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Dealing with such division means finding ways to promote more contact among groups, says Robin Wright, a research associate at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University in Columbus.
Living in a homogeneous community “allows your biases to go on unnoticed, and so when you do have [interactions] with someone of a different culture and race, the possibility is you’re not even aware you have biases,” she says.
Eventually, that interaction will happen naturally in a place like McKinney, as economic growth attracts all sorts of people, says Professor Troutt. But it needs to be embraced.