Social class and money seem to be the great "integrators" today. With laws enacted to end institutional and systemic racism the suburbs of America are now becoming the places that people of all ethnicities flee to in order to escape inner city crime and violence.

"Studies show that suburbs today are, on the broadest level, significantly more integrated than they were in previous decades, thanks to both legal changes and shifts in public attitudes" (based on a study by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies several years ago).

But why do our cities, while diverse on paper, remain a jigsaw puzzle of largely segregated neighborhoods based on ethnicity more than race. Every major US city has multiple ethnic black, white, Asian, and Hispanic neighborhoods, not defined by race but culture, language, traditions, and ethnicity.

https://untappedcities.com/2023/02/03/ethnic-micro-neighborhoods-nyc/

I think poor neighborhood segregation is explained by the social, cultural, and economic benefits that accrue to the poor living in a segregated community due to their greater reliance on that community. As people grow more affluent, they grow more independent and thus less inclined to live in a segregated community... and so they don't.

But this social, cultural, and economic tie remains a reason why poor neighborhoods don't integrate today. It is too simple to refer to some place as the "black side" of town since it infers the other side of town is "white". It simply was not like that growing up. Nor is it like that today.

I grew up on the east coast, and your writing often seems to understate how much ethnicity rather than race dictated life in the past. "Southern blacks" were an ethnicity, quite different from Haitians, Jamaicans, Nigerians, etc. My town growing up had two "southern black" neighborhoods (every black family I knew was one or two generations from the living in the South) and I knew many of them (since their children were my teammates).

One of these black neighborhoods was on the more affluent northern side of town and one on the less affluent southern side of town each of those neighborhoods had different roots.

The northern "southern black" neighborhood was adjacent to one of the two most affluent neighborhoods in town and dates back to when many of the black residents worked as domestic help in the homes of the affluent families in those neighborhoods.

The other black neighborhood was on the opposite side of town and was largely comprised of black families that moved into my town for the various factory jobs in the nearby towns. It was located right next to southern (Italian) and eastern European neighborhoods (Slavic), many of whom worked in the same factories.

Towards the center part of town was a small Puerto Rican neighborhood. On the eastern side of town was the Jewish neighborhood near the Temple and Jewish Community Center.

There was no "white side" of town, there were poorer ethnic neighborhoods and wealthier integrated ones.

Gentrification impacted all of the poorer neighborhoods in my old town. The old black neighborhoods are more integrated to point they are not majority black anymore (though they remain "more black" than other neighborhoods. The income level in those neighborhoods has clearly increased just looking at the houses. The percentage of African Americans as a whole remains not much different, but they are no longer "southern blacks" ethnically speaking but a more diverse mixture of successful blacks of all ethnicities.

In that sense, ethnicity seems to have been replaced by economic class as the poor neighborhoods have mostly disappeared and been taken over by middle class families of all ethnicities and races.

I think the takeaway is that there are reasons ethnic neighborhoods exist systemic and institutional racism, especially among the poor. Municipal planning or not, they will continue to emerge (like Little Mogadishu in Minneapolis). I see similar trends in southern California where I live and saw similar trends in southern Florida where I lived. These self-segregating practices have both positives and negative aspects to them. I love the ethnic festivals and restaurants that these neighborhoods give rise to, but I wish it did not go hand-in-hand with physical segregation at the neighborhood level.