Saturday, March 26, 2011

Whitest Cities Try To Attract Minorities

Marin County California has 7 of the whitest cites in the Bay Area and they have new plans to attract minorities.

An article titled “The 10 Whitest Cities in the Bay Area” by Aaron Glantz March 24, 2011 and published in the Bay Citizen details the issue. Not only are there few minorities in Marin County, it has been charged with failure to comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and other anti-discrimination laws.

A situation like this should not come as a surprise to most people in the United States as there are highly segregated areas all over the nation. There real issue is why these areas are segregated, by choice or by design. An area segregated by choice simply means that a certain racial or ethnic group became the majority population by choice and not by excluding other groups intentionally.

Segregation by design means that barriers were erected to exclude other races intentionally and that seems to be the case in Marin County as realtors and landlords were also mentioned as needing to curb discriminatory practices. It also seems that less than mandated affordable multifamily housing was built to restrict the number of lower income residents that could move into the county. In effect Marine County, California is under a housing version of forced busing to introduce diversity into the communities.

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