Socioeconomic Integration: Will This Achieve True Diversity

http://www.naesp.org/comm/p0500b.htm

I've posted the link to an article pulished in The New Diversity (5/00) on the subject of diversity as achieved by integration based on race versus that achieved based on socioeconomic factors.

This approach to diversity is presently being tested in select schools in Cambridge Ma.

Likewise in Chicago, a similar plan is being implicated in new high rise buildings. Populations of residents will be selected based on income and socio-economic factors and not by race. The very poor will receive markedly reduced rents, while the upper middle class will pay the full-charge.

What will the consequences of this type of integration be? Will this stimulate diversity or hinder it? Is it really possible to have a diverse population, living together in harmony, based on ethnic, racial,religious,
and socioeconomic differences created by these means?


Relative to religion, a recent article in The International Jerusalem Post points out the difficulties an Orthodox Jewish group is having in obtaining real estate space in a predominately Jewish neighborhood in New York State. The residing non-Orthodox Jewish population is fearful of a mass migration of Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn to the suburbs. (This situation In NY state sounds like a story written several years ago by J.D. Salinger. which described a similar occurrance.)