NEIGHBOR LOVE:

Integration is good

The government in Singapore doesn't put a lot of value on individual autonomy, so they force every neighborhood and every high-rise apartment building to roughly match the country's overall ethnic balance.

From the standpoint of the government, this solved a problem that existed early in Singapore's history where neighborhoods dominated by the large Malay minority in the country would become hotbeds of anti-government agitation. Now there are no Malay neighborhoods and no Indian neighborhoods, either. Every neighborhood is mostly Chinese, but with Malays and Indians integrated -- no minority clusters or ghettos.

The United States is not like that, but freshman dorms at American colleges sort of are -- central planners dictate where people will live and force racial integration. And that lets us ask, "what if you are assigned a Black roommate?" The answer is that students assigned to a Black roommate end up with more Black friends, even if you exclude the roommate from the count. A somewhat similar survey looked at peer group assignments in the Air Force Academy, with broadly similar results.

This general phenomenon is the Contact Hypothesis -- that actual interaction with members of diverse groups will lead to less prejudice. And while Contact Hypothesis doesn't hold up in all cases, meta-analyses tend to strongly support it overall. A really interesting study by Xuechunzi Bai, Miguel R. Ramos, and Susan T. Fiske finds that "at national, state, and individual levels," places with more diversity feature less stereotyping. Detailed research from Census records suggests that white kids who grew up living next door to a Black family are more likely to grow up to be Democrats. There is a similar outcome based on the rise and fall of integration-promoting busing in North Carolina.

We've obviously not going to go Full Singapore, but we should absolutely reform zoning laws to promote more integrated neighborhoods and (as D.C. does) draw school boundaries to err on the side of integration rather than doing the reverse the way most localities do.

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