Sociologist predicts future of racial relations

The Urban Studies program sponsored guest speaker John Logan, a professor of sociology at Brown University, yesterday to present "Neighborhoods: New Pathways to Diversity and Separation," a look at the direction metropolitan neighborhoods are headed in terms of racial change and diversity.

One of the primary ways we organize inequality in the United States is by spatial boundaries, Logan said to the group gathered in the Homer Babbidge Library's Class of 1947 classroom. Where you live is significant in terms of social outcomes.

This phenomenon is prevalent in the U.S., where there are ever-present and clear distinctions between privileged neighborhoods and areas like slums and ghettos.

Logan studied four ethnicities to produce his argument: whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians. His theory, called Invasion and Succession Model of Racial Change, examines how minority groups play a role in where whites choose to live.

One of Logan s aims was to find evidence of stable, integrated neighborhoods, where whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians live together. There are such neighborhoods, he said, but certain criteria must be fulfilled before all four groups live together.

According to Logan, blacks are only included in multi-ethnic neighborhoods with a white population when both Asians and Latinos are already included. Whites become used to the idea of living with minorities like Latinos and Asians, and so it becomes easier for blacks to become part of these neighborhoods.

Logan cited fellow sociologists who are optimistic that these stable, integrated neighborhoods will provide breakthrough in race relations in the future. Logan, however, also saw trends that underprivileged, all-minority neighborhoods are still prevalent, and that deters his hope for a complete breakthrough.

This kind of integrated neighborhood is the way of the future, said Logan. All-white neighborhoods are things of the past, but all-minority neighborhoods haven't been touched.

Logan stressed that the idea that white flight must be considered a factor in his hypothesis and may deter the hope for this breakthrough.

White flight is the idea that when a neighborhood becomes too populated with minorities, the white community will move to more suburban areas, said Logan. They are able to choose to do so, he said, whereas those restricted to all-minority neighborhoods - which Logan termed the typical American tragedy - usually do not have that monetary freedom.

The most disadvantaged in terms of race and class continue to live in places that are disadvantaged, said Trisha Tiamzon, a 3rd-semester graduate student in sociology who attended the talk.

Logan looked at trends of New York City's metropolitan and suburban areas from 1980 to 2000, which shed some hope for improved race relations and living situations. In 1980, all-white neighborhoods dominated the northern suburbs, but by 2000, they mostly died out.

The average white American who used to live in neighborhoods that were 95 percent white is now living in a neighborhood 80 percent white, he said. The influx of minorities into white neighborhoods means that they can experience the advantages of suburban societies, like better schooling for children and significantly lower crime rates, said Logan.

Bill Berentson, a professor of geography at UConn, said that the expanding future of ethnically mixed neighborhoods reflected Obama's ideas of change in society.

The issues he's dealing with are the most important in our society, he said.

Berentson also said that, as a geographer, he was impressed by Logan's use of maps and data to present his theory. He showed the facts, the change in those facts and explained why, Berentson said. "That's how geographers make sense of these processes."