Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities, Study Finds
By SAM ROBERTS
William H. Frey, the chief demographer at the Brookings Institution, cautioned that “the report sends a potentially harmful message that black-white residential separation is no longer a priority issue in this country.
“While recent modest declines in black segregation levels are welcome, the 2010 census shows that the average black resident still lives in a neighborhood that is 45 percent black and 36 percent white,” he said. “At the same time, the average white lives in a neighborhood that is 78 percent white and 7 percent black. Black segregation levels are even higher for children, signaling the continued separation of black and white families across communities with different levels of resources available for schools and other services important for nurturing the next generation.”
John R. Logan, a Brown sociologist, said: “If we want to understand the long-term trends in segregation, we have to be aware both of the progress and of the resistance to change. We are far from the ‘end of segregation.’ ”
Still, Professors Glaeser and Vigdor found that only 20 percent of blacks now live in “ghetto” neighborhoods where 80 percent of the population or more is black, compared with nearly 50 percent who lived in similar neighborhoods a half-century ago.
The findings in the report, titled “The End of the Segregated Century,” for the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership did not denigrate decades of desegregation efforts. In fact, the authors said, “there is every reason to relish the fact that there is more freedom in housing today than 50 years ago and to applaud those who fought to create the change.” But they concluded that housing desegregation was not a magic bullet in providing equal opportunity.
“Residential segregation has declined pervasively, as ghettos depopulate and the nation’s population center shifts toward the less segregated Sun Belt,” Professors Glaeser and Vigdor wrote. “At the same time, there has been only limited progress in closing achievement and employment gaps between blacks and whites.”
The study’s definition of neighborhood was borrowed from the census: a tract that is home to 1,500 to 7,500 people. The analysis relied on the two most common segregation indexes: dissimilarity, or the proportion of individuals of either group that would have to switch neighborhoods to achieve perfect integration, and isolation, which measures neighborhoods where the share of the population of one group surpasses the citywide average.
By the dissimilarity index, Dallas and Houston are the least segregated big cities.
Los Angeles fared best on the isolation index.
Among cities with the largest black population, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis ranked highest in the dissimilarity index. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia did.
Since 1960, the share of blacks living in neighborhoods where they account for a minority of the population has risen to 59 percent from 30 percent.
“While it may be tempting to see the overwhelmingly white nature of many suburbs as evidence of stagnation or stasis, the presence of even modest numbers of African-Americans in suburbs demonstrates the remarkable change in American society,” the study said. “Indeed, measured by dissimilarity indices, suburbs are often among the most integrated parts of America.”
Only 424 of the nation’s 72,531 census tracts recorded no black residents. More than half were either in rural areas or in metropolitan regions where blacks account for less than 1 percent of the population. Every census tract in Connecticut, Maryland and New Hampshire recorded at least one black resident.
Showing posts with label whites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whites. Show all posts
Friday, July 27, 2012
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
STRUCTURAL RACISM AND COMMUNITY BUILDING
-How is it that a nation legally committed to equal opportunity for all—
regardless of race, creed, national origin, or gender—continually reproduces
patterns of racial inequality?
-Why, in the world’s wealthiest country, is there such enduring poverty among
people of color?
-How is it that in our open, participatory democracy, racial minorities are still
underrepresented in positions of power and decision making?
Without fully accounting for the historical and ongoing ways in which racial dynamics produce inequities between whites and people of color, the social justice and antipoverty field risks pursuing strategies that are misguided, incomplete, or inappropriate to the challenge.
The statistical portrait of the American population broken out by race reveals persistent disparities between people of color and white Americans in almost every quality of life arena, the most basic being income, education, and health.
The statistical portrait of the American population broken out by race reveals persistent disparities between people of color and white Americans in almost every quality of life arena, the most basic being income, education, and health.
The correlation between race and well-being in America remains
powerful.
Beginning with the expropriation of Native American lands, a racialized system of power and privilege developed and white dominance became the national common sense, opening the door to the enslavement of Africans, the taking of Mexican lands, and the limits set on Asian immigrants (8).
Over time, beliefs and practices about
power and privilege were woven into
national legal and political doctrine.
While committing to principles of
freedom, opportunity, and democracy,
America found ways to justify slavery,
for example, by defining Africans as nonhuman. This made it possible to deny
Africans rights and freedoms granted
to “all men” who were “created equal.”
Only when white Southerners wanted
to increase their political power in the
legislature did they advocate to upgrade
Africans’ legal status to three-fifths of a
human being. Thus, from the earliest
moments in our history, racial group
identities granted access to resources and
power to those who were “white” while
excluding those who were “other” legally,
politically, and socially.
Racism in twenty-first century America is harder to see than its previous incarnations because the most overt and legally sanctioned forms of racial discrimination have been eliminated. Nonetheless, subtler racialized patterns in policies and practices permeate the political, economic, and sociocultural structures of America in ways that generate differences in well-being between people of color and whites. These dynamics work to maintain the existing racial hierarchy even as they adapt with the times or accommodate new racial and ethnic groups. This contemporary manifestation of racism in America can be called “structural racism (9).”
White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks (18).
. . . . whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and
average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as
work which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage . . . is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all.”
-Peggy MacIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the In
“. . . a child born in the bottom 10
percent of families ranked by income
has a 31 percent chance of ending
up there as an adult and a 51 percent
chance of ending up in the bottom
20 percent, while one born in the top
10 percent has a 30 percent chance
of staying there.”
Psychological studies of African American adolescents have demonstrated that consistent negative imaging contributes to negative self-acceptance and mental health problems (22).
Moreover, the attitudes that manifest
themselves at the individual level can
also aggregate all the way up into a
national consensus about race that,
in turn, influences policies, practices,
and representations. Experimental
studies of the effects of news stories
on the public suggest that television
images have the potential to catalyze
and reinforce opinions about public
policies that contribute to racially disparate outcomes: “A mere five-second exposure to a
mug shot of African American and Hispanic youth offenders [in a 15-minute newscast]
raises levels of fear among viewers, increases support for ‘get tough’ crime policies, and
promotes racial stereotyping.”
---EDUCATION---
Public education is probably the national system that holds the greatest potential for reducing racial inequities over time.
Looking closely at specific school districts reveals even greater inequities in investments. In the predominately white school district of Manhasset, just outside New York City, students receive twice as many resources as their predominately black and Latino counterparts in or close to New York City’s urban core (28).
RACIAL EQUITY ITSELF NEEDS TO BE A PRIORITY OBJECTIVE OF ANYONE COMMITTED TO PROMOTING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL JUSTICE.
The implication for action is that social change leaders must adopt an explicitly raceconscious approach to their work: they must factor race into their analysis of the causes of the problems they are addressing, and they must factor race into their strategies to promote change and equity.
Source
regardless of race, creed, national origin, or gender—continually reproduces
patterns of racial inequality?
-Why, in the world’s wealthiest country, is there such enduring poverty among
people of color?
-How is it that in our open, participatory democracy, racial minorities are still
underrepresented in positions of power and decision making?
Without fully accounting for the historical and ongoing ways in which racial dynamics produce inequities between whites and people of color, the social justice and antipoverty field risks pursuing strategies that are misguided, incomplete, or inappropriate to the challenge.
The statistical portrait of the American population broken out by race reveals persistent disparities between people of color and white Americans in almost every quality of life arena, the most basic being income, education, and health.
The statistical portrait of the American population broken out by race reveals persistent disparities between people of color and white Americans in almost every quality of life arena, the most basic being income, education, and health.
The correlation between race and well-being in America remains
powerful.
Beginning with the expropriation of Native American lands, a racialized system of power and privilege developed and white dominance became the national common sense, opening the door to the enslavement of Africans, the taking of Mexican lands, and the limits set on Asian immigrants (8).
Over time, beliefs and practices about
power and privilege were woven into
national legal and political doctrine.
While committing to principles of
freedom, opportunity, and democracy,
America found ways to justify slavery,
for example, by defining Africans as nonhuman. This made it possible to deny
Africans rights and freedoms granted
to “all men” who were “created equal.”
Only when white Southerners wanted
to increase their political power in the
legislature did they advocate to upgrade
Africans’ legal status to three-fifths of a
human being. Thus, from the earliest
moments in our history, racial group
identities granted access to resources and
power to those who were “white” while
excluding those who were “other” legally,
politically, and socially.
Racism in twenty-first century America is harder to see than its previous incarnations because the most overt and legally sanctioned forms of racial discrimination have been eliminated. Nonetheless, subtler racialized patterns in policies and practices permeate the political, economic, and sociocultural structures of America in ways that generate differences in well-being between people of color and whites. These dynamics work to maintain the existing racial hierarchy even as they adapt with the times or accommodate new racial and ethnic groups. This contemporary manifestation of racism in America can be called “structural racism (9).”
White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks (18).
. . . . whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and
average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as
work which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage . . . is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all.”
-Peggy MacIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the In
“. . . a child born in the bottom 10
percent of families ranked by income
has a 31 percent chance of ending
up there as an adult and a 51 percent
chance of ending up in the bottom
20 percent, while one born in the top
10 percent has a 30 percent chance
of staying there.”
Psychological studies of African American adolescents have demonstrated that consistent negative imaging contributes to negative self-acceptance and mental health problems (22).
Moreover, the attitudes that manifest
themselves at the individual level can
also aggregate all the way up into a
national consensus about race that,
in turn, influences policies, practices,
and representations. Experimental
studies of the effects of news stories
on the public suggest that television
images have the potential to catalyze
and reinforce opinions about public
policies that contribute to racially disparate outcomes: “A mere five-second exposure to a
mug shot of African American and Hispanic youth offenders [in a 15-minute newscast]
raises levels of fear among viewers, increases support for ‘get tough’ crime policies, and
promotes racial stereotyping.”
---EDUCATION---
Public education is probably the national system that holds the greatest potential for reducing racial inequities over time.
Looking closely at specific school districts reveals even greater inequities in investments. In the predominately white school district of Manhasset, just outside New York City, students receive twice as many resources as their predominately black and Latino counterparts in or close to New York City’s urban core (28).
RACIAL EQUITY ITSELF NEEDS TO BE A PRIORITY OBJECTIVE OF ANYONE COMMITTED TO PROMOTING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL JUSTICE.
The implication for action is that social change leaders must adopt an explicitly raceconscious approach to their work: they must factor race into their analysis of the causes of the problems they are addressing, and they must factor race into their strategies to promote change and equity.
Source
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