This is a real sentence that got published in the Star Tribune this morning

It’s from this editorial, which argues that Minneapolis isn’t actually segregated (and by implication, city leaders are unnecessarily alienating white people when they talk about race in housing policy). https://m.startribune.com/smart-minneapolis-housing-policy-need-not-be-so-divisive-and-racialized/572321602/

I’ve actually seen arguments like this more often than you’d expect, because Minneapolis-Saint Paul is a very white region overall, which means that it’s simply numerically impossible to achieve the totalistic segregation of, say, Detroit.

It’s still segregated, though!

Anyway the editorial used a lot of what I’d call, ah, tricky data. For instance comparing the black share of Minneapolis’s richer neighborhoods to the REGIONAL average but neglecting to mention that the REGIONAL average is much lower than the city average.

It also argues that black poverty in Minneapolis is high because we have “imported” poverty in the form of East Africans. Not only is this toxic anti-immigrant framing, it’s dead wrong: non-immigrant black Minneapolitans are also poor (and generally live in different places).

And it’s funny that the piece, previously dedicated to neighborhood comparisons, reverts to citywide data when it talks about housing composition. Yes, like any major city, Minneapolis has a mix of housing types. But the single-family units are concentrated in the richest areas.

(In fact I have helpfully produced graphs in the past to help compare the distribution of different housing types across neighborhood demographics. Hint: it's not even!)

What's amazing about this op-ed is that, ultimately, the author seems to favor Minneapolis's housing efforts. Instead, it's entirely focused on a CULTURAL agenda: trying to get city leaders to stop talking about race, so that rich white developers don't have to feel bad.