Segregation

The spatial division of a population according to racial or ethnic characteristics. Since the 1950s many studies in social geography have been conducted on the residential racial segregation present in most major cities in the United States. Before the 1920s, many cities in the northern region of the United States had a relatively small black population, but a large migration of Southern blacks in the 1920s and 1930s northward greatly increased the percentage of African Americans living in urban places like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and New York. By the 1950s sociologists of the so-called “Chicago School” were conducting research on the spatial separation of racial groups in Chicago, and this research stimulated similar studies of the racial segregation patterns found in other cities.

Segregation in residential areas in these urban environments followed more or less the same geographical arrangement—an inner city that was predominantly black, with smaller clusters of other ethnic or racial minorities; and a surrounding fringe of suburbs that were overwhelmingly populated by white residents. In the 1960s these spatial patterns appeared to become even more distinct, and were accompanied by a decline of the inner-city area. Property values declined, the local tax base eroded, and the quality of services provided to residents suffered, including law enforcement, fire protection, and education.

The term “white flight” was coined to describe the process whereby cities became racially segregated. Whites began leaving inner-city neighborhoods in the 1930s as greater numbers of black families moved in, but this process dramatically accelerated after World War II. Several factors contributed to the movement of whites to the suburbs. The construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s allowed whites in the suburbs to live a considerable distance from the inner city, but still commute there on a daily basis relatively easily. Low land values in the countryside, relatively low mortgage rates, and the application of mass production techniques to housing construction after the war enabled many whites to purchase homes in the suburbs, but blacks were unable to follow because incomes in the black communities were lower, and few blacks could afford to relocate. Moreover, discriminatory practices in lending prevented blacks frompurchasing property in predominantly white areas. “Redlining,” for example, was a tactic mortgage lenders used to maintain the segregated character of housing in the large cities. When a residential area was redlined, mortgage lenders would deny mortgage applications of blacks and other minorities for property within the area, effectively prohibiting them from living in that part of the city. This was done primarily to protect property values, because the mortgage holders felt that the presence of minority residents would depress the value of existing residences. Such discriminatory practices are now illegal, but their effect remains, as most urban areas in the United States remain quite segregated. However, the U.S. Bureau of the Census has declared in recent census reports that the level of segregation in American cities is declining, as white neighborhoods have gradually become more integrated.