Racial Residential Segregation in Urban America

Abstract

There are numerous causes and consequences of racial residential segregation in American metropolitan areas, and a long‐standing literature is filled with debates about them. We provide an overview of the trends and patterns regarding racial residential segregation, focusing primarily on blacks and whites. We pay special attention to the competing arguments about race and class in the context of residential stratification. We then discuss the many causes of residential segregation, and its social and economic consequences. After the overview, we identify key gaps in the literature. We discuss three broad substantive areas of research that expand the study of racial residential segregation: (i) the everyday experiences of race, class, and gender disadvantage as they are related to segregation; (ii) contemporary immigration streams and their impact on black‐white residential dynamics; and (iii) the power of political‐economic forces to transform residentially segregated spaces, with a particular emphasis on processes related to gentrification and home mortgage lending.

Identity-Based Motivation: Implications for Intervention

“…These neighborhoods also have a number of other problematic characteristics. First, they are likely to be segregated and segregation is associated both with limited exposure to adults who are college graduates (Adelman & Gocker, 2007; Krivo, Peterson, Rizzo, & Reynolds, 1998) and with lower endorsement of those aspects of racial-ethnic identity predictive of academic attainment (termed connectedness, awareness of racism, and embedded achievement, Oyserman & Yoon, 2009). Second, these contexts are likely to be “media saturated”, providing vivid models of education-independent adult identities such as sports and entertainment (Roberts, 2000).…”

Neighborhood Effects on Racial–Ethnic Identity: The Undermining Role of Segregation

“…This resulted in increasingly segregated and high poverty urban centers with fewer and worse paying jobs (Eggers and Massey 1992;Wilson 1996). This spatial segmentation and separation means that residents of segregated neighborhoods have little exposure to people who have high education, income, or occupational prestige (Adelman and Gocker 2007;Krivo et al 1998;Massey et al 1994). Because African American and Latino children are disproportionately likely to live in these segregated neighborhoods (Wallace and Muroff 2002), in the current article we examine the impact of neighborhood segregation on the racial-ethnic identities of African American and Latino youths, controlling for poverty and unemployment.…”

A Theory of Socio‐spatial Integration: Problems, Policies and Concepts from a US Perspective

“…Other authors emphasize problems like economic disadvantage, lack of political participation, unequal access to education, erosion of the economic base, lack of spatial mobility, activity segregation and consequent lack of social mobility (Western, ; Massey and Denton, ; Bolt et al ., ). High‐poverty neighborhoods are said to suffer from the magnification of poverty due to its concentration, as well as from abandonment, and cyclical decay (Jargowsky, ; Adelman and Gocker, ). Jargowsky () argues that these neighborhoods present a certain immunity to policy interventions, a culture that stresses short‐term goals, a lack of role models and stabilizing institutions, underfunded schools, and a reduced access to new jobs at the metropolitan level.…”