Mapping the Intransigence of USer Racial Separation

Despite almost half-a-century of social movement and struggle to ensure equal rights and equal opportunity for all citizens, there is still disturbing evidence that much of the progress may be illusory. The data assembled here suggests that there have been relatively small results, at least as measured as changes in housing/neighborhood diversity.
N.B.: The Mapping Tool is linked in the headline directly below
Mapping and analysis of new data documents still-segregated America

January 18, 2011 — In the first analysis of new 5-year data from the American Community Survey at the Census Block Group level, Remapping Debate has found that reports that a long-term trend towards greater integration "overall" has continued leave out fundamental aspects of current-day residential reality. Census Blocks Groups represent smaller geographic areas than do Census Tracts.

Working with tools provided by Social Explorer, Remapping Debate is also releasing interactive maps that can zoom down to the Census Block Group level anywhere in the United States, revealing high levels of segregation that are cloaked at larger geographic levels (see example in the box at the end of this article).



Key data findings

It turns out that these ACS data, covering the period 2005 to 2009 and released last month, reveal that:

In a country that is only 12.1 percent African-American, 30 percent of African-Americans live in Census Block Groups that are 75 percent African-American or more.

75 percent of African-Americans in the country live in only 16 percent of the Census Block Groups in the United States.

50 percent of African-Americans live in Census Block Groups that have a combined African-American and Latino population of 66.85 percent or more (nationally, the latino population is approximately 15.8 percent, so the combined African-American and Latino population is just shy of only 28 percent).

There is much more data, and explanatory methodology, as well as thorough instructions for reading and exploring the map here.