Episode 4: Racially sorted: Segregated by choice? Episode 4: Racially sorted: Segregated by choice?

Runtime: 15:49 — The country’s sharp geographic segregation is fueling racial disparities, and our racist past has helped create divides. But researchers say a voluntary phenomenon called “racial sorting” may be playing an underappreciated role.

Overview Overview

The Supreme Court outlawed segregation in schools nearly 70 years ago, and it’s been almost 60 years since the Civil Rights Act ended the enforced segregation of Jim Crow laws. So why, decades after legal segregation was dismantled, are America’s neighborhoods still so racially segregated?

Researchers say this segregation feeds our country’s racial disparities because a neighborhood’s racial makeup and quality of life are so strongly linked. So, advantages and disadvantages in particular areas get frozen in place.

This segregation is partly a product of the country’s racist past. But what if a big reason people today are clustering by race is not because they’re forced to, but because they want to? Research indicates a voluntary phenomenon called “racial sorting” may be a major driver in geographic segregation today.

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Transcript Transcript

JAY LINDSAY:

It's been nearly 70 years since segregation in schools was outlawed by the Supreme Court. And it's been almost 60 years since the Civil Rights Act ended the enforced segregation of "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws.

So why, decades after legal segregation was dismantled, are America's neighborhoods still so racially segregated?

Studies continue to show that geographic racial integration is being achieved slowly in the U.S., if at all.

A recent analysis by the Brookings Institution found the neighborhood of the average white resident in the U.S. is 71% white, and 8% Black. Meanwhile, University of California at Berkley researchers looked at 209 metropolitan regions with 200,000 people or more. They found that 81% of those regions were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990.

Here's Cleveland Fed economist DIONISSI ALIPRANTIS:

DIONISSI ALIPRANTIS:

Because we've started from a segregated society, there's this really long half-life, and it's really hard. It's going to take time to break that down.

JAY LINDSAY:

Researchers say as long as this segregation continues, it feeds our country's ongoing racial disparities.

There are strong links between a neighborhood's racial makeup and its resources or measures of quality of life – things like income levels or crime rates. So, residential segregation works to freeze neighborhood advantages or disadvantages in place.

Here's how economists Patrick Bayer of Duke and Kerwin Charles of Yale put it. They write: "These differences in neighborhood resources work … to calcify and pass down historical inequities from one generation to the next, likely slowing the speed of racial economic convergence in the United States significantly."

But as policymakers work to speed up the closing of racial gaps, some research poses a potentially unexpected question: What if a major reason people today are clustering by race is not because they're forced to, but because they want to?

The phenomenon is called "racial sorting," and refers to a universal tendency of racial and ethnic groups to choose to live near each other.

Bayer and Charles explore racial sorting in a paper they presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's 64th Economic Conference, which focused on racial disparities. Their work joins other research that suggests a preference to live among racial peers is one of the major reasons that segregation endures.

In fact, it appears that people will chose to live in neighborhoods that are much poorer than what they could afford – or bid up prices in other places – just to be with others of the same race.

Here's Boston Fed economist JEFF THOMPSON:

JEFF THOMPSON:

There's a comfort in sameness of being around people who are in some sense like you. And this comes up again and again, and it's not nefarious.

JAY LINDSAY:

Eric Esteves is a longtime resident of Boston's majority Black Roxbury neighborhood. The neighborhood has a rich history, but also higher crime and poverty rates.

Esteves is also the executive director at the nonprofit Lenny Zakim Fund. If he wanted, he could seek out other places to live. But he says Roxbury is home to what he calls his "people," and he has no desire to leave.

ERIC ESTEVES:

I consider myself a walking map. So, I know Boston and the region very well. So, I know that there are adjoining towns and suburbs that have very few of us there, very few Black residents. So, I don't, … I have no desire to be living in isolation like that. So, for me, it's really being around my people just in the same way that I grew up.

JAY LINDSAY:

I'm Jay Lindsay, and this is Six Hundred Atlantic, a podcast produced by the Boston Fed. This season is taking a close look at the issues and research presented at the Bank's conference on racial disparities.

Aliprantis, the Cleveland Fed economist, spoke at the conference. And he explored racial sorting in his own paper, which was cited by Bayer and Charles in their work.

Aliprantis did not expect to discover how important preference was in geographic segregation. And he suspects some form of racial hostility is still playing a role.

He added it's critical to understand more about why people of all races are choosing to live where they live.

DIONISSI ALIPRANTIS:

These are first order – first places – to look when we think about why racial inequality has stayed pretty persistent. This seems like it could be one of the key factors. If it really is something that's coming out of preferences, then the question is why do people hold those preferences? How are they formed? I think that starts a much larger and deeper conversation.

JAY LINDSAY:

Thompson organized the Boston Fed conference. When he talks about the historical roots of modern-day segregation, he starts with slavery and includes the more recent and discriminatory practice of "redlining."

That's when lenders – private and government – would literally draw red lines on maps around Black and minority neighborhoods and decline to issue loans to people or projects there.

Here's Thompson:

JEFF THOMPSON:

So obviously, that pattern that we see today is a function of slavery when it happened. And the patterns of heavy concentration in the North, there was a period, The Great Migration, when large numbers of Black families, Black individuals, left the South in the post-Civil War era, and they were able to seek out better fortunes, better opportunities, in the North.

But when they went up North, they were shunted. They were isolated. They were prevented from living in certain communities, and they were shepherded into others. And those patterns of racial segregation, residentially, have their deep roots in some of the most horrific elements of Jim Crow and of slavery itself. And so those patterns are still, in many respects, with us today.

JAY LINDSAY:

For instance, Black households at every income level live in neighborhoods that are, on average, much poorer than neighborhoods where comparable white households live.

A stunning fact is that it is nearly impossible to find a neighborhood in the U.S. with both a high median income and a high percentage of Black neighbors.

Outside of Atlanta and Washington, they essentially don't exist.

Here's Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania.

SUSAN WACHTER:

In essence, for example, wealthy Black households must typically choose to reside either as a minority, a small minority, in a high-income, resource-rich neighborhood without Black neighbors, or with Black neighbors in low-income, resource-poor neighborhoods.

JAY LINDSAY:

The choice affluent Blacks often make is to live near other Blacks. And research show how big a trade-off that can be.

One study found that relatively affluent Black households live in neighborhoods with a higher average poverty rate than those occupied by lower-income whites.

Aliprantis had a similar finding in his research, and it shocked him.

DIONISSI ALIPRANTIS:

The amount of neighborhood income that they're trading off is just enormous. And so that's really, I think, an incredible finding here. And so then again, now our attention turns to what's driving that trade off? Why are Black households doing that?

JAY LINDSAY:

Aliprantis' research began with the premise that neighborhoods are critically important for a person's economic prospects and opportunity.

DIONISSI ALIPRANTIS:

In a lot of ways, economic opportunity flows through neighborhoods. And we can, again, we can think about this in many different dimensions. So, we can think about things like access to schools, what kind of schools are you're going to? Think about public safety. You can think about access to job market networks, or access to jobs. So, all of these things put together, I think, are important ways that where we live impact our longer-run outcomes, or economic outcomes.

JAY LINDSAY:

Aliprantis admits he thought he had the answers ahead of time when he and his co-authors began investigating why people seemed stuck in lower-income neighborhoods.

That's because he assumed it would all come down to constraints Blacks had on their choices – maybe due to discrimination, maybe due to chronic racial wealth gaps that restricted their residential mobility.

He was surprised when his work indicated that voluntary choices by Blacks may be a big part of the continuing racial separation.

Aliprantis said he knows racial or ethnic enclaves are everywhere, and he understands how naturally they form and how valuable they can be. His father was a Greek immigrant and reveled in that community.

DIONISSI ALIPRANTIS:

That's the beauty and the richness of the U.S., that we have all these different groups, and it's awesome. But I think that the issue for me, and where it crosses a line is, there's two issues. One is, "Is this a choice that people are making affirmatively and because they want to, or because they're fearful, and they're facing some really negative outcome being in the other place?" So, that's one. And the other is just this issue about just our history of racial inequality.

So, the fact that resources have been allocated through neighborhoods, and through segregated neighborhoods for so many years, that means this can really matter for essentially the economic performance in those neighborhoods.

So, as a result, it's not just a matter of, this household or this family can live in one neighborhood or the other, and it's just a matter of preference.

JAY LINDSAY:

For Esteves, the decision to move to Roxbury was a very deliberate choice.

He grew up in the Charleston, South Carolina area. Esteves headed to Massachusetts after deciding to attend Northeastern University. He liked it and decided to stay after graduation. Then, he moved to Roxbury in 2005.

Its heavy Black population was like home. And he says its cultural richness appealed to him – including a vibrant arts scene, and the fact one of his favorite rappers, Guru, was born there.

The married father of two is now nearing the end of his second decade in Roxbury.

ERIC ESTEVES:

For me, it was a very intentional choice around being in Roxbury, building a life in Roxbury because it was, it's often been and still is considered, kind of the heart of Boston's Black community. And for me, that was a very, very key aspect of kind of choosing to live there.

JAY LINDSAY:

But Roxbury has its problems, like anywhere else.

According to the Census data, about 27% of the population of Roxbury and neighboring Mattapan lives below the poverty line. That's well over double the statewide poverty rate. It's also one of the higher crime neighborhoods in Boston.

His career success gives Esteves flexibility to look around at other places to live. But Esteves wants to be in Roxbury.

One major reason is to be the example he didn't have when he was younger.

ERIC ESTEVES:

I didn't know successful Black professionals growing up. I read a lot about them, but I didn't necessarily know any or see any, unless I went to some special event or a church or something. But they didn't live in my neighborhood.

JAY LINDSAY:

It's also a matter of comfort.

ERIC ESTEVES:

So, I think choosing to live in a neighborhood that has Black people, regardless of income, is for me also, I think speaks to peace of mind. So, yes, there's cultural affinity and cultural identity and ethnic affiliation and nationality. But I think also there's peace of mind of you feeling like people just understand you. Ideally, less problems come out in terms of just neighborhood dynamics and interactions.

JAY LINDSAY:

Esteves says he remembers being warned in college to drive slow through certain towns where there weren't a lot of Black people, so he wouldn't get pulled over by police. He didn't want to deal with that where he lived.

ERIC ESTEVES:

I don't want to be racially profiled in my own neighborhood.

JAY LINDSAY:

Aliprantis calls the undue suspicions Blacks might encounter "racial hostility." It's different from blatant or structured acts of discrimination, but it's informed by biases. He speculates that racial sorting might be motivated by it, but he doesn't know for sure.

He adds that no matter what role preference is playing in our continuing geographic segregation, it has economic consequences – it's extending racial disparities.

That's why we need to understand it.

DIONISSI ALIPRANTIS:

How can we make it so that everybody feels welcome in all of our neighborhoods? And that's actually an economic issue, not just something about people might have thought about it in terms of fairness or some other dimensions, but actually seems to really matter for economic opportunity.

JAY LINDSAY:

Economic opportunity isn't the only thing that flows out of neighborhoods. Sometimes crime does as well.

But researchers say even in the highest-crime neighborhoods, it's usually just a few streets or city blocks generating the problems. These places are known as areas of "concentrated disadvantage," and they're characterized by high joblessness, family disruption, and geographic isolation.

Experts say these are also the places where successful interventions can have the most impact on closing racial crime disparities.

Tito SantosSilva worked for Boston Uncornered, a program that tries to redirect gang members toward college or careers. He says it's essential to go to crime hotspots and engage the worst offenders.

TITO SANTOSSILVA:

Those who are driving the most violence inside of the community, those who are often seen as the disrupters in the community, are actually the keys to changing those negative kind of ideas of a community.

JAY LINDSAY:

That's next time on Six Hundred Atlantic.

JAY LINDSAY:

Thank you for listening to Season 3 of Six Hundred Atlantic. You can find interviews and our first three seasons and subscribe to our mailing list at bostonfed.org/six-hundred-atlantic. Listen and subscribe to Six Hundred Atlantic on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and TuneIn.

The producers would like to thank our contributors for their time and insights. They are Dionissi Aliprantis, Eric Esteves, Tito SantosSilva, and Jeff Thompson.

This has been "Enduring Divides," the third season of the Boston Fed's Six Hundred Atlantic podcast.