1. How Can We Explain Residential Segregation?

2. How can we explain racial residential segregation?
I. Why is it important?
II. What are its historical roots?
III. How can we explain continuing residential segregation?

3. Why does it matter where you live?

4. Residential segregation:
Different races living apart from each other
Typically measured by living apart from whites

5. What does segregation “look like” in U.S. cities?
How segregated are we?
What does segregation “look like” in U.S. cities?

10. 1990 Census:

11. http://www. huffingtonpost

13. https://www. brookings

14. II. Historical Roots of Segregation
1. Deed Restrictions
2. Restrictive Covenants:
April 1928 (Broadmoor, Seattle, WA) – “No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic race...”

15. II. Historical Roots… 3. Exclusionary Zoning
4. Lending/Insurance Practices: Red-lining

17. II. Historical Roots… 5. Fair Housing Act of 1968
BUT – maps, data were from 1980s, 1990s, 2000

18. III. How can we explain the persistence of segregation?
A. Individual-level explanation
Preferences
B. Class-based explanation:
Segregation due to differences in income
C. Institutional/place stratification
Housing providers, not consumers
Active, ongoing discrimination by institutional agents

20. III. How can we explain the persistence of segregation?
A. Individual-level explanation
Preferences
Zubrinsky and Bobo (1996)

22. What we know about preferences:
IDEAL:
Whites – vast majority themselves, up to 30% other group
African Americans, Hispanics and Asians – bare majority their own group, 50% others
REALITY:

23. B. Class-based explanation
Segregation due to differences in income
Fischer (2003): class segregation declining since mid-1990s
But poor still segregated from non-poor
Blacks still most segregated from other groups
Poor African Americans uniquely segregated

24. B. Class… So, class MATTERS, but there’s something more at work too
Rosenbaum (1996) – Hispanic home seekers in NYC
Outcomes varied by race/skin color

25. C. Institutional/Place stratification Explanation
Housing providers, not consumers
Active, ongoing discrimination by institutional agents

27. C. Institutional…
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 2000 Housing Discrimination Study
Discrimination overall is decreasing
Racial steering is increasing
New “strategies” seem to being adopted
Disparate treatment still found between 17%-26% of the time.

28. All of which tell us:
The first two explanations help explain our individual choices
But the institutional argument sheds light on the mechanisms by which we have our preferences shaped.