General Discussion

I grew up in a white flight suburb around Chicago, and the people there were extreme guardians of who they did and did not want in their neighborhood. It has ever been thus.

However, culturally and geographically, we've been making progress in that area. Where suburbs used to be predominantly white even twenty or thirty years ago, nearly half of suburbanites are now non-white. Where I grew up, it had been 98% white in the 80s and early 90s. Now it's at around 65%.

There's a lot of opportunity in that, particularly where younger generations are concerned as they will grow up in a world where their peers come from a more diverse set of families and cultures.

Now it feels like we're U-turning towards that extreme polarization-induced segregation due to mass and social media, and it's like you can't win for trying. I have Trump-voting neighbors. I talk to them all the time. I'm not going to turn up my nose at them or engage in verbal slap fights in my driveway. (Although I do enjoy the . . . imaginative stories in that regard that crop up here). People are people. It's actually easier to treat them as such. No one's going to be utterly destroyed despite the fantasies, so we might as well find ways to live with each other.