Introduction

“Every day that our nation was segregated was a day our nation was unfaithful to our founding ideals.” So said President George W. Bush, in the wake of Senator Trent Lott’s controversial remarks on Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday. Unfortunately the President’s use of the past tense is unjustified. In many ways the nation is segregated and we are unfaithful to our ideals. Americans of all races may endorse the principle that people should be able to live wherever they want to, regardless of race. That is far from how we actually live.

According to census data from the year 2000, 48 percent of all African Americans in U.S. metropolitan areas experience conditions of residential isolation so extreme that they satisfy the criteria for “hypersegregation.” Within hypersegregated cities, the typical black resident lives in a neighborhood that is virtually all black. These neighborhoods are packed tightly together around the urban center. An additional 21 percent of African Americans in 2000 lived in conditions of “high segregation”; only one-third of urban African Americans lived under conditions of low or moderate segregation.

Typical inhabitants of a hypersegregated ghetto are not only unlikely to come into contact with whites within the particular neighborhood where they live; even if they traveled to the adjacent neighborhood, they would still be unlikely to see a white face. If they went to the next neighborhood beyond that, no whites would be there either. People growing up in such an environment have little direct experience with the culture, norms, and behaviors of the rest of American society and few social contacts with members of other racial groups. Ironically, within America’s large, diverse, and highly mobile post-industrial society, blacks living in the heart of the ghetto are among the most isolated people on earth.

Historically in the United States, very few other groups have ever experienced high segregation, and never for long periods of time. Segregation levels for Jews, Italians, and Poles, while briefly “high” during and after the great migrations of the early-20th century, fell sharply in the ensuing decades as generations wore on and socioeconomic status rose. We observe much the same pattern among Latino and Asian immigrants today. No other group in the United States besides African Americans has ever experienced hypersegregation, with the exception of Latinos of Afro-Caribbean origin. Indeed, the only other historical example--anywhere in the world--of such high levels of segregation persisting over a prolonged period of time is South Africa under apartheid, where levels of segregation were only slightly higher than those observed today in the hypersegregated cities of the United States.

Interestingly, although levels of class segregation have risen in the U.S. over the past several decades--and affluent and poor households have tended to settle in different neighborhoods--segregation by class pales in comparison with segregation by race. Black-white segregation does not decline as incomes rise. The most affluent black neighborhoods are virtually as segregated as the poorest. Indeed, the most affluent black households are more segregated than the very poorest Asian or Latino households. This is significant because it is well-established that “middle-class” African-American neighborhoods do not compare favorably to those inhabited by the middle-class members of other racial and ethnic groups, as Sheryll Cashin describes in her article in this issue of TNAC. Middle-class black neighborhoods are geographically much closer to high-poverty neighborhoods, have higher crime rates, lower levels of service provision, worse schools, higher insurance rates, lower home values, and much less home equity when compared to middle-class white neighborhoods. Segregation alone accounts for nearly half of the gap in wealth between middle-class blacks and middle-class whites.

Perhaps this helps to explain why residential segregation is particularly central in perpetuating the disadvantage of African Americans, so much so that some have called it the “linchpin” of American race relations. Achieving full access to housing markets is critical to a group’s welfare because, ultimately, housing markets don’t only distribute homes--they distribute amenities. Moving to a “better” neighborhood can mean safer surroundings, lower insurance rates, better fire and police protection, more frequent trash pick-ups, greater access to emergency services, and the prospect of rising real estate values. Housing markets affect safety, security, health, wealth, jobs, peer groups, and perhaps most critically, public education.

Everyone knows this implicitly, which is why upwardly mobile families generally move to better neighborhoods, seeking to translate growth in income and wealth into improved residential circumstances. As individuals, families, and groups move up the socioeconomic ladder, they also move up the residential ladder; and by doing so they put themselves in a better position to climb further up the economic ladder, progressively ratcheting themselves up the socioeconomic hierarchy over time.

Moving to a better neighborhood also allows families to pass on their status attainments to their children, putting them in a position to achieve even more than their parents have. The new neighborhood typically offers better schools characterized by smaller class sizes, more motivated, well-educated teachers, sound and attractive buildings, state-of-the-art classrooms, and a greater abundance of academic and extracurricular resources. In addition, the peer environments within these schools are likely to reward educational achievement and emphasize college aspirations while denigrating delinquency and risky oppositional behaviors.

African Americans, because of their systematic segregation in American society, have had the first rungs of the mobility ladder effectively placed out of reach. If African Americans do not have access to housing markets because of the color of their skin, then they do not have access to critical social and economic resources that are distributed through housing markets because they are determined by place of residence. A segregated society is thus a stratified and unequal society and can never be considered “race blind.” Only when we can honestly say that the United States was rather than is a segregated society, can we begin to think of it as a truly just nation.