How Do We Get White People Out of Their ‘Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence’?

Integrating West Baltimore’s Sandtown Neighborhood Required Sacrifice From White Newcomers as Well as Black Residents

West Baltimore has been an Empowerment Zone. It is currently an Opportunity Zone. It was home to HOPE VI—a program since succeeded by Choice Neighborhoods—and it contains a Promise Neighborhood.

Empowerment, opportunity, hope, choice, promise. For decades, national policymakers have lavished aspirational sobriquets upon poor, segregated urban communities like West Baltimore. Analysts at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are more candid, using the term “racially concentrated area of poverty.”

Given the state of segregation and inequality in our nation’s metropolitan regions, why don’t we have labels for America’s wealthier …