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THREAD: I wanted to go into more detail on our new paper "Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence: A Preliminary Investigation" and interrogating whiteness in planning and policy w/ Ed Goetz &
@ComradeRah 1/
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscpe/vol21num1/article4.html
@ComradeRah 1/
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/cityscpe/vol21num1/article4.html
Since Wilson published "The Truly Disadvantaged" disadvantaged communities of color have been problematized as places of disorder that represent a "tangle of pathology" due to crime, teen mothers, welfare dependency etc. 2/
The stigmatizing discourse around these communities often locates the “disorder” within the community and its people rather the oppressive systems of racial capitalism and white supremacy that maintain spatial disadvantage in the first place. 3/
We posit that this lack of engagement with whiteness and systems that maintain white advantage works to further stigmatize communities of color without reckoning the larger political economy that benefits white communities at the expense of communities of color. 4/
For example, HUD requires the mapping Racially/Ethnically Concentrated Areas of Poverty (RECAP) without any similar look at the other end of the segregation spectrum. This is a first attempt to document and understand Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence (RCAA). 5/
We define RCAA as census tracts that have a median hh income of at least $125k and are at least 80% white. We chose 80% because we find that this represents a “tipping point” where n'hoods experience a non-linear increase in advantage as they get whiter. (See paper for math) 6/
Whiteness and affluence both represent types of advantage. We posit that both of these types of advantage reinforce each other. Eg - all whites benefit from the "public and psychological wage" of whiteness, but affluent whites benefit MORE from whiteness than poor whites 7/
Here's where we find the largest shares of neighborhoods that qualify as RCAA as well as RECAP. Not surprisingly places with more white/affluent hh had more RCAA. Poorer metro areas with lots of POC had more RECAP. Chicago is the only metro area to be in the top 10 for both. 8/
We find that in our sample, RCAAs are more common in the Midwest and Northeast. RECAPs are most common in the Midwest. The West region has, on average, the fewest RCAAs and the fewest RECAPs despite being the most racially diverse region in our sample. 9/
We put together a simple typology that compares a metro area's share of RECAP and RCAA. 10/
Though this paper is largely descriptive, interestingly, we do find a modest positive correlation between metro areas that have high levels of RCAA and high levels of RECAP (0.36) suggesting further research co-determination of both of these types of segregation. 11/
We built a web app to let others explore spatial patterns of RCAA and RECAP in the largest 50 metro areas in the US. The app has a map of RECAP and RCAA, sortable tables and downloadable data. https://z.umn.edu/rcaa 12/
