Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The Persistence and Decline of the Pattern
For Chicago, heralded as the iconic and ideal area for study, figure 2.6
from 2010 makes plain that the concentration and segregation of the Af-
rican American population has persisted into the twenty-first century.
Furthermore, the segregation paterns also followed the population into
the suburbs and permeated the entire metropolitan area. By 1960 the
Chicago metropolitan area included cities in Indiana, including Gary,
and cities in Wisconsin, including Kenosha, as well as Illinois suburbs
well to the north and west of the city. In that year the Chicago metro had
a population of about 6.8 million, of which almost 1 million were Afri-
can American, or about 14.7 percent. The dissimilarity index was 0.91,
African American isolation stood at 0.83, and white isolation stood at
0.97. Not only was Chicago highly segregated, but its metropolitan area
was too. Indeed, one could say that, developing from the small urban
core of 1880, when there were only a few thousand African Americans,
Chicago and its metro area grew into one of the most segregated cities
and metros in the United States eighty years later. Furthermore, when
one looks at the metropolitan area in 2010, high levels of segregation
remain. The metropolitan area included 9.5 million people, of whom 1.6
million were identified as black, or about 17.5 percent. The dissimilar-
ity index had declined to 0.73, black isolation was then 0.69, and white
isolation was 0.92. So as the black population almost doubled, some
decreases in segregation in Chicago occurred. However, the basic pat-
tern of relatively high levels of segregation of blacks and whites con-
tinued. Also, one must acknowledge that by the year 2010 substantial
numbers of Hispanics, including many Mexicans, now lived in the Chi-
cago area, and the segregation indexes ignore these groups. In general,
if one looked at non-Hispanic black segregation with reference to non-
Hispanic whites, the segregation indexes would be even higher.
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So,
if these groups were taken into account, segregation in Chicago would
appear even starker. he common patern of highly segregated African
Americans in Chicago that had developed by 1960 (exactly the patern
that the Taeubers were writing about) continues and intensifies into the
twenty-first century.
