A thing I hear a lot, following the campaign trail (and just a few minutes ago, in my e-mail box) is something like: “Oh, this race business, it’s just you older types who go on about it. Young people like me, the 18-30 crowd, we really are past it all. It just doesn’t matter to us at all. Black, white, Hispanic, we really don’t care.”

Now, you know me; I really, really hate to burst anybody’s bubble. However, the crowd of 21-year-olds I graduated with back in 1966 were just as convinced of their own post-racial righteousness as this present cohort are. So, I am sure, were the graduates of 1976, 1986, and 1996. It’s to do with being young.

Don’t believe me? OK, let’s try a thought experiment. Here is a handy website, with good data on local demographics all over the U.S.A. It’s actually displaying my town there – Huntington, NY. Whadda we got? Median house value $695,700. Racial breakdown: 92/4/2/2 white-non-Hispanic/Hispanic/black/other.

Here is the next town over, Cold Spring Harbor. When we first went house-hunting in the ‘burbs, CSH was our first choice, until we realised we couldn’t afford it. (We did not know at that time that CSH had spawned Lindsay Lohan, or we would never have considered the place.) Median house value: $903,000. Racial breakdown: 95/2/0/3.

And here is a town a few miles east. Median house value $278,100. Racial breakdown: 4/16/78/2.

Here’s the thought experiment. Plainly the people buying houses out here have been making some shamefully race-based decisions. In fact, as any realtor will tell you (if he’s sure he can trust you, and if there are no government snoops within earshot), the single biggest determinant of house values in the U.S.A. is the desire of white parents that their kids not attend schools with too many black and Hispanic students. Come on, it’s not exactly a secret – and look at the numbers I just pulled off.

So let your imagination roam a few years into the future, when all these post-racial young folk are buying homes in the ‘burbs and settling down to raise families. They will of course not make race-based decisions, and the deplorable patterns revealed in those numbers will melt away.

Will they, though? I don’t believe it.

[Though as a footnote, if Christopher Leinberger’s article in the March issue of Atlantic is right, the suburbs may not be middle-class much longer. With oil peaked, gas and home-heating prices out of sight, urban living will make a comeback. Possibly so; that it will make much difference to patterns of residential segregation seems to me highly doubtful though.]