Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
0.60. Black isolation also declined as the proportion of blacks increased
slightly. In short, there were gradual declines in segregation from 1970
to 2010 as the black population continued to grow. There are definite dif-
ferences in the changing regional paterns of dissimilarity in the United
States. W hile the Northeast and Midwest continued to experience quite
high levels of segregation, the initially high levels in the South and West
declined further.
he explanation for the diferent paterns and the prospects for
change are quite controversial. Most recently, the African American
population in many large cities has declined, and the white population
has increased. New immigrant groups, including many who are not
conventionally white (such as Asians and Hispanics), have moved to the
cities. Often, the initial segregation of such groups is high. However, the
degree to which they remain segregated is an open question. Nonethe-
less, we can expect that the segregation of African Americans in the
United States will continue to be quite high in most places. W hether
other groups will follow that patern is still an open question that re-
quires further research.
The use of newly developed large-scale datasets using GIS has made
this work possible. It shows the promise of shedding new light on his-
torical questions using GIS techniques. Here four points need to be
highlighted:
1. Segregation developed very rapidly in the United States with
respect to African Americans and whites. Even with a small
proportion of African Americans in the United States by 1940,
the index of dissimilarity was nearly 0.80. Black exposure to
other groups was minimal, and black isolation had risen greatly.
2. After reaching their peak in 1970, dissimilarity and black
isolation trended down somewhat during the rest of the
twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, though
they remained much higher in the Northeast and Midwest than
in the South and West.
3. The advent of the Civil R ights Act of the 1960s and the ban
on formal discrimination against African Americans in real
estate and other realms may have begun to dismantle the
