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ACORN, a nonprofit fair housing organization, has charged Wells Fargo/ Norwest Mortgage with racial discrimination over the company’s Internet real estate site (which has since been taken down). Plaintiffs argued that the website’s neighborhood profiles used “overt racial classifications” to dis- courage people from inspecting or buying homes in predominantly minor- ity areas by exaggerating the desirability of areas deemed white occupied and the drawbacks of areas classified as minority occupied. The plaintiffs also claim the site’s neighborhood matching feature steered residents of predominantly minority zip codes to other minority zip codes, and referred residents of predominantly white zip codes to other white zip codes. The practices described above are common but hard to track, located more often by anecdotal example than by research. Although they are not as dramatic as acts of violence and not as quantifiable as redlining, they play a significant role in the persistence of housing discrimination. Together, they may be as discouraging to the growth of integrated com- munities as the easier-to-measure practices of discriminatory pricing, mortgage lending and insurance underwriting. However, these habits that support segregation can be broken by a concerted effort to bring them into the light of day. . . . First, let’s talk about what is going on.The absence of public dialogue is one of the conditions that allow racial discrimination to persist. Most indi- vidual home buyers see themselves not as change agents but as consumers whose decisions are merely individual choices that have no broader impact. Community organizations and coalitions play a key role in helping to raise public awareness of segregation and the contemporary problems it creates. Second, community organizations can strengthen their case by partner- ing with researchers and journalists to more precisely document the scope of residential segregation in their communities. Academic researchers can teach local groups techniques for tracing social patterns and analyzing their impact in a community over time. Journalists can bring the issue of segrega- tion to public attention. Rather than focusing their stories on individual acts of housing bias involving a few people, news organizations need to cover residential segregation as an issue story, highlighting the social processes and outcomes that affect thousands of people. Such efforts can begin to raise broader public support for changes in policy. Publishers and editors should also assess the racially exclusive advertising practices in their own real estate sections and pressure advertisers to change. Finally, we must call on public officials at local, state and federal lev- els to address residential segregation through assertive social programs. Models for these already exist, such as the one developed by the Fund for an Open Society in Philadelphia. This plan calls for the creation of neigh- borhood enterprise zones dedicated to residential integration. It suggests the creation of mortgage subsidies and tax exemptions for homeowners, and recommends that participating localities be made eligible for dedicated funding for new construction and school support. The Fair Share Housing Center in Cherry Hill, NJ works with residents of Mt. Laurel, NJ to develop low-income housing that would allow some of Camden’s inner city residents to afford suburban housing. The South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race is also testing out some of these ideas. Segregation is a stubborn problem. Although some communication practices have been used to circumvent fair housing and integration, others can help. Let’s talk frankly about the racial makeup of our neighborhoods. Let’s document and publicize what is going on. Let’s define segregation as a social harm rather than as an inconvenient byproduct of individual pref- erences. And let’s come up with alternatives for viable communities with quality of life for all.