We're all super pumped about the results of the 2010 Census. Who isn't dying to find out that white people still live on the Upper East Side? But some just can't wait for the results to come in to start writing their angry editorials: the Daily News points out today that in the 2000 census, New York was America's third most racially segregated city, after Detroit and Milwaukee. And as far as they can tell, the results of the latest survey will come to terrifyingly similar conclusions.
They blame some of the housing segregation on real estate professionals who "unlawfully steer white and black renters and buyers to different neighborhoods." According to Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, a civil rights organization, the problem is more political in nature: "There has been, in my opinion, an unholy alliance in this city, where patterns of segregation are accepted by a variety of political leaders. You have to have a belief in civil rights enforcement like every other kind of law enforcement. You have to make it more than a once-in-a-while kind of thing."
Last month, digital cartographer Eric Fischer made a series of maps based on the 2000 Census data that showed the racial breakdown of America’s biggest cities, and which seemed to confirm a lot of what the News argues about the chunkiness of the NYC "melting pot." The main question we have: will the new Census results show us anything new?
