Segregation levels have changed, professor says

The change has been remarkable.

Over the past 70 years, housing segregation in America has decreased to the point where most African Americans no longer live in neighborhoods that are mostly black, said Mary Pattillo, a Northwestern University sociology professor who spoke Thursday at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Race and Social Problems.

Ms. Pattillo, who studies and writes about the black middle class and residential patterns, said that from 1940 to 2010, the percentage of African Americans nationwide who lived in a majorityblack neighborhood fell from 62 percent to 42 percent. Even in the Chicago metro area, which historically has had high segregation rates, the percentage living in majority black neighborhoods fell from 90 percent in 1940 to 68 percent today.

And in the Pittsburgh region, the proportion of blacks living in mostly black neighborhoods has fallen from 58 percent in 1970 to 40 percent today. As a visitor, Ms. Pattillo said, “I was so surprised when I saw those numbers. [Playwright] August Wilson would have us believe it was like Harlem here, but it doesn’t show up in the statistics that way.”

Ms. Pattillo, who has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago, said there seem to be several forces that have reshaped housing patterns.

Efforts to reduce official housing discrimination and the rise of the black middle class have led to many more African Americans living in the suburbs. And while many suburbs have become mostly black, the majority of them have not, she said.

Another national trend that has reduced the concentration of blacks in certain city neighborhoods has been the destruction of large public housing complexes and their replacement with more mixed-income housing plans.

Finally, in many major metropolitan areas, the growth of the Latino population has created many mixed black-Hispanic neighborhoods. South Central Los Angeles, long an iconic black region, is now mostly Latino, she noted.

While residential segregation has eased and millions of African Americans have climbed into affluence, that hardly means that America has become colorblind, she said.

For instance, when blacks are asked in surveys about their ideal neighborhood, most say it would be one that is about 50 percent black or even majority white. Yet, she said, “by and large blacks tend to live in neighborhoods that are a little more black than their preferences.”

Still, she noted, those goals don’t necessarily mean that blacks simply want diversity for its own sake. “It may instead reflect their understanding that neighborhoods with more whites have better schools or get better investments from city administrations.”

When asked if the sweeping changes in where blacks live in America have been a net benefit, Ms. Pattillo said it’s impossible for her to say.

“On the one hand, we now have a black president. On the other hand, we have young people who look just like him who are shot in the back while they are running away. When you have two things like that going on at the same time, I think it’s impossible to say if there has been a net plus or a net minus.”