My region, like most around the country, is generally divided by race. There are communities where the residents are mostly white next door to communities where the residents are mostly people of color. These racial divisions usually accompany differences in wealth. Why is that?
It’s because we designed it that way. After World War II when the GI bill made home mortgages widely available to returning soldiers and their families, the U.S. government and the banks treated soldiers differently based solely on race. This 6-minute clip from the documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion explains it well: