Rich Benjamin accepted the mission and his book, Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America (Hyperion/ 2009, 368 pages, $24.99) is proof that -- if anything -- America is becoming even more racially segregated.

For one thing, he says, if you've ever been enticed by those "Best Places to Live" lists in Money magazine and on the internet, have you noticed "how white those towns and cities are? I asked myself: What will white Americans do — where and how will they live — to achieve their American dream?"

Benjamin, a black man living in Brooklyn, traveled  26,909 miles from coast to coast between 2007 to 2009, visiting Whitopia (pronounced White-Opia) communities and living for months in three of them: St. George, Utah; Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; and Forsyth County, Georgia.

First off, what the heck is a Whitopia? According to Benjamin:  "A Whitopia is whiter than the nation, its respective region, and its state. It has posted at least 6 percent population growth since 2000. The majority of that growth (often upward of 90 percent) is from white migrants. And a Whitopia has je ne sais quoi — an ineffable social charisma, a pleasant look and feel."

He wasn't a parachute journalist, dropping in for a week or so, living in a hotel and collecting his information: He rented a house in each community, taking part in activities like a resident, playing golf -- a passion of his -- going to church and social events.

With his bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University and doctorate from Stanford University, Rich Benjamin is without a doubt better educated than 99 percent of his neighbors. He's a senior fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan think tank based in New York City and has taught at Stanford. He's as cosmopolitan as they come, but with a common touch. He drove a pickup truck in Idaho and a Mustang GT in the almost entirely white enclave of Forsyth County, an exurb of Atlanta.

By 2042, he writes, whites will no longer be the American majority. Already, non-Hispanic whites are a minority where I live, Port Lavaca, Calhoun County, Texas. Hispanics are the majority in this coastal Texas county.

White flight is taking place on an unprecedented scale as immigrant populations -- largely people of color -- increase in cities and suburbs. Whites of all age and demographic groups are moving from places like Los Angeles and Phoenix and Atlanta to small towns and exurban areas that are very white.

In Idaho's panhandle, where Coeur d'Alene and Sandpoint and other towns are attracting retired Los Angeles Police Department officers -- the most famous is Mark Fuhrman of O.J. Simpson fame -- young couples and older retirees -- Benjamin attended a three-day retreat with links to Aryan Nations. He writes wittily about his experiences in whitest America and was told by more than one person that it was a good thing that a more violent Aryan separatist group had left the area. His presence would have been noted, he was told!

He played golf at a Scottish-links style course in Bandon, Oregon, on the Pacific a couple of hundred miles south of Portland and attended a New Year's Eve costume party in Forsyth, where guests dressed up in 1920s costumes and attempted to solve a murder mystery.

Throughout the experience he kept his cool. This must have been difficult in Forsyth County, where Benjamin discovered that all of the county's black residents had been forced out of the county  in 1912 -- reminiscent of the Trail of Tears in the 1830s that saw the Cherokee Indians living for centuries in this part of northwest Georgia being forced to move by the state and federal governments to what is now the state of Oklahoma.

He visited Potomac, Maryland, a wealthy "lily white" suburb of Washington, DC, where a prominent alumnus of Churchill High School -- which Rich attended -- was Darren Star, creator of the TV show Beverly Hills 90210.  He tells us that Star's early working title for the show was "Potomac 20854." Star also created Melrose Place and Sex and the City.

Prominent white residents of Potomac included "Ted Koppel, Jack Kemp, Sargent Shriver, and many congress people."  About the only blacks, aside from Benjamin and his family, were professional athletes like boxers Mike Tyson and Sugar Ray Leonard and NBA great Patrick Ewing. Benjamin's parents took advantage of the soft economy of the 1970s to put a down payment on "to secure their $179,000 steal." They obviously wanted the best preparation for college for young Rich.

In Manhattan, he explored Carnegie Hill, Jackie Kennedy Onassis's old neighborhood, and learned of the exclusionary policies of the co-op boards that determine who can or cannot live in the neighborhood that faces Fifth Avenue and Central Park on the west and Lexington Avenue on the east, with E. 86th Street marking the southern boundary and E. 96th Street -- only a few blocks south of Harlem -- marking the northern boundary.

Aside from a few townhouses, most of the for-sale apartments in Carnegie Hill -- which gets its name from steel tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie who built a mansion at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue in 1901 -- are co-ops, where buyers own shares in the building and have a proprietary lease on their apartment. Rich says that owners who bought their units before the massive  price inflation are the gatekeepers of what are in effect the same kind of gated communities found throughout Whitopia.

Yes, when white folk move to Whitopias in St. George, Forsyth County or the Idaho Panhandle, more often than not they move into gated communities. Fear of crime -- which is minimal to the point of nonexistence in these places --  or just fear of the other?

Rich Benjamin notes that he visits the greater Washington, DC area about four times a year. Each time he makes the trip, he notices how much more diverse the suburbs are compared with when he was growing up in one of the region's most exclusive suburbs.

"When a fellow says he lives in the suburbs now, he hasn't said much of anything," he writes. "You know nothing reliable about his social class, his race, his income, his education, or his lifestyle. When he  says he lives in the suburbs, you know only that he lives in some microcosm of America, where half the population also lives, vast and nebulous."

It's no surprise that the whiter-than-the-rest of the country Whitopias voted overwhelmingly for McCain over Obama last November. Benjamin notes that McCain beat Obama 55 percent to 45 percent among white voters. In Whitopian exurbs the margin was even more extreme: In Forsyth County, McCain garnered a whopping 79 percent to Obama's 20 percent, he says. In Utah's Dixie, Washington County, St. George, McCain had 76 percent of the vote to Obama's 21 percent. In Kootenai County, Idaho (Coeur d'Alene, Hayden) McCain beat Obama 62 percent to 32 percent.

At the end of Searching for Whitopia Rich Benjamin asks -- and answers -- the question: "What's wrong with Whitopias."  For one thing, exurban Whitopias -- like Forsyth County, GA  -- increase commuting times, waste time and energy, increase already dangerous urban sprawl and put a strain on schools and the infrastructure. Small town Whitopias, like Coeur d'Alene and St. George, minimize interaction of young people with people of other races and backgrounds, just as inner city minorities are deprived of interaction with others. Too, the high cost of housing in small town Whitopias forces people to make drastic lifestyle compromises, like a man Rich met in Coeur d'Alene, who lives in a rented storage unit because he can't afford to rent an apartment.  Middle-class black people who live in predominantly black suburbs miss out, too, he says, because these suburbs don't typically generate the same economic growth as their predominantly white counterparts.

Searching for Whitopia is an important contribution to urban studies literature, plus it's fun to read. Rich Benjamin is an engaging writer who also includes plenty of statistical information in the book's appendix, providing an overview of many areas of the nation.

Rich Benjamin is Senior Fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan national think tank based in New York City. His social and political commentary is featured in major newspapers nationwide, on NPR and Fox Radio, and in many scholarly venues. He holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
You'll find the author online at www.richbenjamin.com