Reply #2: segregation

[enid602]

The Bronx has largest concentration of primarily Black poverty in the US. Chicago is still quite segregated, as is DC, Detroit, Cleveland, Philly, etc.

I come from LA, which is often ridiculed for its very violent racial history. Watts riots, South Central riots, etc. Nonetheless, these riots were in large measure responsible for an integration which otherwise might not have been possible. South Central was 45% black before the last riots; it is now 15% black. LA has not lost any of its black population overall, and most have moved to neighborhoods on the Westside and in the Valley, as well as in San Bernardino County suburbs.

I realize that the South Central riots were multi-cultural riots, as many groups were upset by LAPD, red-lining investments in poorer neighborhoods, housing discrimination and a city council more interested in image than developing neighborhoods and opportunities.

I think there is a tendency to look at the poverty exposed by Katrina as being peculiar to the Mississippi Delta or the South, where you have a rather large, poorer inner-city black population. These same conditions and needs exist in so many of our larger cities, but have not yet been made visible by a natural disaster.