Panel Paper:
“Because the World Consists of Everybody”: Parents’ Understandings of Neighborhood Diversity
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
This research shows how preferences with respect to neighborhood racial composition contribute to residential segregation (Bobo and Zubrinsky 1996; Bruch and Mare 2006; Charles 2000; Charles 2006; Quillian and Pager 2001; Schelling 1971), drawing on social psychological theories about in-group preferences and out-group avoidance (Charles 2000; Charles 2006; Charles 2007; Clark 1992; Farley et al. 1978; Krysan et al. 2009), including avoidance based on racial stereotypes or perceived status differences. Yet this work provides little insight into alternatives – specifically, the preferences for neighborhood diversity that some may hold, their meanings, and how they matter for outcomes. Furthermore, while existing research on neighborhood racial preferences reveals patterns in respondents’ ideal or suitable residential destination, few studies directly address the reasoning behind such preferences.
In this study, we draw on 264 in-depth interviews with 156 Black, White, and Hispanic parents of young children living in neighborhoods across the Cleveland and Dallas metropolitan areas to examine how they think about neighborhood ethnic and racial composition. While previous research on neighborhood racial preferences has largely examined the preferences of individuals without regard to parenthood status, we focus on the preferences of parents with young children, as segregation in the U.S. is higher among families with children, compared to households without children (Iceland et al. 2010; Logan et al. 2001).
We find that across race, a sizable share of respondents explicitly, and typically unprompted, voiced a desire for neighborhood racial and ethnic diversity. Parents often motivated this preference by describing the benefits of diverse neighborhood environments for their children: cultivating skills interacting with racial or ethnic others that will be useful in the “real world”; nurturing tolerance and a propensity to “see beyond” color; and offering enriching experiences of ethnic difference.
Parents often framed diversity in reference to homogenous environments they or their peers had experienced, such that neighborhood diversity could convey relative advantage for Black and Hispanic parents – shielding them from the structural disadvantages of all-Black or all-Hispanic areas and the racial isolation of all-White areas – but create tradeoffs for White parents, for whom pursuing diversity often meant conceding preferences for areas near workplaces and preferred public school districts. Appreciation for neighborhood diversity, as reflected in parent discourses, may not necessarily advance efforts to remedy systematic racial inequality if it does not strongly inform residential decisions (Berrey 2015; Smith and Mayorga-Gallo 2017). For most of our respondents, racial inequality produced conditions in which parents’ positive views about neighborhood diversity remained idealized and aspirational.
Full Paper:
