I was surprised by how forces in the community could mobilize against a community changing. There were many examples of this. In St. George, members of the Latino community proposed having a "Dixie Fiesta." The resistance to that surprised me.

I don't want to live in a monoculture of any kind. I don't want to live in a wealthy monoculture, a black monoculture. I don't want to live in an elitist, progressive monoculture.

Problem with segregation isn't that people can't live in peaceful harmony singing "Kumbaya" - although that wouldn't be bad. The problem is that many of these Whitopian communities are taking state, local, and federal resources with them.

In the pioneer West Whitopias, immigration tended to be the dominant social and racial issue. In Forsyth County, Georgia, immigration is still an issue, but because you have that complicated history of the Trail of Tears and slavery and Jim Crow, the Whitopia has a different flavor.

There is tremendous long-term harm when Americans accept ethnic and class balkanization as a de facto fixture of American life. I think that impoverishes our understanding of each other.

Of course, there isn't really a black population in Idaho or Utah.

Louisville, Colorado, which was just voted by CNN and Money magazine as the best place to live, is a veritable Whitopia that is unaffected by the housing crisis and even the severe recession. You look at the best places to live, according to Money's 2009 list, and 9 of the 10 are Whitopias.