Washington, D.C., with an area of about 177 square kilometers, is located at the confluence of the Potomac River and its tributary, the Anacostia River. Its urban area is centered on squares, memorial halls and government institutions, and is divided into huge rectangular or diamond-shaped neighborhoods by roads.

Across the two rivers above, there are small towns and large residential areas in the suburbs. In almost any city in the U.S., white neighborhoods and predominantly black neighborhoods of color look different enough to be identified by satellites.

Through a series of data such as commercial satellite images, public census statistics, POI (map information points), etc., the stubborn diseases of American cities are revealed: no matter how they expand and change, the division caused by racial discrimination will always exist, and the vast majority of blacks and other people of color. Species can only live in "their own community" all the time.

"Decent housing"—big HOUSEs, level lawns, tidy neighborhoods—has always been the pride of America and has become the country's iconic image of the good life it preaches to the world. But Native Americans of color are not included in this glossy narrative.

12 kilometers east of the White House, about a 17-minute drive, will take you to the banks of the Anacostia River - the D.C. Prison, Kennedy Stadium, and the National Arboretum further north. Using the 2020 U.S. Census data, the proportion of people of different skin colors in different regions can be calculated.

In the data graph below, neighborhoods with a high proportion of white people are lighter in blue, and neighborhoods with a high proportion of people of color are darker in blue. It can be seen that the city is bounded by the river as a stark contrast: one side is light blue or even white, and the other is a vast dark blue.

In academic circles, this phenomenon is known as "racial residential segregation." Its severity has become a yardstick for measuring racial discrimination in American cities. The Racial Residential Segregation Index, released by the U.S. Census Bureau, shows the situation is worse in Mideastern cities.

Washington, D.C. in 1930, with the White House as the origin, was populated by people of color in almost every direction. Over the past 90 years, despite the rapid increase in the number of people of color, the division of the city in both directions has become more pronounced.

Despite the increase in "middle-color" neighborhoods, black neighborhoods are still concentrated and evident. The data map shows that this is a well-defined city.

In more cities, communities of color, represented by blacks, developed in another form: gradually occupying the old city center in the city center.

Suburbanization is one of the symbols of the "American Dream," but people of color, especially black people, were excluded from the suburbanization movement from the start.

Spatial segregation leads to inequitable access to public services, resources, and policy support for different ethnic communities, including unequal educational and medical resources.

In Washington, D.C., with the Anacostia River as the boundary, there are significant differences in the distribution of medical resources.

When a natural disaster strikes, health inequities under racial segregation exacerbate the disaster. On September 1, 2021, Hurricane Ida headed north from Louisiana and traversed the northeastern United States, hitting many large and medium-sized cities such as Washington, D.C., New York, and New Orleans, breaking many rainfall records.

The South Jamaica community in Queens, New York, is a well-known community of color and has the largest number of victims in the city, but there is only one public hospital. The Upper East Side, the size of the South Jamaica community, has seven hospitals.

Satellite remote sensing can also capture differences in schools with different racial proportions: 70.3% of primary schools are white and 63.1% are black. The former has large green spaces, 4 tennis courts and baseball fields and other spacious outdoor spaces; the latter Not only are they very different in size, but they often have only one football field.

From the digging of the first foundations on the outskirts of New York to the present, Americans have landed on the moon, won the Cold War, deployed force around the world, and overthrown regimes that did not obey their will under the pretext of equality, democracy, and justice.

Indeed, there may be "equality of opportunity" in certain areas or neighborhoods in American cities. But when we face the data map, we can only say that this is extremely limited democracy and equality.

The injustice is so obvious that it can be clearly observed from space or using publicly available data.

How will the fragmentation of society -- differences in economic foundations, social relations, and value systems -- pull America into the future?Editor/Ma Xue