Hate Thy Neighbor: Move-In Violence and the Persistence of Racial Segregation in American Housing

Americans are increasingly racially diverse and tolerant—a 2007 Gallup Poll indicated that 75% of whites approve of interracial marriage—but we still live in relatively segregated neighborhoods, although not necessarily by choice. “There is significant evidence that minorities who move into white neighborhoods experience violence on a nearly daily basis,” Bell writes, citing 455 incidents of anti-integrationist violence between 1990 and 2010, including 44 cases of arson and 96 burning crosses. Though these numbers may be surprising, the majority of present-day cross burners and arsonists are not members of extremist groups. Bell (Policing Hatred: Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Hate Crime), a professor at Bloomington’s IU Maurer School of Law, contends that racially motivated violence is most likely to occur in “entrenched white neighborhoods” where individuals choose to fight integration as if defending against a foreign enemy. An impassioned advocate, the author puts a human face on statistics, drawing our attention to the financial and psychological damage sustained by individual victims of move-in violence. These victims are mostly African-Americans, who moved out of segregated housing into white neighborhoods. The cumulative effect is powerful and disturbing—a nuanced view of race relations in the age of Obama and a reminder to civil rights advocates of unfinished business. (June)