Since my retirement, I spend almost every Tuesday at our local public library. It is a very comfortable, modern building that houses many things other than just books. For example, you can now check power tools out of the library, and craft supplies, and cake baking pans, and movie DVDs, and original art to hang on your wall. It has Friday night movies, Sunday afternoon music concerts, and kids’ birthday parties.

However, for me, the best is the magazine reading room. To be sure, most magazines are readily available online Yet, I still like going to the library and reading the printed versions of the news magazines in person.

About three months ago, I saw an article in Time magazine that has stayed with me. It was an article about Detroit, more specifically about the cement block wall built in the early 1940s to divide the east and the west sections of the city. That’s correct. A cement block wall erected to divide the city. The wall was funded by some of the city’s largest real estate developers. It was designed to separate the city into a “black half” and a “white half.”

Researchers have studied the impacts of the Detroit wall and have concluded that its impacts were enormous.

Initially, house prices were similar on both sides of the wall, but after twenty years, the houses on the “white” side were worth two or three times those on the “black” side. The “black” side had streets with larger potholes, and the city crews that removed the snow from the streets did the “white” side weeks before the “black side.” The “white” side had more stores, better schools, less unemployment, and significantly lower crime. Far more “white” students went to college. The “white” side had more (and higher quality) hospitals. The “white” side had more parks, more theaters, and more churches. Life expectancy was lower on the “black” side.

On over 200 dimensions, the “white” side of the wall was significantly higher (more positive) than the “black” side.

As I said, the study of the impacts of the Detroit wall remained with me for weeks. Then, I realized that my cousins (although neither African American nor Hispanic) lived on one side of a comparable “wall” and my brothers and I lived on another.