Sharkey Mobility.jpg

If I sounded a bit glum and fatalistic in my post on the killing of Jonathan Ferrell, and if I sounded glum and fatalistic in my postings on Trayvon Martin, and if I generally have sounded glum and fatalistic—period, you can blame charts like this one. Again, this is from Patrick Sharkey's research in his book Stuck In Place. I would go so far as to call it essential in understanding the profound lack of progress we've seen, over the last forty years, in our efforts to forge an integrated society.

Much of Sharkey's data is pulled from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The PSID is remarkable in that it allows you to look at people across generations. Or, for now, just one generation, because the PSID started in the late 60s.
Above, you see a chart looking at blacks and whites born in poor and affluent neighborhoods, and what happened to them across a generation. The chart then shows what percentage of each group's families remained in poor neighborhoods, and which group's did not. It also shows what percent of each group's families born into affluent neighborhoods were able to remain there, and what percent of each group's families were not.
As you can see, the results are glum. Put simply, if you are black and grew up around poverty, your children probably grew up the same way. If you are white and grew up around poverty, your children probably did better. If you are black and grew up around affluence, your children probably didn't. If you are white and grew up around affluence, your children probably did. 
When I talk about terms like "poor" and "middle class" and "elite" not translating when we compare blacks and whites, this is what I mean. Black people living around affluence are not white people living around affluence with a tan. Their lives are different. The prospects of their children are worse, and their presence on the East Side tends to be transient.
The fact of a dual-society has implications beyond the dollar signs. Toleration of black disadvantage, in a world where that disadvantage is rarely forthrightly explained, leads to the toleration of magic. This is true many times over when you consider that America was founded on the magical thinking of white supremacy. Put differently, if a society has a history of believing that black people are less than human, and repeatedly sees black people living in conditions unlike other humans in that society, the original belief is reified. 
And we know this. Beryl Satter documents in her book Family Properties how the racist practice of redlining black people did not just rob black people of wealth, it reinforced racist beliefs already present. Because I am black, my interest rates and my payments are higher than yours. Because my payments are higher I can not keep up my property as well as you. Because my payments are higher, I work a second job and I am not around to supervise my kids. You don't ever see the absurd contract on my house. But you do see my gutters falling off. You see my kids out past the hour of streetlights. No one told you about redlining. But many people told you that I am lazy and prone to criminality. You have been told this since somewhere around the 18th century. And now you see that when I move next door, property values dip, and the neighborhood becomes a ghetto. 
Where science is concealed, magic reigns. And you will be forgiven for believing that the fact of the ghetto is the fact of my lesser humanity. And with that lessened humanity, with all the requisite stereotypes, comes an entire belief system that tolerates the killing of Trayvon Martin by a man who then tours the factory where the weapon he used to slaughter a child was made.
I can only yell so loud when a jury comes back with a verdict we do not like. I can only yell so loud when the police act on magic. The society believes in magic. The institutions reflect this belief. Whoso tolerates a dual-society, necessarily tolerates the killing of Jonathan Ferrell. I see no evidence that the dual-society, nor its toleration, are in decline. Trayvon Martin will happen again. George Zimmerman will be innocent again. Fools will blame hip-hop again. Racists will discover Chicago again. And we will be back in the streets demanding a change in some law which is but the thin branch of a problem that extends down into our country's deepest roots.