WELCOME TO MOUNTAIN LAKES
Mountain Lakes is a small town tucked away in the corner of Morris County in northern New Jersey. Living there for the majority of my life, I would venture to say that I know my town and the nearby towns fairly well. Along with the neighboring towns of Parsippany, Morristown, and Dover, Mountain Lakes is an affluent community with not much socioeconomic or ethnic diversity. To be frank, Mountain Lakes is somewhat of a bubble. The largest racial minority group inhabiting the town is Asian-Americans followed not so closely behind by African Americans (2). My mom told me that when we first moved to Mountain Lakes from Brooklyn, New York on my fifth birthday, I asked her where all the black people were. If you were to drive through Mountain Lakes, most of the houses are well above the average house size, which is reflective of the fact that most members of the community are economically very successful. The surrounding communities of Parsippany, Morristown, and Dover, though marginally more racially and socioeconomically diverse, are all relatively homogeneous. Parsippany, Morristown, and Dover all are around 75% to 80% white and the rest is a mix of African American, Asian, and Hispanic (2). Fiscally, these communities show a broader spectrum of income per family, but most still live with more than enough money to get by with the median household income at $77,340 (2).