 99.9 percent white. No kidding. But the town across the river is very mixed. I worked there, and the family has always gone to church there.

Since I'm now retired, the fact is that I go days without even seeing an African American. At the park, at the mall, in the grocery store. People here would deny being racist, but they don't want blacks to live here.
Posted at 2:55 PM  

Blogger The Lazy Iguana said:

I live in a strange place. White non-hispanic people are a minoroty. The majority is hispanic, and of all the hispanics cubans are the most numerous.

Anyway, the trend is the same as other southern cities. Hatians stay in little Haiti. Cubans live anywhere, except Little Haiti. Black non-hispanics live in black neighborhoods. and so forth.

I think that all people like to be around people like them. If you speak spanish, you will live in a spanish speaking area if you can. If you speak creole, same thing.

It is not racisim, it is just human nature.
Posted at 9:14 PM  

Blogger dAAve said:

Interesting.
I am a white man.

I consider myself to be non-racist. I have lived in West Africa for years where I was the victim of racism. I tend to be attracted to dark-skinned men and MAYBE that is racist. I don't know.

I live in Montrose, a melting pot. All races mix here with little problem. And of course, it's heavily gay. I was raised with the notion of Live and Let Live so maybe I live blind to many of the problems.
Posted at 9:25 PM  

Blogger thc said:

I work in a white male dominated industry and we live in a very white neighborhood. But the SF Bay area is the most ethnically diverse metro area in the U.S.

This part of California is extremely tolerant of all ethnicities, but it is not tolerant of all ideologies.
Posted at 10:23 PM  

Blogger Urban Chick said:

for the most part here in the UK, it's hard to disentangle race with socio-economic class and in a previous job i often quoted a govt statistic which is very telling: 70% of the UK's ethnic minority groups live in the most deprived areas of the country

i like to think that we have less racial segregation than in the US, but then again, i'm open to the view that those from minority groups may not feel this is the case
Posted at 1:22 PM  

Blogger GodlessMom said:

Nope, never have been. Never will be. Many of my extended family are LDS though.
Posted at 3:24 PM  

Blogger Watson Woodworth said:

I live in the Detroit area which has been very segregated for a Northern city. But we also have immigrants from all over the world who came here oblivoius to the black/white standoff and I think the boundaries are now starting to fade.
I work in a factory and factories around here are quite well integrated. Even class-wise, we have college grads who can't get jobs in their chosen fields as well as highschool dropouts and folks who went to university but don't read English.
Posted at 11:22 AM  

Blogger S said:

I am biracial and definately experienced racism here in Pa, My parents actually recieved death threats when we were kids (including all of us kids too) and I think there was maybe one black kids at our school. My experience was hard because being of both African American and Caucasian decent, I don't nessesarily look like anything definable. I got a lot of "what are you?" Love that one!
Also when people realized my racial background, I could see them back peddaling.. "oh...well you're not like most blacks," or " well It's ok, you don't really look black!"

nice huh?
Posted at 7:59 PM  

Blogger Pseudo-intellectual lunatic said:

personally i don't think racial integration....full racial integration could ever be achieved.
Posted at 10:17 PM  

Anonymous Anonymous said:

I am Hispanic with other cultures mixed in. I was adopted by white parents and have lived in Salt Lake City for the past ten years. The world that i see and live with here is diverse. There is racism here too and i have experianced that. I have lived in L.A., Dallas and Europe and have had similar experiances. It can be very hard to hear that people view you as less of a person because your not white or from their culture but I think you have to find people that accept you and unless you have to defend yourself from threats, choose not to involve yourself with those who see you through prejudiced eyes.
Posted at 3:48 PM  

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