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On the one hand this seems to highlight the lived reality of many of us — moving from a segregated to more integrated neighborhoods brings its own set of issues

On the one hand this seems to highlight the lived reality of many of us — moving from a segregated to more integrated neighborhoods brings its own set of issues. In my case moving out of a middle class Black “food desert” into a more “diverse” neighborhood brought the stares of neighbors and disturbing and mentally, emotionally challenging micro-aggressions — how many times do you have to hear the same neighbors ask “Do you live around here?” before it starts to get to you? Ten years is a long time to deal with persistent invisibility. Then there are policing patterns. In that context, the ability to find community on Twitter and FB provides some access to affirmation. Black and Brown people in the US and Europe have been asking for generations to the groceries and other stores and services that the more privileged populations take for granted. In that sense the paper’s conclusions seem like old news. Proposals like the Paris 15 minute city proposal [1] might be one ray of hope. It would have been nice for the paper to talk about segregation attributable to explicit and implicit state policies (e.g. state enforced segregation in the US, now outlawed but still visible in redlining practices today) vs cultural segregation (anybody watched Gentefied [2]?) other historic patterns. All that to say that there is probably a lot of important questions to resolve in how race, culture, ethnicity overlap when trying tease apart economic and online segregation. Pentland also received a great deal of criticism in Shoshana Zuboff’s book Surveillance Capitalism [3]. The gist of her critique of Pentland’s social physics is that it amounts to a justification of behaviorist attempt at mass social control. Having heard a presentation of Pentland’s at a NetSci conference a few years ago, I didn’t think it that over arching, but still. I don’t know if people here had done much thinking about this. I can imagine a critique of this paper as being an attempt to control the behavior of segregated or marginalized communities. I’m curious whether the data sets used are publicly available. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/07/paris-mayor-unveils-15-minute-city-plan-in-re-election-campaign https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/07/paris-mayor-un... [2] https://www.netflix.com/Title/80198208 https://www.netflix.com/Title/80198208 [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

austincheney 7y ago
> In my case moving out of a middle class Black “food desert” into a more “diverse” neighborhood brought the stares of neighbors and disturbing and mentally, emotionally challenging micro-aggressions — how many times do you have to hear the same neighbors ask “Do you live around here?” before it starts to get to you? Ten years is a long time to deal with persistent invisibility. Then there are policing patterns. In that context, the ability to find community on Twitter and FB provides some access to affirmation. I am curious what you mean by integrated, because that does not at all sound integrated. I suppose my experiences are wildly different because my neighborhood is now mostly composed of rental houses and renters seem to come and go much more frequently. Its weird because the renters are the majority of the population and have no vote or say in HOA policies, but they are still obligated to follow HOA policies just the same.
- charlescearl 7y ago
  "Integrated" in my experience seems to be a contested term: - During my elementary school and the first part of my high school years, there were attempts in Atlanta to de-segregate schools via busing of students from Black to white neighborhoods. The schools where my neighbors who participated were sent to typically were not "integrated" in the sense of complete 50/50 proportionality. Typically in the Southern US, the mere presence of a Black population within a formerly segregated institution counted as "integration" [1]. - Similarly, the neighborhood next to mine formerly had covenants on who a house could be sold to. The city was founded by an advocate and supporter of the Klan. Informally, "integration" is thought of as "Well, the neighborhood used to be white by law, now the town/neighborhood is 30% Black..." The "tipping point" phenomenon, in which white residents leave if the number of Black/LatinX residents increase above a threshold is documented [2]. All that to say that "integrated" is a term relative comparison, where the majority of neighborhoods remain deeply segregated, perhaps even an 70/30 comparison is likely to count as "diverse" or "integrated", but the old patterns of power are likely to be replicated. [1]https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unhealed-wounds-of-a-mass-arrest-of-black-students-at-ole-miss-fifty-years-later https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unhealed-wounds... [2]http://cityobservatory.org/are-racial-tipping-points-overblown/ http://cityobservatory.org/are-racial-tipping-points-overblo...
  - austincheney 7y ago
    It still seems weird to me. I should also add that my major city is the fast growing major city in the US at about 4% year over year for the last 20 years so traditional rules about ethic neighborhoods either don't apply or are relegated to very old and low prosperity neighborhoods far away. In this past decade alone my city has grown by about 30% and is racing to reach 1.2 million residents in the next twenty years nearly doubling in size from 20 years ago.

austincheney 7y ago

> In my case moving out of a middle class Black “food desert” into a more “diverse” neighborhood brought the stares of neighbors and disturbing and mentally, emotionally challenging micro-aggressions — how many times do you have to hear the same neighbors ask “Do you live around here?” before it starts to get to you? Ten years is a long time to deal with persistent invisibility. Then there are policing patterns. In that context, the ability to find community on Twitter and FB provides some access to affirmation. I am curious what you mean by integrated, because that does not at all sound integrated. I suppose my experiences are wildly different because my neighborhood is now mostly composed of rental houses and renters seem to come and go much more frequently. Its weird because the renters are the majority of the population and have no vote or say in HOA policies, but they are still obligated to follow HOA policies just the same.

charlescearl 7y ago
"Integrated" in my experience seems to be a contested term: - During my elementary school and the first part of my high school years, there were attempts in Atlanta to de-segregate schools via busing of students from Black to white neighborhoods. The schools where my neighbors who participated were sent to typically were not "integrated" in the sense of complete 50/50 proportionality. Typically in the Southern US, the mere presence of a Black population within a formerly segregated institution counted as "integration" [1]. - Similarly, the neighborhood next to mine formerly had covenants on who a house could be sold to. The city was founded by an advocate and supporter of the Klan. Informally, "integration" is thought of as "Well, the neighborhood used to be white by law, now the town/neighborhood is 30% Black..." The "tipping point" phenomenon, in which white residents leave if the number of Black/LatinX residents increase above a threshold is documented [2]. All that to say that "integrated" is a term relative comparison, where the majority of neighborhoods remain deeply segregated, perhaps even an 70/30 comparison is likely to count as "diverse" or "integrated", but the old patterns of power are likely to be replicated. [1]https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unhealed-wounds-of-a-mass-arrest-of-black-students-at-ole-miss-fifty-years-later https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unhealed-wounds... [2]http://cityobservatory.org/are-racial-tipping-points-overblown/ http://cityobservatory.org/are-racial-tipping-points-overblo...
- austincheney 7y ago
  It still seems weird to me. I should also add that my major city is the fast growing major city in the US at about 4% year over year for the last 20 years so traditional rules about ethic neighborhoods either don't apply or are relegated to very old and low prosperity neighborhoods far away. In this past decade alone my city has grown by about 30% and is racing to reach 1.2 million residents in the next twenty years nearly doubling in size from 20 years ago.