Читать книгу Segregation - Eric Fong - Страница 13

Why does segregation exist? Perhaps the simplest and most common explanation is homophily. Like the adage “birds of a feather stick together,” the principle of homophily suggests that people prefer to be with people like themselves. This desire may come from deep-rooted feelings that safety, compatibility, reciprocity, attraction, and shared culture are more likely to be found in people who share a common background. Although scholars who study segregation most often focus on ethno-racial segregation, homophily may draw people together due to a variety of common characteristics (e.g. race/ethnicity, language, religion, age, income, family type). Proponents of homophily argue that it is natural to prefer to live in a community with neighbors who have a similar economic, social, and demographic background. These preferences determine those with whom residents share neighborhoods and other social environments (Dietz and Rosa 1994).

Another result of homophily is that voluntary choices made to create and maintain an “in-group” often also include exclusionary behaviors involuntarily imposed on an “out-group.” Thus, segregation is a product of both voluntary and involuntary factors. For example, one group’s desire to stay homogeneous within an environment may lead to exclusionary practices that are unfair, unkind, and even unlawful. Exclusionary practices can take place through individual behavior, or by entities that act in one group’s interests against another. As mentioned in Chapter 1, an example of the latter is the former exclusionary practice by the US Federal Housing Administration (FHA) of refusing to insure mortgage loans to homebuyers in or near African American neighborhoods (Rothstein 2017). The FHA sought to minimize the risk of default on home mortgages through the practice of “redlining,” which classified neighborhoods into zones and denied loans to people in the riskiest “red” (or sometimes “pink”) zones: usually older neighborhoods in the city with a high concentration of African Americans. This exclusionary practice fortified black–white segregation and the urban–suburban divide.

The status and power differences between groups mean that these processes of inclusion and exclusion often occur in ways that generate and maintain social stratification in society. The greater the status, cultural, and linguistic differences of groups, then the greater the potential protective effect of voluntary segregation, and the greater the potential harm of involuntary segregation.

Voluntary segregation suggests that members of a group, such as ethnic or immigrant minorities, make a conscious decision to live with their own group. For example, sharing a language, cultural understandings, and an ethnic economy can be a protective lifeline for new immigrants. The preferences that shape voluntary segregation have an important overall effect of segregation for all groups. Schelling (1971) found that people have different preferences for the extent to which they are willing to share neighborhoods with other groups, and a change in racial composition may trigger those who are less tolerant of other groups to move out. Thus, individual preference for racial composition can result in substantial segregation of groups (Clark 1992).

Segregation where a group is involuntarily excluded from neighborhoods has also drawn considerable attention because it contributes to important social issues of inequality and discrimination. A variety of factors can create involuntary segregation, including constrained choice due to discrimination, prejudice, or other variables that limit access, such as income. Furthermore, sometimes the exclusion is explicit and overt (e.g. redlining) and other times it is implicit and covert (e.g. making people feel unwelcome through a cold reception). However, as Lieberson and Carter (1982) pointed out, a clear distinction between voluntary and involuntary segregation is often not made in the research literature. A group may experience discrimination from other groups in certain neighborhoods and thereafter prefer to stay elsewhere with their own group. Sometimes both forces operate at the same time, or one precedes the other. The distinction between voluntary and involuntary segregation also reveals that the sorting process is not always governed by maximizing preferences within constraints. People may choose certain neighborhoods despite having the resources to make other choices.

In short, segregation is among the most important social problems because of its relevance to stratification and inequality in the broader society. It is related to stratification in society because it is shaped in part by exclusionary behaviors of groups with more economic, social, and political power over marginalized groups. These patterns of segregation are considered involuntary, and groups who are marginalized and isolated by these practices often have lower well-being and fewer life chances.