Segregation is getting worse in most large US cities: report

Protesters march against segregation on Peachtree Street in front of Davison's department store in downtown Atlanta on February 1, 1961. - TNS

Matthew Chapman

June 21, 2021

On Monday, CNN reported that a new study from the University of California Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute has found worsening racial segregation in most major U.S. cities over the last 30 years.

"The study found that 81% of regions with more than 200,000 residents were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, despite fair housing laws and policies created to promote integration," said the report. "Some of the most segregated areas included Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit in the Midwest and New York, Northern New Jersey and Philadelphia in the mid-Atlantic. Conversely, large metropolitan regions that saw the biggest decrease in segregation included Savannah, Georgia, San Antonio and Miami."

"According to the study, segregated communities of color have lower incomes, higher unemployment, lower home values and are less educated than segregated White communities," said the report. "However, the report indicates that Blacks and Hispanics who grew up in segregated White communities were able to earn significantly higher incomes than those in communities in color."

Housing segregation has been enabled by a litany of policies at the federal, state, and local level, including access to credit and discriminatory urban renewal programs. Even now, there is tacit support from some politicians to keep people of color out of certain neighborhoods, with former President Donald Trump moving to gut fair-housing rules in 2020 for the sake of "suburban housewives."

"One explanation for increased segregation is that while Asians and Hispanics remain the fastest-growing minority groups in the country, they are becoming more segregated from White communities," said the report. "This is driving up the nation's aggregated level of segregation, he said. The study did not explore why these groups are not integrating."

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