The Christian Science Monitor

Florida city paints a different racial portrait of America

Alex Martinez has a curious observation about his hometown of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Though the city of 200,000 is 20% Latino, “There’s no ‘Hispanic’ neighborhood.” Though it is 18% Black, “there’s no ‘Black neighborhood,’” either.

Then, the local insurance broker who moved here in the early 1990s goes further: “And there’s really no poor or economically blighted areas here in town.”

To the unaware, Port St. Lucie might look like a rather nondescript Florida town, sprawling and sedate – a suburb in search of a city with nothing that resembled a downtown until developers built one about two decades ago.

But that might be its genius. According to a recent study, only two of 113 of the largest cities in the United States qualify as integrated. And one is Port St. Lucie. (The other is

Why desegregation mattersWhy Port St. Lucie is different“I can’t say that about other places”A sense of belonging

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