Milwaukee is most segregated city: U.S. Census analysis

Jet, Dec 16, 2002

Although Blacks experienced modest but consistent declines in residential segregation from 1980 to 2000, they remained the most highly segregated, according to a two-year analysis of census data by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Based on the Census analysis, the top five most segregated metro areas were Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis and Newark, NJ, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

"This is one of the most exhaustive studies of residential segregation ever undertaken," said Daniel H. Weinberg, co-author with John Iceland of the report, Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States. Weinberg added that metropolitan areas in the Midwest generally had the highest levels of segregation for Blacks.

The one index where only Blacks experienced declines, the study said, was in the degree of potential contact between minority and majority group members. This measure increased for Asians and Hispanics mainly because of major increases in their populations due to immigration since 1980.

"It's progress that for a second decade in a row, we're seeing a modest decline in segregation, but it's important, while recognizing that decline, to also recognize how much segregation remains," said Margery Turner, director of Metropolitan Housing and Communities Center at the Urban Institute, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

The study focused on metropolitan areas, using constant June 30, 1999, boundaries, but also examined selected metropolitan areas, where the minority group consists of at least 20,000 people or 3 percent of the total 1980 population. The unit of analysis was the census tract, which typically encompasses between 2,500 and 8,000 people and is intended to represent a neighborhood.

Weinberg said he and his fellow researchers were consciously not trying to determine why segregation exists in each area they studied, research also did not try to estimate exactly how many Blacks, Hispanics and others live in segregated areas. Instead, they used a complex series of formulas to produce rankings.

For Blacks, the index measuring the rate of decline in residential segregration fell 12 percent nationally from 1980 to 2000. In Chicago, it fell 9.2 percent. For Hispanics, the national index rose slightly during those two decades, up about 1.5 percent.

The report, based on data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses, includes representations of residential segregation in the form of graphs and maps.