not comfortable.

12:49am, starving, and my options? Oatmeal & brown sugar, "Oriental" Ramen noodles, portabello mushroom gnocchi. Looks like it's door number three.

We spent today in Evanston, working, as projected. Evanston is weird. It's weird precisely because it's so clean, so white, so rich. So suburban, so Stepfordy. After three years, I'm used to the South Side--we're a little grittier, a little more varied down here. Hyde Park has some beautiful little town houses covered in ivy, but we also have, you know, minorities. I've come to imagine Hyde Park as a sort of normal environment--all kinds of people, all kinds of nationalities and races, all kinds of beliefs. We have the Adam Smith-totin' U of C econ department; we also have Barack Obama. We mix it up, at least a little bit.

It's going elsewhere that reminds me, disturbingly, how strictly divided most places actually are. On the north side, so many places (exception: Devon) are almost completely white; south and west of here, it's all African Americans. Hyde Park is one of those in-between neighborhoods that manages to blend things. I'm not ignorant enough to believe that there is no segregation, but I think Hyde Park's better-than-average diversity insulates me from seeing how obvious it is elsewhere. It also makes it more apparent when I do leave the neighborhood. And it kinda creeps me out.

So here's the news that almost everyone ignores--or forgets:

America is still enormously segregated, for many sinister reasons.

Just take a minute and think about it. And with that I go to bed.