Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Black segregation across America has fallen to its lowest level in over 100 years, according to a new report, although the authors warn that social inequality and income disparity still exist.
Black segregation is at its lowest level for over 100 years. Image - Jason Pier in DC via Flickr.com
The newly released Manhattan Institute report suggests that huge strides have been made to make US neighborhoods more inclusive of all races. According to the report, titled THE END OF THE SEGREGATED CENTURY: Racial Separation in America's Neighborhoods, 1890-2010, all-white neighborhoods are now effectively extinct, while of the 85 neighborhoods studied, none were reported to have the level of black isolation that was considered average just 40 years ago.
However, the report warns that segregation has not completely disappeared in the US. In order to achieve complete integration, the authors claim that more than half of the African-American population would need to move from their current housing markets.
Access to credit, black suburbanization, immigration and fairer housing laws have led to the decline in black segregation in the US, states the report.
The report claims there's still some way to go before complete integration is achieved. Image courtesy The Voice of Eye via Flickr
Jacob Vigdor, co-author of the report and a professor at the Duke University, told USA Today that the US is currently more racially integrated than it has been at any time in the past 100 years. “We’ve seen black suburbanization and a complete elimination of lily-white neighborhoods,” explained Vigdor.
Even so, we still have a long way to go before we achieve complete integration of the races, claim some experts.
John Logan, a sociologist at Brown University who was not involved with the report, told USA Today that the country was nowhere close to ending racial segregation. Logan pointed to the fact that very few, if any, whites move into neighborhoods that were previously all-black or all-minority, while there is still a significant level of white abandonment of racially mixed housing markets.
