Washington, D.C. — A recent report by the Manhattan Institute about the extent to which segregation may have declined in the last century has triggered a heated debate, with many social justice advocates rejecting its finding that segregation has virtually ended in U.S. cities.
The controversial study, “The End of the Segregated Century: Racial Separation in America’s Neighborhoods, 1890-2010,” has exposed sharp division among these advocates, scholars and researchers over whether the country has reached a major racial milestone or the study merely uses its data to mask disparities still plaguing people of color, especially African-Americans.
Edward Glaeser and Jacob Vigdor, fellows at the institute and authors of the report, contend that “American cities are now more integrated than they’ve been since 1910.” They also say that all-White neighborhoods have mostly vanished and that so-called “ghettos” populated by Blacks are in fast decline. Several experts on race and segregation, including researchers and academics, say these developments indicate change, even welcome progress, but certainly not the end of segregation.
“Yes, all-White city neighborhoods are increasingly rare, as are monolithic African neighborhoods, and middle-class families of color have far more choices than they did 40 years ago, in spite of continuing housing market discrimination,” Philip Tegeler, president and executive director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council in Washington, D.C., said in an email. “These are positive developments, but it does not mean that segregation has gone away. In fact, in some disturbing ways it has intensified, particularly when one examines the confluence of racial and economic segregation.”
According to Glaeser and Vigdor, segregation in American cities declined steadily from 1910 to 2010 “with significant drops in every decade since 1970.” Using U.S. Census data, they reported that “the separation of African-Americans from individuals of other races stood at its lowest level in nearly a century.
“Fifty years ago, nearly half the Black population lived in what might be termed a ‘ghetto’ neighborhood, with an African-American share above 80 percent,” they write in their report. “Today, that proportion has fallen to 20 percent.”
Dr. Roderick J. Harrison, an urban sociologist at Howard University and former head of the Racial Statistics Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau, says conclusions drawn by the report’s authors are “almost intellectually dishonest.”
