Racial Segregation in America Reaches New Peak

Researchers have found that in urban areas, people belonging to different races go about their daily routines (where they eat, drink, shop, socialize and travel) in different neighborhoods, just like with their living arrangements,

The research team analyzed geotagged locations for more than 133 million tweets by 375,000 Twitter users from 2013 to 2015, in the 50 largest U.S. cities. The team developed a Segregated Mobility Index (SMI) for which each city scored somewhere between 0 and 1.

‘The Social Mobility Index shows U.S. cities are even more deeply segregated than previously understood’

Jennifer Candipan, lead researcher, explained that if a city scored 0 on the SMI, it would indicate total interconnectedness, i.e., residents regularly visiting neighborhoods that don't resemble the racial and ethnic composition of their own with a frequency that corresponds with the diversity of the city. A score of 1 would indicate total racial segregation, i.e., residents failing to visit any neighborhood that doesn't resemble the racial makeup of their own.

Candipan said that various other studies had highlighted racist hiring practices, housing policies, and social settings have kept people of color (particularly Black and Hispanic people) residentially separated from whites for generations. But before the proliferation of mobile devices, it was relatively unknown whether that separation extended to people's regular movements, she adds.

Findings showed that cities with large populations of Black residences and troubled legacies of racial conflict had the highest SMIs. In comparison, the cities with the lowest SMIs tended to have proportionally smaller Black and Hispanic populations and proportionally larger white populations. SMIs of the largest and most racially diverse American cities fell somewhere in the middle.

Minority group threat is a phenomenon in which an area's dominant racial group segregates itself and excludes other groups out of fear of one or more non-dominant groups. Researchers believe this could be a reason for the segregation.

Candipan explains, "Some cities have long histories of preventing people of color from living in majority-white neighborhoods through racist housing policies and racially restrictive covenants."

She adds that the Social Mobility Index shows U.S. cities are even more deeply segregated than previously understood. She believes that the patterns highlighted in the study could help provide city policymakers with a roadmap toward more integrated, equitable futures.

For instance, the more segregated a city's housing, the higher its SMI, indicating that providing more affordable housing options will help diversify neighborhoods and movement. Increasing public transportation options could help people of color live on the margins of the city limits and without good transit options, which results in being cut off from job opportunities and cultural experiences.



Source: Medindia