Northeast Has the Highest Black-White Segregation

The Northeast and parts of the Midwest are the U.S. regions which are still strongly affected by Black-white housing segregation, according to The Brookings Institution. As seen in the data, Buffalo, N.Y. – the site of the first in a line of horrific shootings that rocked the U.S. in the past few weeks – is the seventh-most segregated metro area in the U.S. out of all with a population of at least one million and a share of Black inhabitants of at least 3 percent.

According to CNN, Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron of Conklin, N.Y., had shared messages on streaming and messaging platform Discord before the attack saying he chose the Buffalo ZIP code where Tops Friendly Market is located for its concentration of Black population. Gendron, who was targeting African-Americans out of racists motives, shot and killed ten people at the supermarket that was considered a popular meeting spot in the area.

In the Northeast and Midwest, Black populations have been stagnating and old patterns of segregated living have proven more persistent as a result. Black-white neighborhood segregation was rated as most severe in Milwaukee, Wis., as well as in New York City and Chicago. These conditions have persisted since the historic migration of Black people from the South to the Northeast in the beginning of the 20th century. Black movement back to the South in the 1960s and ‘70s, after anti-discriminatory laws were in place, helped to integrate communities there. Segregation index scores in the region, as well as in the American West, have dropped below 60 in most places.

The least segregation between Black and white inhabitants in major metros was recorded in the American West, with Honolulu and Tucson, Ariz., at below 40 index points. Raleigh, N.C., was the least segregated Southern city in terms of Black and white segregation at 40 index points, the same score as Las Vegas. Looking at white vs. Latino segregation, the picture looks more mixed regionally, with Los Angeles, Miami, Memphis and Houston among the most segregated together with New York, Boston and Providence, R.I. Latino-white segregation scores, as well as those measuring the segregation of whites and Asians, were lower overall, however.