Tom sends along a link to a recent Census article in the Washington Post, which points out that affluent blacks and Hispanics throughout the U.S. live in neighborhoods noticeably poorer than low-income whites.

The two exceptions are in Washington D.C. and Atlanta, where affluent blacks and Hispanics live in neighborhoods on par with the neighborhoods of low-income whites.  Why the exception?

Prince George’s County near Washington and DeKalb County outside Atlanta are home to many African Americans with college degrees and good incomes, pushing up the average for their regions.

As a result, blacks and Hispanics in both cities who earned more than $75,000 lived in neighborhoods that were virtually the same as neighborhoods populated by whites earning under $40,000, as measured by average income, poverty rates, education levels, home values and housing vacancies.

“Income, and being successful in class terms, does not necessarily put you in a different kind of neighborhood,” said John Logan, a Brown University sociologist who analyzed census data in his study released Tuesday.

The article doesn’t provide much in the way of answers, Tom sums up the article nicely when he says, “…above all, it seems to highlight the error of simplistic notions about why people choose housing that they do and what policies affect those choices.”

Interesting to think about in relation to our recent discussions about race in Decatur.

Don points out Decatur High School ranked as the 9th best high school in the state and 233rd best in the nation in a new ranking by the Washington Post.

What’s the formula?

The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors. While not a measure of the overall quality of the school, the rating can reveal the level of a high school’s commitment to preparing average students for college.

What Georgia schools top Decatur?  Here’s the full list, but for those of you exhausted after a week of clicking-thru, here’s 1-8…

1. Walton High School in Marietta
2. DeKalb School for the Arts in Avondale
3. Riverwood International School in Sandy Springs
4. Berkmar High School in Lilburn
5. Alpharetta High School
6. John Davidson Fine Arts in Augusta
7. Morgan County in Madison
8. Columbus High School in Columbus

BTW, it looks like the high ranking high school in the country is in Dallas, TX and the lowest ranking high school on this list is Jackson County High School in Jefferson, GA.

Another week, another mashup of journalists publicly stumbling their way through the tough questions facing their industry, emerging on the other side of a two-hour session essentially where they started; with resigned, puzzled looks on their faces.   And then of course, a bunch of other journalists inevitably run back to their laptops to write about it.   We must forgive them of course, because although the formal industry is in dire straights, never has the field of journalism been such a rich battleground of ideas, open questions and opportunities to ruminate over.

This week, another chapter in this Mitchner-length saga unfolded; this time out west, amongst the cool shadows of the Rocky Mountains.  A panel of “old guard” journalists met out in Apsen, Colorado at the Ideas Festival to take another go at the new age  question of “How do we save journalism in it’s traditional form (a.k.a. ourselves)?”

Politico summed up the event nicely yesterday, capped with a snarky headline that could only have been written by an online-only news outlet, “Save Journalism?  Beats us panel says“.  But reading deeper into the article, that’s not actually what was said.  In fact, I’d argue that this panel of traditional journalists came the closest to a “mea culpa” moment that I’ve encountered.

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