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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Okay, so you agree with the premise of this thread. Poor kids (who are overwhelmingly minority in the DC area) aka socioeconomic diversity brings a host of problems and issues and dysfunction. And thus you (general you) will seek out areas in which these problem people do not exist thus increasing the segregation. I appreciate your honesty. [/quote]

The premise of this thread is that diversity & multiculturalism lead to problems.  You're saying that socioeconomic diversity leads to problems, which most people would acknowledge is true.  That is different than racial diversity.  It is possible to be racially diverse while being socioeconomically homogenous.  I went to a private school in the midwest that was like that, actually.

Conflating the two things doesn't help anyone...both racism and classism exist in the US.  Often the two are intertwined, but not always.  And it's worth understanding the differences.  I suspect the majority of people in Bethesda and Arlington are classist, not racist.  The fact that race is correlated SES makes it difficult to deal with both problems simultaneously, but it doesn't help to call people who are self-segregating by SES class racists.  It precludes a fruitful dialog.  If you pointed out to those same people that their decision to self-segregate along class lines leads them to end up in a racially segregated situation without accusing them of being closet racists, you might be able to move the discussion forward.  As someone who earns close to 10x the median income of the racially diverse area where I live, I can also speak to the fact that it's challenging for reasons that go beyond -isms.  At some point you lack shared experience with which to build community.  We don't have any plans to move any time soon, but we do wonder what it will be like for our kids (who are still young) to be so different from their peers in school etc.  We both grew up in families where going to a four-year college was the expectation, and we're in an area where it's considered unusual.  I'm sure our kids will likely do just fine in school, but they may feel socially awkward.  In our case, we feel pretty stuck because we don't share the values of the more affluent neighborhoods we could move to, but we also don't really fit in where we are either.  In the meantime, we like our house so we're sticking around for the time being, but it's not so simple as you might think.

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