Residential Segregation and Desegregation: Is Housing Discrimination a Relevant Sociological Issue in the Twenty-First Century?

Although all minorities experience some levels of housing discrimination, statistics show that African Americans, more than any other minority, are still the most residentially segregated group in the United States. We examine residential segregation for African Americans, Latinos, and Asian/Pacific Islanders from the 2000 Census data for 331 Metropolitan Statistical Areas across the United States and compare our findings with data from the 1990 Census. We provide evidence that residential segregation has generally declined slightly for blacks across the United States. However, we find that residential segregation has increased substantially for Latinos and remained relatively unchanged for Asian/Pacific Islanders. We examine our findings from a historical sociology of law framework of housing discrimination and desegregation, concluding that communities such as our example of the Grosse Pointes and Detroit in southeast Michigan epitomize a contemporary white-black residential divide with very deep-seeded patterns of housing segregation. We review research on residential preferences of black and whites and argue that both structural and individual factors must be considered in any understanding of contemporary residential segregation. We conclude that, while black-white residential segregation has decreased very slightly, patterns of overall residential segregation have increased. Data include six tables and three figures illustrating patterns of residential segregation from 1990 to 2000. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]