Monday, January 21, 2002

Exclusive Report
Racial divide fosters isolation, intolerance
Segregation's social costs set back region in multihued world

By Gordon Trowbridge, and Oralandar Brand-Williams / The Detroit News

The Cost of Segregation Part II: Paying For Preferences        Monday, The Detroit News will publish the second of three special reports examining the impact of segregation in Metro Detroit. Monday's installment will focus on the heavy costs residents pay for having the most racially polarized housing in the nation.    Read previous installments of this series. Would you be willing to participate in a town-hall forum on the issue of segregation? Please CLICK HERE and fill out the form to be considered for participation. More on WDIV/TV 4    Watch for special reports by Emery King and Roger Weber during Monday's 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts.     Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

   Lori Turner knows the real world isn't like this.
   Turner realizes she's raising her 13-month-old son in a community -- Macomb Township, which is 96 percent white, and in a metropolis -- the Detroit area -- that's the most racially segregated in the country.
   "It's certainly unusual to see much variety when you go to the grocery store," she said. "You know you're living in an all-white area.
   "In the work place, in academics, it's not like that," said Turner, who knows her son someday will have to interact with people of other races. "When children are brought up around only one cultural or ethnic makeup, it doesn't encourage them to be accepting."
   It is a common story across Metro Detroit, where some believe segregation breeds several social ills: a false sense of America's diversity, racial isolation, intolerance toward others and, in the end, a perpetuation of separate living patterns.
   Monday, The Detroit News explores the price of segregation, a price paid by Metro Detroiters black and white. From depressed black neighborhoods in Detroit to traffic-clogged suburbs to inflated suburban housing values, The News found effects of segregation that are seldom realized but are many and steep.
   Ultimately, the most universal of all may be how much the separateness Metro Detroit neighborhoods keeps many unprepared for the rest of a multihued, melting-pot globe.
   
A world apart
   Some of segregation's costs are starkly economic: depressed home values in African-American neighborhoods and inflated prices in white suburbs. Others are matters of convenience: mushrooming gridlock on the suburban fringe, or the lack of a good grocery store in a black neighborhood.
   Despite mountains of academic research documenting these costs, The News found that, for the most part, Metro Detroiters seldom notice them.
   "I just haven't seen it to be a problem," said 55-year-old Marilyn Simpson of Macomb Township. "I just don't know of anybody that's personally affected by it."
   Her feelings aren't unique. In more than 200 interviews with Metro Detroit residents, and in two public-opinion polls, the area's attitudes toward its overwhelming racial segregation is clear: We're not exactly ready to put our No. 1 ranking on a Chamber of Commerce brochure, but we don't really see how it costs us anything, either.
   Still, many are at least aware that things here are different, and not always for the better. People new to Metro Detroit, or unfamiliar with its black-white dividing lines, can find the separation shocking.
   Angela Kaza came to the area from Southern California when she was 12. As the only minority in a largely white school, Kaza said she felt something she'd never experienced in California: isolation.
   "It freaked them out a little bit, I think," Kaza, who is Indian, said of fellow students. "I was the only person of a different group and a different religion. It felt really uncomfortable.
   "It was totally different in California, a lot more diverse. It didn't seem like there was any sort of segregation." Kasa now is a senior at University of Detroit Mercy High, where the racial and ethnic diversity makes her feel more comfortable.
   Her story points to one of the subtle but telling repercussions of neighborhood segregation: How little Metro Detroiters know of other races before they reach the work place.
   Work is by far the most common place for Metro Detroiters to befriend people of different races; more than half of the people surveyed in a Detroit News/WDIV poll in August said they first met their friends of different races at work. By contrast, only a quarter of those polled said they had met a friend of a different race in school and far fewer -- only 8 percent -- had made a friend of another race who was their neighbor.
   Still, one in three Metro Detroiters said they've never had a close friend of a different race.
   
'They should be able to share'
   "Children who grow up in these areas have a false sense of reality when it comes to diversity in the United States," said University of Detroit-Mercy sociologist Lyn Lewis. "It affects the degree to which they embrace diversity and appreciate diversity.
   "All of these things will affect them more when they go to college and eventually get into the workplace. Then they are forced to deal with people different from themselves."
   It's a worry to African Americans such as the Rev. Pamela Reed, a Detroit minister.
   "Blacks and whites should be able to know our histories," said Reed. "They should be able to share."
   The lack of familiarity shows up in surprising places. Mark Wyckoff is president of the Planning & Zoning Center, a Lansing-based consulting firm that consults with governments and private groups on land use and development issues. He regularly meets with government officials and business people in big cities, suburbs and rural areas, and said he often finds himself cringing at a racially insensitive remark.
   "When we don't live together, the benefits of diversity don't exist -- we don't know what we're missing," Wyckoff said. "The more homogeneous a population becomes, the less tolerance there is."
   To some observers, young Metro Detroiters are beginning to recognize their segregated neighborhoods aren't all that the world has to offer. Detroiter James Turner, a historic-preservation activist, said younger whites are bucking the trend, however, and making an effort to learn about others from different backgrounds.
   "What we're starting to see is the migration of suburban youth into urban centers primarily because of the blandness of suburbia and the blandness of one norm," Turner said.
   

You can reach Gordon Trowbridge at (313) 222-2735. You can reach Oralandar Brand-Williams at (313) 222-2690.