Yeah, exactly. And living in the Bay Area really makes that plain. I lived with a friend in San Francisco's Potrero Hill / Dogpatch neighborhood. The north sid

Yeah, exactly. And living in the Bay Area really makes that plain. I lived with a friend in San Francisco's Potrero Hill / Dogpatch neighborhood. The north side of the hill is one of the most desirable areas of the city and is one of those deliberately quaint neighborhoods that is pretty much 100% white. The south side has low-cost housing and is almost as uniformly black. [1] My friend lived very near the top of the hill, where the character abruptly changed. Police sirens were common, but since it was all over on the other side of the hill, everything was okay and nobody even felt unsafe. Apparently whoever it is that makes trouble on that side knows never to come over to the other side, presumably since the police will bring down the hammer much harder. Taking the bus into the city was embarrassing. The bus started on the "black side" and then came over to the "white side" on its way downtown. And half a century after Rosa Parks, the bus was voluntarily segregated with blacks at the rear. I got on the first "white" stop and was stunned to see how, every day, the entire bus was filled at the back with nobody at the front. One day I went to a different bus stop (just three blocks over!) and got a lot of stares, because this was obviously a "black" stop and I'd crossed the line. I'm not saying Canada does it much better -- ethnic ghettos exist, and are often encouraged by realtors or even government policies. But I always felt like, in Canada, we all sort of knew that was a bad situation that had to be rectified eventually. If you asked a typical Obama-loving resident of Potrero Hill if they lived in some kind of cultural standoff that amounted to a separate regime for their black neighbors, they'd be shocked and offended. [1] Race map of the Bay Area: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4981425631/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4981425631/