America may be entering a new era of racial and class segregation, according to David Dahl, a journalist and Harvard Nieman fellow who spoke at the College yesterday.
Whites and affluent African-Americans are moving to suburbs, gated communities and states a little farther inland than where they've lived in the past. Meanwhile, Latinos are increasingly concentrated in a small number of states, and African-Americans are trapped in effectively segregated schools or even prisons.
With an impeached President, a controversial election and no less than two major military conflicts, the past five years have been among the most eventful in our history. "This is a time for taking stock of our national identity," Dahl said.
Dahl's speech was an effort to bring several different trends together to illustrate a single idea: that race and social class are dividing the nation. But the divisions that are emerging in the country have gone largely unnoticed by the general public.
A deputy metro editor of the St. Petersburg Times, Dahl found a number of the examples he used to illustrate national trends in his paper's home state of Florida.
One of the strongest symbols of the new kind of segregation are the gated communities that frequent Florida's Gulf Coast and many other affluent parts of the nation.
These communities are enclaves for the affluent, protected by their own security, with their own private schools and always surrounded by a tall wall. They are often unwilling to pay outside taxes and they have sometimes tried to break off from city governments.
Gated communities are symbols of affluent, usually white populations that are fleeing to suburbia as they age. And, significantly, Dahl has found that they are most popular in the states with the highest rate of immigration.
Schools, political districts and prisons have all come to reflect the new segregation. A tiny fraction of white students go to schools with a significant portion of minorities, while black and Latino students often find themselves in schools where they make up the vast majority of the student body.
With regard to prisons, Dahl pointed out that one-third of all African-American males in the 20s are either in prison, on probation or on parole. The demographics of prisons are essentially the reverse of those outside.
States with the highest incarceration rates are in the South, where there are a greater minority population. States like Maine, which have only a tiny non-white population, have the lowest incarceration rates.
Targeted political redistricting has given African-Americans a majority in some Congressional districts, sending a much-needed voice to the House, Dahl said. But the other districts left behind tend to be more conservative and homogenous, creating a sharp division between the political representation of blacks and whites in certain states.
The politicians from the newly-created minority districts often have policies to radical to allow them to successfully run for a state-wide office, the next logical step.
Latinos come from a wide range of cultures, and Dahl warned against equating their politics with those of African-Americans. They tend to congregate in only nine "melting-pot states" and a few urban areas like Orlando, Fl.
Certain industries that have often relocated their plants to small cities where they can take advantage of a more captive labor pool also attract Latino immigrant populations.
Dahl is currently at Harvard researching national demographic trends. He spoke to an audience of less than 15, none of them undergraduate students.
