Sociology

Sociology’s Emerson: Race still divides Houston neighborhoods

BY LILIA FABRY
Special to the Rice News

Despite efforts to integrate, Houston neighborhoods are still divided by race and wealth lines, said Michael Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology.

Michael Emerson

Emerson analyzed the causes and effects of the divide during the February Community Dialogue Luncheon sponsored by the Office of Minority Community Affairs.

“Values matter, but they aren’t the only thing that matter,” Emerson said during his lecture titled “Succeeding in Life: Personal Values and Social Structures.”

Emerson presented a color-coded map showing the symmetry between rich-white versus poor-minority neighborhoods. He said the roots of the split between the races include opportunity, background, academic performance and moral values.

“One of the assumptions … is that we all have equal opportunity,” he said. “It’s not who you know, but how you know them. It is sharing the right sort of bonds with the right people.”

Emerson argued that the way children are raised also plays into the racial divide. “We don’t believe that if our children work hard enough in school they will succeed,” he said. “We get them into the right activities to get them into the best schools.”

The fact that many parents worry if their children are around the right people demonstrates the importance of social networks, Emerson said.

Although race-based networks do not seem exclusive or immoral, they do exist, and dialogue is the first step to opening them, he said.

Emerson is the director of Rice University’s Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life. His book “Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America” was named the 2001 Distinguished Book of the Year by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

The Community Dialogue Luncheons bring to campus community leaders from academic, cultural, legal, religious, broadcast, journalistic and political sectors. Designed to provide an informal gathering to spur engaging discussion and sharing of ideas, the luncheons bring together people from different backgrounds so they can get to know each other and form a network.

—Lilia Fabry is a staff assistant in the Division of Public Affairs.