About that Diversity Thing....

Two things struck me about today's ChronBlog story on the growing diversity of Houston.

Houston region is now the most diverse in the U.S., Jeannie Kever, ChronBlog

First off, this data point:

The report also found that while residential segregation has dropped over the past 20 years, it remains highest within the city of Houston; most suburban neighborhoods are less racially segregated.

Report co-author Michael Emerson, co-director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice, said poverty, aging housing and larger concentrations of minority groups all contribute to continued segregation in Houston.

In other words, the Caucasian Progressive set, those progs who spend most of their days telling us mean suburbanites how racist we are, are actually the most segregated among us, and are less likely to have daily interactions with minorities.

If you've spent any time studying prog political philosophy, this shouldn't surprise you. "Good for thee but not for me" is not only an InterLeft mantra, but it seems to be something that dominates their daily lives as well.

The second was this:

Toni Carter was a reluctant suburbanite, moving to Pearland in 2000 in search of more house for her money. Carter had grown up in Houston and was wary of raising her children in what she feared would be an all-white enclave.

"I wanted them to be comfortable with everybody," she said. "When we were looking at this neighborhood, that was something I had my eye on."

She discovered a mix of people from all over the world.

"I didn't know much about the suburbs," she said. "I expected it to be white-bread land."

Is ensuring that a racist slur be inserted into your article on diversity taught in J-school these days? Or is this just a situation where ChronBlog, with it's skeleton staff and lack of professional editing, reveals one of their many blind spots?

Now imagine that a white resident, considering a move inside the Loop, had opined that they were concerned they would be moving into "the barrio" or "to Africa West" (among many other, cruder, examples I could choose). Do you think that would have made print?

It's one thing to hold your racial bias in private, it's another thing to publish it for all the world to see.