New York is very much like Boston, but with a broader ethnic base and greater geographical area. People of Italian descent in New York probably occupy a position similar to the Irish-decended people in Boston.
I'm convinced that the reaction to busing in Boston is one reason it was never brought to New York, where it would have been greeted in a similar manner. New York continues to maintain a system of neighborhood schools, basically, for the lower grades, and schools in outlying white areas remain predominantly white, despite the overwhelming minority composition of the system as a whole. High schools cover wider areas of mixed ethnicity, but most upwardly mobile white, black and Puerto Rican parents etiher remove their kids from public school at this point or get them into the system of admission-based high schools, leaving the neighborhood or zoned high schools for the most poorly performing students.
Lower middle class and middle class whites in the outer boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island remain strongly anti-black in general because they fear that the problems of adjoining black neighborhoods will penetrate their neighborhoods, and they can't afford to move in that event. Social liberalism is more prevalent among rich Manhattanites who can afford to indulge the fantasies of social liberalism secure in the knowledge that they can buy their way out of the grim realities that it produces.
I have also noticed that upwardly mobile Puerto Ricans in New York are becoming anti-black, and are much more vocal about saying so than white people. Puerto Ricans who have been successful tend to be social conservatives also, believing strongly in family and religion, and opposed to abortion, etc.
I don't favor forced integration because I think it reinforces racial labeling and gives it more importance than it deserves. People should be judged their behavior, not their ethnic background. If kids are unable to get a good education in their neighborhood schools, then we ought to be asking why, and fixing that problem, rather than attempting to avoid it by moving kids around. It failed miserably in Boston and every other place it was tried. Even most blacks don't want busing any more.
Philly is pretty split too. Center City and Manayunk are yuppie liberal most will vote Dem, some will go Rep. North and West Philly are black liberal and will almost always vote Dem even for Street 'ugh'. Northeast and South Philly are a microcosm of "rustbelt populism", but not as economically liberal or socially conservative. They will tilt Dem in national elections, but almost always vote Street and cronies out! Suburbs are socially liberal to moderate, economic moderate to conservative. They were once GOP stongholds now turning Dem.
