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.

When well-qualified, upper middle-class blacks or Latinos or Asians move to predominantly white neighborhoods, there's what's called the tipping point. That tipping point is generally 15 percent; at 15 percent you begin to see white flight.

By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority.

I hope we have American-topias.

It's the texture of New York that people miss by filming elsewhere. There are layers and layers of character - even in the pavement - that you can't get anywhere else. And the speed that the people move. It's so different from other places.

With growing and intermixed minority populations, our democracy can not work optimally unless all people are integrated as full and equal members, and I think our collective freedom requires that.

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.