Neighborhoods

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D.C. Mapped By Stereotypes

Do you live amongst go-go, jumbo slice, commie dog walkers or in Ethiopia? Check your location against the DC Stereotype Map, produced by SocialStudiesDC, which attached stereotypes to neighborhoods in a tongue-in-cheek graphic:

Courtesy of SocialStudiesDC

D.C., by stereotypes.

Do you take issue with any of the categorizations? Let us know in the comments.

Affluent Minorities Live in Poorer Neighborhoods than White Counterparts

Cynthia Closkey / Flickr

A class divide doesn’t fully explain racial neighborhood segregation, a new Brown University study finds.

Nationally, affluent blacks and Hispanics live in poorer neighborhoods than where the average low-income white person lives.

The D.C. region bucks the trend somewhat; here, wealthy minorities live in areas with the same, not higher, poverty rates as where poor whites live. The proximity of Prince George’s County may skew the results for the region, the Washington Post reports. The county, which is 65 percent black, is home to high concentration of affluent African Americans:

Blacks and Hispanics… who earned more than $75,000 lived in neighborhoods that were virtually the same as neighborhoods populated by whites earning under $40,000, as measured by average income, poverty rates, education levels, home values and housing vacancies.

“Income, and being successful in class terms, does not necessarily put you in a different kind of neighborhood,” said John Logan, a Brown University sociologist who analyzed census data in his study released Tuesday.

Many in D.C. proper view class, not race, as the District’s biggest divider, but racial segregation is more prevelant in the city than in the region as a whole. And the wealthiest areas in D.C. also have the fewest numbers of African American residents. For example, the black population accounts for only 5 percent of Ward 3, the city’s wealthiest area, where the median income is about $97,000.

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