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Comment by daemin | Hacker News Reader

I guess that depends on a uniform distribution of the location of the jobs to the racial characteristics in said location.

For instance I would imagine there would be more vets in an area with more animals, perhaps a country or town border region. At the same time those areas might have a higher concentration of white people than the average (with other races preferring a more urban environment).

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They need EMTs just about everywhere (92% white).

but they need EMTs who live nearby, just about everywhere - and it does not take much for neighbourhoods and states to clear into distinct patterns by house-purchase preferences (game theoretic economist whose name cannot remember won a prize for this) basically all that is needed is a prefernce for a particular neighbourhood attribute (walk to shops, less black people, more black people, close to hiking routes) and for that preference to be available at that persons clearing price.

so, a dribbling knuckle dragging KKK member would pay a lot to avoid living in Harlem (or rather would sacrifice opportunity by staying in Fuckwatsr Alabama.)

Take a nice black professional couple - happy to live in well integrated area of Manhattan - till along comes baby. at this point a slightly larger house nearer good schools is desirable - and preferably closer to grandma. Alternatively there is a nice area of Queens (?) that is predominately white but has good schools. Now all it takes is a preference or a feeling of being more comfortable near grandma and near other young mothers "just like me".

Since grandma will likely be living in an area where there was traditionally a larger percentage of black families the comfortable preference is near grandma. and who would argue with an expectant mother wanting to be comfortable.

At a certain point the cost of being near grandma will exceed the amount they can afford without realising they are making an explicit racist choice. which is I think my preferred definition - not emotional preference but when a conscious decision is made with race as a factor.

All this shakes out to mean that levels of preference few if any of us would consider racist, lead to segregated neighbourhoods. luckily other preferences intrude masking the effect.

So to help with the discussion, this implies that if everyone was perfectly color blind we would expect to see a 81% ratio. if not what is the level, the error bar, that we accept as emotional preference that does not cross the line ?

And how do we tell that difference if the starting population is not 81% in that area ? and if the school district in the area is really bad / good? (nb nationally funded schools systems I would expect see nationally less segregated societies than the USA for this reason)

anyway my 2 cents

Doesn't your segregation hypothesis actually argue in favor of an EMT distribution closer to 81%?

Also I think the fact that you had to put a question mark after "Queens (?)" suggests that you might be speaking from a position of shelter.

I simply ran out of parts of New York I can name and associate with good / bad neighbourhoods. hence the ? as a sop to anyone who knows queens enough to laugh out loud at the idea there are any nice parts.

My guess would be that a large fraction of EMTs are in fire departments. Fire departments are notorious for being full of racists. They were pretty segregated until the mid 20th century, too.

As the system was taken over by the government, the pay got good, and it's one of the best jobs someone without college can get. So you can bet that the incumbents would use any weapon, including racism, to discourage competition for these jobs.

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