Behind the white picket fence : power and privilege in a multiethnic neighborhood /

By employing semi-structured interviews and participant observation along with survey data, sociologist Mayorga-Gallo (Univ. of Cincinnati) offers a deeper understanding of diversity in this thought-provoking ethnographic study of a group of residents in a multiethnic neighborhood in Durham, NC. She calls into question the labeling and quantification of communities as integrated or segregated, specifically arguing that the current use of a dissimilarity index to measure racial segregation belies the realities of the levels and types of social interactions between community members. Her study demonstrates the ways in which power dynamics and racial ideologies create structures of exclusion for racial and ethnic minorities as well as renters in the neighborhood. Though Mayorga-Gallo's study presents a mostly unilateral perspective of white families as the only active agents of social control in the Creekridge Park neighborhood, her study has broader policy implications for residential segregation and poverty deconcentration efforts. Moreover, the book opens the door for mixed-method studies that examine micro-level interactions of individuals within neighborhoods and offer more nuanced interpretations of diversity. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Sherri Lawson Clark, Wake Forest University