Racial Segregation: The Persisting Dilemma

Although moderate to high social and economic heterogeneity are typical of suburbs as well as central cities, the black population has become highly segregated residen tially. This segregation has little economic base, but is based primarily on racial discrimination. The military images used to describe black "invasion" of neighborhoods and white "flight" from central cities express racial conflict and distort our per ception of metropolitan trends. As a one-in-eight minority na tionally, blacks are not numerous enough to "take over" many central cities. The high concentration of blacks in a couple dozen cities ensures that blacks will remain a small minority in 200 other metropolitan areas. Demographic data since 1970 indicate a reversal of the centuries-long process of increasing metropolitan concentration and a sharp diminution in the flow of black migrants to large cities. To date, there is no evidence of sharp shifts in the residential isolation of blacks. Black suburbanization in some metropolitan areas has followed the central city pattern of segregation. The altered demographic circumstances of the 1970s and 1980s hold out prospects for change, but those prospects depend on the nation's efforts to reduce continuing discrimination in the sale and rental of housing.