Now, shifting somewhat, I want to discuss something that's emerging within our society that also, sort of addresses the question as to whether race is going away? Or, whether it continues to affect not only where we live, but how we live and our relationships to our neighbors? And, there are scholars who are doing research now on what they call Ethnoburbs. And, it represents the changing face of ethnic and racial segregation within the country. Now, Ethnoburb was a term that was coined by the scholar Wei Li, some years ago, a few years ago. And, it's focused on suburban communities, in which ethnic groups have moved in, in some cases, become the significant or the predominant population. But, much of this research is focused on ethnic minority groups that are affluent and high achieving, that move into neighborhoods that were or are predominately white and trying to gauge the reaction to an affluent neighborhood. Now, one of the articles that was written on this was written by, Anjali Enjeti, I believe the name. And, she looked at a neighborhood outside of Atlanta called Johns Creek, I believe is the name of the neighborhood. And, this was a neighborhood in which it was a significant Asian population and also significant white population. In fact, white students were the slight majority of the high school there. And then, the whites started to move out and their numbers reduced significantly within the community. And also, significant within the schools. It really was an exodus from Johns Creak. And John's Creek by that time had become a predominantly Asian suburb. And, one of the things that the author did to note that in one decade the white population in Johns Creek Elementary School, plummeted from 397 to 195. Or drop from 55% to 23%. And, she observed these trends and so she decided to simply question the people that were moving out, to get some sense as to why were they moving out of the community with an affluent population and also a high-achieving population. And, she got some of the following responses that she recorded. Some of the white parents said, Asian parents take their kids for extra tutoring. And it was not fair for what they call regular kids. Another comment was that, the high school was too competitive and the white parents felt that their kids could not get into a good college because Asian would outrank them in terms of class rank and so forth, in achievement. And another comment was that, they wanted their children to grow up in the real world and that a suburban community with a lot and even predominately Asian-American population was not the real world. There were so many quips like that and so many comments. And, what the researchers are trying to understand now is, are we moving toward neighborhoods that welcome diversity and also that believe in inclusivity? Or is this new kind of suburbanization call Ethnoburbs, when which Latinos, as well as Asian-Americans and African-Americans as well, who are fluent that are moving into these neighborhoods? And how are they being received and whether this is a transformation of long standing neighborhood segregation as well as prejudice and bias against people who are different? Or whether it will open the way for a new kind of affluent neighborhood which is diverse and inclusive? And so far, they're finding the opposite. I think, if there was any silver lining from the research so far it's that, it seems to be that there some stability of late that has not been there, say, in the last 10 years. Now, there have been more systemic studies of this by some sociologists from Indiana University, to see if by looking at census tracks to see if the particular case in Atlanta, in the suburb Atlanta was reflective of larger patterns throughout the nation. And, so on a national study they found that, yes it is typical and it is characteristic of what is happening. And so, the hope that we would see more housing desegregation or neighborhood integration, is something that hasn't happened yet. And, in fact, the researchers are very much concerned that it's headed in the opposite direction.
