Conor here: A paper<\/a> last year from the Minneapolis Fed showed how income segregation in the US has been increasing for 40 years:<\/p>\n Over the last 40 years US cities have experienced a profound transformation in their socio -economic structure: poor and rich families have become increasingly spatially separated over time. As noted by Massey et al. (2009), this is a new phenomenon in US cities, which historically were segregated predominantly on the basis of race. During the last third of the twentieth century, the United States has moved toward a new regime of residential segregation characterized by decreasing racial-ethnic segregation and rising income segregation. Such a shift has taken place at the same time as a steady increase in income inequality.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And from the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality<\/a>, a slightly dated chart (with trends that have only grown since) showing how an increasing number of Americans live in neighborhoods that are either very poor or very rich:<\/p>\n By Sarena Neyman, who writes a syndicated column for PeaceVoice and is a Massachusetts grant writer. Originally published at Common Dreams<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n It was 1974. The Bronx was burning. Abandoned cars littered the streets, and New York City<\/a> teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. I\u2019m still surprised my overprotective Holocaust-survivor parents let their preteen daughter ride the subway to school every day, but somehow they did.<\/p>\n For five years\u2014from eighth grade through high school\u2014I took the No. 5 Dyre Avenue train from our apartment in the Pelham Parkway neighborhood of the Bronx to my Jewish day school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The commute was nearly an hour each way and always coincided with rush hour.<\/p>\n Mornings weren\u2019t so bad; I lived near the beginning of the line and could usually get a seat. But heading home, the 86th Street platform was packed five to eight people deep.<\/p>\n When it was my turn to board, I would throw my entire body weight onto the person in front of me, as the person behind me did the same. We all pushed forward together, forcing ourselves into an already crammed car, as more people tried to pack in behind us.<\/p>\n Once the doors closed, we stood packed together in a dense sea of bodies. When the train lurched, the entire crowd swayed as one. Usually, I breathed through my mouth to avoid the smell of sweat and bad breath. I tried to pull away from a hand on my behind that might have been accidental, but probably was not. I remember thinking I was too young for this.<\/p>\n At the time, I hated riding on the subway. But more than 50 years later, I\u2019m grateful for that commute\u2014for the way it forced a visceral reminder of our shared humanity.<\/p>\n Now, like three-quarters of Americans, I go everywhere by car. It\u2019s faster and more convenient but I never see my fellow travelers\u2014only their vehicles speeding past on the highway. And while I don\u2019t miss the discomfort of the subway, I feel more cut off from other people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n When you don\u2019t see people, you know them less. When entire groups remain unseen it becomes easier to turn them into abstraction\u2014to fear them, dismiss them, or vilify them. It\u2019s much harder to do that when you\u2019ve stood shoulder to shoulder with someone, both of you grasping the pole as the train jolts you from side to side.<\/p>\n These were the days before smart phones or even portable music players. There was little to distract me from just looking and listening to the people around me. For two hours a day, I heard people speaking Spanish. I absorbed its rhythms long before I understood the words. Years later, when I finally learned the language, I picked it up quickly.<\/p>\n The subway exposed me to a depth of poverty<\/a> I hadn\u2019t seen in my own working-class Jewish neighborhood. I saw people asleep on the seats, curled around garbage bags that held everything they owned. There was a young man with no legs or lower torso who moved through the cars on a wheeled platform, collecting money. I watched him cross the treacherous gaps between cars as the train rattled and swayed.<\/p>\n The subway also showed me where people lived. Unlike highways, which are designed to bypass neighborhoods, the elevated train trestle cuts straight through them.<\/p>\n The No. 5 ran through the South Bronx at a time when more than 80% of buildings had burned or been abandoned. On dark winter evenings, we passed through blocks of hollowed-out shells, with the occasional occupied apartment. From the train I could see into people\u2019s living rooms, glowing blue from the television.<\/p>\n As a teenager, I didn\u2019t know much about redlining<\/a>, disinvestment, or the policies that had helped create those conditions. I only knew that children<\/a> my age lived there and I wondered what it was like to grow up in what felt like a war zone.<\/p>\n There are, of course, other ways to encounter difference. My husband, a nurse in one of the poorest communities in Massachusetts, has cared for people from all walks of life. But that\u2019s a different kind of interaction. People meet him when they\u2019re sick, in pain, or in crisis. When you commute, you\u2019re simply sharing space.<\/p>\n But not all forms of transportation<\/a> create the same kind of shared space. Recently, riding the Amtrak train home from Philadelphia<\/a>, I watched miles of rundown brick rowhouses slide past the window. Some were boarded up. Inside the train, however, the conversations I overheard were about road races in Cancun and the best spin classes in Manhattan. The passengers\u2019 lives appeared far removed from the neighborhoods we were passing through.<\/p>\n Having last lived in a city decades ago, my rural life is now quieter, more controlled. I move from one place to another sealed inside a car. It\u2019s comfortable and efficient. But it\u2019s made my life smaller. It\u2019s made it possible to live a life where one rarely sees anyone outside one\u2019s own orbit.<\/p>\n How can that not affect one\u2019s ability to empathize\u2014if your neighbors, coworkers, and classmates all reflect some version of yourself? The more choices we have about how we travel or whether we go to private schools or fancy gyms, the easier it becomes to spend our lives among people much like ourselves. Distance makes it easier to dehumanize.<\/p>\n Which is not to say that riding the No. 5 Dyre Avenue made me a kinder person. I still judge people; I could be nicer and more patient. But the commute gave shape and texture to lives I might otherwise reduce to stereotypes. Day after day, it reminded me that everyone, just like me, was simply trying to get home.<\/p>\n\n
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