Segregation in the 21st Century

• Published in: Poverty & Race Vol. 25; no. 1; p. 1
• Main Authors: Powell, John, Menendian, Stephen
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Poverty & Race Research Action Council 01.01.2016
• Subjects: Race relations; Segregation; Social conditions & trends; Social exclusion
• ISSN: 1075-3591

Segregation as a problem is gripping our cultural consciousness for the first time in a long while, beyond the domain of social scientists and city planners. David Simon (the creator of the acclaimed HBO series, "The Wire") wrote and produced a miniseries for HBO this past year, "Show Me a Hero," illustrating the dynamics of segregation in the post-civil rights period. Set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the series visibly demonstrated the realities of metropolitan segregation, and the resistance to integration in both economic and racial terms through the lens of a fight over scattered-site public housing in Yonkers, New Jersey. The most well-known and widely used measure of segregation is the dissimilarity index. The dissimilarity index measures how evenly various racial groups are spread across neighborhoods within metropolitan areas. A dissimilarity index score indicates the percentage of a subgroup that would have to move to achieve integration. A score of 100 indicates that every neighborhood has residents of only one particular group ("complete segregation"), whereas a score of zero indicates proportional representation of each group throughout the metropolitan region ("complete integration"). First and foremost, the rate of decline between each decennial census has fallen significantly. Each decennial census indicates less progress. Between 1970 and 1980, dissimilarity scores fell by nearly nine points. However, between 2000 and 2010, it fell by three. This might not be so troubling if it weren't for a second fact, that the measured rate of segregation in 1970 is considered very high, not far from that measured in South Africa under apartheid. Our current measure of segregation, 59.0, is still considered a very high level of segregation. In real world terms, it means that more than half of African Americans (or whites) would have to move residence to achieve a fully integrated society. Modestly improving dissimilarity index scores should not mask the persistence of segregation in our society.