To the editors:
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A friend searched the census data for “diverse” community areas, any of which has less than half the population in its largest ethnic group. He found six community areas, out of Chicago’s 77, and three “near misses,” areas with 50-52 percent of their population in the largest ethnic group. Of these nine, however, four are less “diverse” than “divided”; they straddle a boundary between two segregated sections. Another is genuinely diverse, but its diversity doesn’t extend to African Americans.
The far north side teaches two lessons. The first is that diversity helps. The conflicts between Black and White seem less severe when they are surrounded by people from all over Asia and Latin America. The second is that the “Leadership Section 8s” made a real difference. The poor Afro-Americans who moved in with those certificates were followed by Afro-Americans of all economic levels.
