Article Analysis "Why America is self-segregating?"

Why America is self-segregating is a piece written by the author Danah Boyd who has written several other books on cultural diversity and how social media impacts teens.

In this article, she writes about how social media and the community around us cause people to divide sometimes unintentionally. In her article, she explains how Facebook and other digital sites and online social media apps which were designed to bring people together around the world are only causing more segregation. She went on to say how politics have also played a major role in the segregation of America and what we need to build bridges.

They say technology is a great way to overcome our differences but instead of helping people build a bridge between cultures some People have taken to Facebook to post racist, anti-culture rants and videos that show discrimination as something that should be allowed to happen. More and more people of color are being targeted online and not just on Facebook but on other social media accounts because there different.  Danah adds "If we want to develop a healthy democracy, we need a diverse and highly connected social fabric.

Also mentioned in her article was that most people want to be in safes spaces, somewhere culturally fit for them because the similarities make them feel welcome so even if they don’t intend to self-segregate, they are doing it with knowledge. There are groups at colleges that focus on one culture instead of creating diversity among students. While that intention is purely so students can have people they relate to and build relationships it has been a controversially debated topic as to whether they should exist at all.

Today a lot of colored people are judged and so many of them are still living in poverty or below the poverty line. According to a business insider” More than 80% of large metropolitan areas in the United States were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990.” It also goes on to add that while America is increasingly becoming diverse it is also segregating more and more as a cause. Danah made several other points on segregation and how it’s impacting America. She stated that people from early on in their childhood are segregated because of the American structure.

While there have been a lot of changes because of the times now and people of color are being accepted more and more and are given higher positions at work and even in the government, the problem does not go away.  Brookings.edu claimed on its site “Even after decades of growing diversity and spatial mobility, most Americans still live in racially segregated neighborhoods”. I think we need to do more than just say we will make a change; we need to act on it too.