I knew Detroit was segregated, but I didn't know the line was so stark you could color-code it on a map. I was also unaware that the violence and the shootings and the murders had gotten so bad—and the whole time Detroit was just half an hour away. It's kind of sad to know that it used to be such a big, proud, important city and now it's a shell of its former self.  I can't even imagine Detroit in its heyday, when the city was full of people and jobs. And now the city management never moved on from the prosperity the auto industry brought, and keep bailing out auto companies and making them the lifeblood of Detroit. That time has come and gone, and it's time to move on.

I think that segregation at groves is not much of an issue, it is more the problem of self-segregation and people like to hang out with other people like them. Just seeing that map today shows you the other side of things that there can be such a border not only physically but geographically. I know exactly the divide between Detroit and Ferndale and the huge difference. My best friend lives south of 8 mile and woodward and every time i cross over 8 mile I can see the differece. You drive through Ferndale and it is just like any other city that people walk around and shop and eat, and then all of a sudden you come to a stop light just south of there and have people banging on your windows begging for money. People in my friends neighborhood can never park their cars on the street, especially at night, because people will smash your windown and take everything, and I learned that the hard way when it happened to me. I do believe that the self-segregation is a problem, and it is causing what is happening at the 8 mile divide.

"The Racial Prism"

Attending schools in Birmingham Public Schools for my entire life, I have always been used to a very diverse student body. Even our district website and post cards display photos of diverse groups of people (kind of trying too hard). I never exactly identified segregation as a problem. I may be taking a naive stance here but I think the problem at Groves is that we see a problem with self segregation and that we are often oblivious to the much larger deep-rooted issue of segregation. Just twenty miles down the road, Detroit is the most segregated city in America.