Mixed Race Studies

Neighborhood Segregation in Single-Race and Multirace America: A Census 2000 Study of Cities and Metropolitan Areas

Fannie Mae Foundation
2002
45 pages

William H. Frey
University of Michigan and the Milken Institute

Dowell Myers
University of Southern California

This report accompanies the release of detailed racial segregation indices for 1,246 individual U.S. cities with populations exceeding 25,000 and for the 318 U.S. metropolitan areas. These data can be accessed from the World Wide Web at www.CensusScope.org. This study extends earlier work on racial segregation from Census 2000 in the following respects:

• It examines segregation patterns for persons who identify themselves as one race alone as distinct from those who identify themselves as two or more races, which is possible for the first time in Census 2000.
• Its focus on large and small cities as well as metropolitan areas provides a comprehensive assessment of segregation variation across local areas and broader metropolitan regions.
• Segregation and exposure measures in this study are based on the block group unit (average population 1,100), which more closely approximates a neighborhood community area than the census tract unit (average population 5,000) used in other studies. This more refined block group–based segregation measure permits the detection of segregation patterns for small racial groups or in small areas that are camouflaged when tract-based segregation measures are used.

The opportunity to look at segregation for single-race and multirace groups with Census 2000 provides an important means of assessing the prospects of future integration in a multirace society where intermarriage and interrace identification are on the rise. Our analysis of singlerace and multirace segregation shows that:

• Persons who identify themselves as “white and black” live, on average, in neighborhoods that more closely approximate the racial composition of the average white person’s neighborhood, rather than that of the average black person’s neighborhood. For the combined metropolitan population of the United States, the average neighborhood of a “white and black” resident is 61 percent white and 19 percent black. The average neighborhood of someone who identifies as black alone is 29 percent white and 54 percent black, and the average neighborhood of someone who identifies as white alone is 81 percent white and 6 percent black.
• Among the cities and metropolitan areas in our study, persons identifying with two or more races showed, on average, less segregation from whites than did minority persons identifying with a single race.

Our analysis of cities with more than 25,000 population shows the wide variation in segregation levels for each race and ethnic group. For most race groups, the highest levels of segregation tend to occur in the nation’s largest cities. For example, the City of New York ranks in the top six of all cities for each minority group’s segregation from whites. It ranks third in segregation for blacks, fifth for Hispanics, first for American Indians, first for Hawaiians, and sixth for those who identify themselves as two or more races. Hence, studies that focus only on segregation in large cities or in cities that have the largest minority populations overstate the level of racial segregation that exits in most cities with a minority presence. Other findings are:

• Among cities with more than 100,000 population, white-black segregation ranges from an index of dissimilarity of 21 (Chandler, AZ) to 87 (Chicago, IL); Asian segregation from whites ranges from 15 (Coral Springs, FL) to 66 (New Orleans, LA); and Hispanic segregation from whites ranges from 17 (Hialeah, FL) to 71 (Oakland, CA).
• The lowest segregation from whites for each race group tends to be associated with cities with less than 100,000 population, located in the suburbs, and, largely, in California, Texas, and other “multiethnic” states in the Sunbelt. Lowest city segregation indices for each race are in: The Colony, TX (white-black index of 8); Morgan Hill, CA (white-Asian segregation index of 9); Copperas Cove, TX (white-Hispanic segregation index of 8); Moore, OK (white–American Indian index of 12); Carson, CA (white-Hawaiian index of 25); and Cerritos, CA (white–multiple race index of 7).

City segregation indices differ from metropolitan segregation indices because the former reflect local patterns that can vary within the same metropolitan unit. Our analyses of dissimilarity of both levels indicate that:

• On average, segregation levels are higher for metropolitan areas than for cities. Among the cities in our study, the average segregation levels for blacks, Asians, and Hispanics are indices of 45, 32, and 35 respectively. Average segregation levels among metropolitan areas for these three groups are indices of 59, 45, and 43, respectively.
• Among smaller racial categories, Hawaiians show the highest average segregation levels, with an index of 53 for cities and 61 for metropolitan areas. Persons identifying themselves as two or more races show the lowest average segregation levels: an index of 27 for cities and 33 for metropolitan areas. American Indian segregation levels lie inbetween, with an average index of 39 for cities and 43 for metropolitan areas.
• Different cities within the same metropolitan area can have quite different segregation measures. For example, although the Detroit primary metropolitan statistical area ranks second among all areas on white-black metropolitan segregation (index of 87), the city of Detroit ranks 55th, with an index of 63, among cities of more than 100,000 population. On the other hand, metropolitan Atlanta ranks 53rd in white-black segregation with a metropolitan wide dissimilarity index of 69, whereas the city of Atlanta ranks fourth in segregation, with an index of 83, among cities of more than 100,000 population. This shows that the metropolitan segregation index does not easily translate into segregation levels of large or small cities within the metropolitan area.

Finally, our use of the block group as a proxy for neighborhood in this segregation study provides a more refined measure that reveals segregation across smaller neighborhoods, rather than the larger census tract measures that have been used in some earlier studies. Block group–based segregation tends to be greater in smaller cities and metropolitan areas or where the minority population is small.

• On average, the white-black dissimilarity index is 5.8 points higher when block groups, rather than tracts, are used to measure segregation. The disparity is greatest in smaller metropolitan areas. For example, in metropolitan Reno, NV, white-black segregation measured on the basis of block groups has an index of 44, whereas the counterpart segregation index measured on the basis of census tracts is only 34.
• Indices of neighborhood exposure to other races are also affected by the choice of block group or tract as the neighborhood measure. For example, in metropolitan Jamestown, NY, the average black person lives in a neighborhood that is 69 percent white when the neighborhood is measured on the basis of block groups. However, that percentage rises to 81 percent white if the larger census tract is considered to be the neighborhood..

Read the entire paper here.

Multiracial no longer boxed in by the Census

USA Today
2010-03-02

Haya El Nasser

Jennifer Harvey was raised by her white mother and white stepfather in what she calls “a Caucasian world.” Harvey never met her father but she knew he was black and Cuban. That made her Hispanic, white and black.

“Blacks think I’m black,” she says. “Hispanics think I’m Hispanic. Honestly, I don’t identify with either bucket wholeheartedly — Caucasian, black or Hispanic.”…

…When Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first black president in 2008, some academics and political analysts suggested the watershed event could represent the dawning of a post-racial era in a land that has struggled over race relations for four centuries.

At the same time, growing ethnic and racial diversity fueled by record immigration and rates of interracial marriages have made the USA’s demographics far more complex. By 2050, there will be no racial or ethnic majority as the share of non-Hispanic whites slips below 50%, according to Census projections.

“It’s showing that tomorrow’s children and their children will in fact be multiracial, leading to a potential post-racial society,” says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution.

“The issue isn’t just multirace,” says Census historian Margo Anderson, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “It’s the blurring of the very traditional black vs. white. Categories that held until about 1980 are shifting in large numbers. … The clarity is breaking down.”…

…Why does the government ask about race and ethnicity?

Federal agencies need the information to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination laws such as the Voting Right Act and the Civil Rights Act, fair employment practices and affirmative action mandates…

…”For some, the multirace response option represented an opportunity to acknowledge both parents,” says Roderick Harrison, a demographer at Howard University and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. “But for a lot of others, it’s like, ‘OK, are you going to turn your back on the rest of us?’ … A lot of the racial and ethnic politics of the Census are that we want the biggest numbers possible for our groups.”..

Read the entire article here.
View the photo gallery from the article here.

Mixed Race Marriages

The Milken Institute Review
Second Quarter 2009

William “Bill” H. Frey, Senior Fellow in Demography/Senior Fellow in Metropolitan Policy
Milken Institute
Brookings Institution in Washington

While Barack Obama’s election was a signal event for many reasons, the fact that Americans chose someone of mixed race isn’t quite as startling as it first appears. New Census data show that 7.7 percent of marriages in 2007 were of mixed race – nearly twice as many as in 1990. The ongoing infusion of immigrants combined with more tolerant public attitudes have taken us a long way since 1967, when the Supreme Court finally barred race-based restrictions on marriage…

…Variance across states is striking. Hawaii, where three in 10 marriages are interracial, leads; New Mexico and other intermountain West states follow. At the other end of the spectrum: Mississippi, along with Vermont and Maine – two states with very small minority populations. Note, however, that many of the states with a low incidence of intermarriage are now experiencing surges, suggesting that intermarriage is leaping regional barriers…

Read the entire “Charticle” here.