Social Segregation Social segregation influences the communities we live in. Whether these influences are positive or negative relies on the individuals’ interpretation and experience. A community can be analyzed from a macroscopic to microscopic level. Riverside and Milwaukee are two very similar communities that we can compare. Riverside is a very diverse community that offers a wide variety of resources that are vital to the education and overall growth of a student. There are a wide variety of Advanced Placement classes to choose from. The extracurricular activities are managed by inspiring professionals who push you to your limits. Yet there seems to be a social constraint in our system. Students tend to socially segregate themselves according to race. The African Americans do their own thing while the Asians do theirs. The few whites are scattered and the Latinos are most comfortable with Latinos. There seems to be no sense of awareness of other ethnic groups other than the one they belong to. Senior Jamil Bradley believes that the logic behind social segregation is, “If you haven’t been exposed to different types of people, you’re going to stick to what you know.” I also spoke to two Riverside professionals who shared their interpretation of this social issue.
Christopher Fons, AP U.S. history teacher, expressed the negativity involved with this issue. “It’s profoundly negative because what it does is it allows people to avoid because they live in neighborhoods of affluence. They get to avoid the real social problems that are created by policies that they support. If you live in Whitefish Bay and you don’t see any of the social ills of the society because you drive from Whitefish Bay to Mequon, the things that you’re doing at your job are creating massive inequality, crime, incarceration, and all kind of social problems that