DC is really two cities

There's the city that is full of professionals, young NGO workers, lawyers, etc, mostly white, and the black and latino service workers, guards, bus drivers, and restaurant workers.  A large percentage of the federal administrative staff seems to be made up of black women. Streets go from yuppiefied, gentrified areas with high rent houses where people are walking around with yoga mats on their backs, to apartments half a block away with a low rent look, where inevitably you see the other half living.  There's some mixing, of course.  Not everything is extreme.  But ride around the city in the early morning, and the homeless people sleeping on the benches and the streets tend to be largely African American.  So much wealth next to so much poverty.  Such a clear distinction in race in the workforce.  It's really disturbing.  Is it this bad in the rest of the country, and I just didn't notice?