People would say, "You know, Rich, it's nature. Birds of a feather flock together." I have to point out to them that, no, that's not the case.

The interesting thing about Georgia is, Atlanta is teeming with middle-class black people and black people with money - and yet there is still segregation.

If I were an immigrant Latino not born in the US, I could not have written Searching for Whitopia: An Improbably Journey to the Heart of America book. And that is because many of the Whitopians would not have been comfortable talking about their views on immigration, talking about their views on taxes. And they wouldn't have spilled to me the new script on race and poverty as they did.

People would say, "You know, Rich, it's nature. Birds of a feather flock together." I have to point out to them that, no, that's not the case.

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.

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.

I concede that segregation can allay social tensions immediately, but it further debilitates us in the long run.