MULTIETHNIC NEIGHBORHOODS ON THE GROUND

As our nation and our neighborhoods increasingly diversify, we should understand how to sustain integrated communities that are equally beneficial for all residents. Though our policies encourage diversity as a theoretical social good, we actually know little about what happens on the ground in multiethnic neighborhoods. We conduct a comparative case study of the only two Boston neighborhoods to have maintained at least 10% representation of four racial and ethnic groups over the past two decades. Using survey data and ethnographic field observations, we examine residents’ experiences in these two consistently multiethnic, yet very different, neighborhoods. We find that neighborhood socioeconomic and racial inequality and disadvantage matter for residents’ access to neighborhood resources and constraints, and their perceptions of sense of community. Notably, in the highly unequal South End, Whites and homeowners have greater access to amenities and have higher perceptions of sense of community in comparison to racial and ethnic minorities and renters. Socioeconomic disadvantage matters in Fields Corner, as evidenced by lower overall perceptions of sense of community and greater exposure to safety concerns among all groups in this neighborhood compared to residents of the South End. In the end, we argue that having multiple groups simply sharing neighborhood space over a stable period is not enough to overcome the social problems associated with residential segregation and isolation. In order to support equitable neighborhood integration amid the changing face of diversity, we should take cues from “diverse by direction” neighborhood models that include active organization and coalition building among dissimilar racial and ethnic groups.

8. The view from Hollywood

‘The view from Hollywood’ begins with the “Westerns” that dominated American cinema for much of the twentieth century and that influenced popular understandings of the western past. It goes on to describe Los Angeles, the most ethnically diverse metropolis in America; the 1965 Watts riot; and the violence of 1992. Across the centuries, migrations and minglings of peoples have triggered struggles that have torn families and societies apart. Yet, there are examples of episodes of concord, from colonial frontiers to multiethnic neighborhoods in the modern American West, which provide evidence of barriers breached and accords reached, of people overcoming their differences instead of being overcome by them, of heterogeneity made hopeful.