“Daddy?” came the voice from the back seat, delivered with an intonation I had long since come to recognize — one that suggested a question of some magnitude would soon be forthcoming.
“Yes?” I replied, as my daughters and I waited at the red light, halfway between their school and the dance studio they both considered a second home.
“Why is pretty much everyone in this neighborhood black?” inquired 10-year- old Rachel, remarking upon the community through which we had been driving to get to the studio most weekdays for nearly a year at that point.
It was not likely the first time she had noticed who lived just down from their school, in a neighborhood with two public housing developments; but it was the first time she had thought to ask about it.
And what she had asked was indeed an excellent question.
First, because it signified that my ten-year-old was already doing urban anthropology in the back of our Highlander — itself no small feat — and second because as someone who writes and speaks about race and class inequality for a living, it is one of the only questions I am frankly qualified to answer.
