Vincent Vega said:
Reading this I'm curious, how do blacks and whites live together today?
Is there still a kind of segregation present, meaning normally whites live and act together with whites, and blacks rather stay with whites? Or is it mixing more and more?
This is probably a bit more empirical of an answer than you were looking for, but I checked some US Census data for 2000 (and, briefly, the prior 20 years) on segregation in our largest metropolitan areas--using the race/ethnicity categories of white, black, Asian, and Hispanic, as defined by the census (there are a few other official categories, but their numbers are too small for practical comparisons). Our Census uses three standard measures for segregation--the "dissimilarity index" (% of whichever racial group being considered which would have to move in order to achieve even integration within a particular geographical census tract); the "exposure index" (the racial composition of the census tract an average person of a given race lives in); and the "isolation index" (% of same-group population within the census tract where an average member of said racial group lives).
In a nutshell, the good news is that black-white segregation continues to decline nationwide. The bad news is that the pace of that decline slowed considerably during the last decade, and that at the present rate, it will take at least 40 years before black-white segregation declines even to the present level of Hispanic-white segregation. Meanwhile, Hispanic-white and Asian-white segregation hasn't declined at all since 1980, despite steady increases in the size of these population groups. The trend applies just as strongly to suburbs as it does to cities.
--The statistically typical white American lives in a neighborhood that is 80.2% white, 6.7% black, 7.9% Hispanic, and 3.9% Asian. (White Americans are about 69% of the total US population--75% counting those who identify as both Hispanic and white--and are a majority in every state except California, New Mexico, Texas, and Hawaii.)
--The typical black American lives in a neighborhood that is 51.4% black, 33.0% white, 11.4% Hispanic, and 3.3% Asian. (Black Americans are about 12.3% of the total.)
--The typical Hispanic American lives in a neighborhood that is 45.5% Hispanic, 36.5% white, 10.8% black and 5.9% Asian. (Hispanic Americans are about 12.5% of the total, though note that about 48% of them also identify as white.)
--The typical Asian American lives in a neighborhood that is 17.9% Asian, 54.0% white, 9.2% black, and 17.4% Hispanic. (Asian Americans are about 3.7% of the total.)
Based on the measurements mentioned above, and looking at black-white segregation only, the 10
most segregated major metro areas (out of those with the 50 largest black populations) in the US are: Detroit, Michigan; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New York City; Chicago; Newark, New Jersey; Cleveland, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio; Nassau-Suffolk, New York; St. Louis, Missouri; and Miami. The 10
least segregated metro areas in terms of black-white segregation are: Richmond-Petersburg, Virginia; Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, North/South Carolina; San Diego, California; Jacksonville, Florida; Columbia, South Carolina; Charleston-North Charleston, South Carolina; Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, South Carolina; Riverside-San Bernardino, California; Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, Virginia/North Carolina; Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina; and Augusta-Aiken, Georgia/South Carolina. Washington, DC (since Irvine mentioned it) is close to the middle--#29 to be exact. As a broad generalization, the first 25 metro areas on that list (i.e., more segregated) are dominated by "Rust Belt" cities stretching from the Midwest on eastward to the Atlantic, while the second 25 (less segregated) are dominated by Southern cities. Those two regions are also where the majority of the US black population lives (about 40% of the total black population resides in the South, which is also where all but 2 of the 60 or so majority-black counties are).
In terms of Hispanic-white segregation (and again, looking at cities with the 50 largest Hispanic populations only), the 10
most segregated metro areas are New York City; Newark, New Jersey; Los Angeles-Long Beach; Chicago; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Salinas, California; Boston; Bergen-Passaic, New Jersey; Ventura, California; and Orange County, California. The 10
least segregated metro areas are Visalia-Tulare-Porterville, California; Las Vegas; Salt Lake City-Ogden, Utah; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Orlando, Florida; Sacramento, Califonia; Stockton-Lodi, California; Modesto, Califonia; Portland-Vancouver, Oregon/Washington; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Laredo, Texas. Once again DC is just about in the middle--#24. As you can see, it's a little harder to generalize about the geographical pattern of the segregation in this case. The majority of the US Hispanic population resides in the Lower West, the Northeast, and Florida.
In terms of Asian-white segregation, there are only 40 metro areas with Asian populations large enough to be useful for these kinds of measurements. The 5
most segregated among those are: New York City; Stockton-Lodi, California; Houston; Sacramento, Califonia; and San Francisco. The 5
least segregated are Salt Lake City-Ogden, Utah; Denver, Colorado; Ventura, California; Las Vegas; and Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona. DC is at #25 (out of 40) on this list. The Asian American population is primarily concentrated in California, Nevada, Washington state, Minneapolis, Chicago, Washington DC, and New York City/New Jersey.
So...that's probably waaaaayyy more data than you cared to know
, and of course it doesn't provide much of anything in the way of
explanations, but at least that gives you a bit of a hard-data-based snapshot of the state of racial segregation in the US.
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Irvine and verte's last comments were kind of interesting...I think it's important to keep in mind that degree of 'diversity' as usually defined (i.e., how many ethnoracial groups are present?) is not necessarily linked to degree of segregation. To refer back to the concepts of "exposure index" and "isolation index" mentioned above, frankly I feel I got much more "exposure" to people outside my own ethnoracial group growing up in rural Mississippi than I have anywhere else I've lived (New York City, New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana). Not saying that's "good" or "bad" really, just an observation, and obviously there are all kinds of ways you could qualify that--e.g., you can belong to a local minority and still hold racist views towards the majority; or, just because you feel very comfortable and familiar with people of Ethnoracial Group X based on extensive "exposure" doesn't mean that will magically transfer over to your attitudes towards Ethnoracial Group Y; etc. etc. Personally I was always a bit confused, if that's the word, about 'which box I fit in' growing up--being a fairly dark-skinned Jew in a small Mississippi town where no one else's family is Jewish doesn't always grant you a pass for 'white', and the fact that my parents were "foreigners" (with accents to prove it) further muddied things...and that's setting aside the religious divide. At the same time, like Irvine's bf Memphis I had hardly ever met anyone Asian, Hispanic, etc. either, until we moved away. The first place we lived after that was actually a heavily Jewish (although, mostly Slavic-Ashkenazic/Hasidic, which is not my background) neighborhood in Brooklyn, and THAT was surreal...suddenly
I was in the "majority," at least as a Jew, and yet here I had this sore-thumb, thick Delta Country accent (think Shelby Foote, if you ever heard him on radio or TV) which I quickly discovered coded me as 'stupid redneck' with a lot of the locals. For some perverse reason this failed to motivate me to try to lose my accent, but anyhow, while my broader social environment definitely became much more 'diverse' overnight, it was a bittersweet experience as often as it was an exciting one. I'm not surprised that NYC ranked so highly on the segregation front.
Again, that's not to say that any of it was "good" or "bad" in a race relations sense. It's facile and not really true to say "What's in your heart is all that matters" on these accounts--travel really is broadening; moving to a different sociocultural climate really does change your outlook. But IMO, it's also facile and untrue to think that merely living in a 'highly diverse' area magically grants you those consequences of extensive social exposure. You can, wittingly or not, strongly exhibit preference for "your own kind" in a big city too--Southern, Northern or otherwise.
