Racial segregation in the United States

===Residential===
{{Main|Residential segregation in the United States}}
{{further|American ghettos}}
[[File:2000census- Black Residential Segregation.JPG|thumb|alt=Map showing a large concentration of black residents in the north side of metropolitan Milwaukee.|Residential segregation in [[Milwaukee]], the most segregated city in America according to the 2000 US Census. The cluster of blue dots represent black residents.{{R|census|p=72{{ndash}}73}}]]

Racial segregation is most pronounced in housing. Although in the U.S. people of different races may work together, they are still very unlikely to live in integrated neighborhoods. This pattern differs only by degree in different metropolitan areas.<ref name="Keating">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O0bnHQAACAAJ |title=The Suburban Racial Dilemma: Housing and Neighborhoods |first=William Dennis |last=Keating |publisher=Temple University Press |year=1994 |isbn=978-1566391474 }}</ref>

Residential segregation persists for a variety of reasons. Segregated neighborhoods may be reinforced by the practice of "[[Racial steering|steering]]" by real estate agents. This occurs when a real estate agent makes assumptions about where their client might like to live based on the color of their skin.<ref name='Encyc of Chicago – "Steering"'>{{cite encyclopedia|last=deVise|first=Pierre|title=Steering|url=http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1195.html|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Chicago|publisher=Chicago Historical Society|access-date=October 7, 2012|year=2005}}</ref> Housing discrimination may occur when landlords lie about the availability of housing based on the race of the applicant or give different terms and conditions to the housing based on race; for example, requiring that black families pay a higher security deposit than white families.<ref>{{cite news|last=Thomas|first=Danielle|title=Investigation Reveals Blatant Housing Discrimination on Coast|url=http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=1672782|access-date=October 7, 2012|newspaper=WLOX|date=February 26, 2004|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130616041708/http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=1672782|archive-date=June 16, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Redlining has helped preserve segregated living patterns for blacks and whites in the United States because discrimination motivated by [[prejudice]] is often contingent on the racial composition of neighborhoods where the loan is sought and the race of the applicant. Lending institutions have been shown to treat black mortgage applicants differently when buying homes in white neighborhoods than when buying homes in black neighborhoods in 1998.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Stephen R. |last=Holloway |year=1998 |title=Exploring the Neighborhood Contingency of Race Discrimination in Mortgage Lending in Columbus, Ohio |journal=Annals of the Association of American Geographers |volume=88 |issue=2 |pages=252–276 |doi=10.1111/1467-8306.00093 }}</ref>

These discriminatory practices are illegal. The [[Fair Housing Act]] of 1968 prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability. The [[Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity]] is charged with administering and enforcing fair housing laws. Any person who believes that they have faced housing discrimination based on their race can file a fair housing complaint.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/online-complaint |title=Housing Discrimination Complaint Online Form – HUD |publisher=Portal.hud.gov |access-date=October 3, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131005022332/http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=%2Fprogram_offices%2Ffair_housing_equal_opp%2Fonline-complaint |archive-date=October 5, 2013 }}</ref>

Households were held back or limited to the money that could be made. Inequality was present in the workforce which lead over to the residential areas. This study provides this statistic of "The median household income of African Americans were 62 percent of non-Hispanic Whites ($27,910 vs. $44,504)"<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Gaskins|first1=Darrell J.|s2cid=154156857|title=Racial Disparities inHealth and Wealth: The Effects of Slavery and Past Discrimination|journal=Review of Black Political Economy|date=Spring 2005|volume=32 3/4|issue=2005|page=95|doi=10.1007/s12114-005-1007-9}}</ref> Blacks were forced by the system to be in urban and poor areas while the whites lived together, being able to afford the more expensive homes. These forced measures promoted poverty levels to rise and belittle blacks.

Massey and Denton proposed that the fundamental cause of [[poverty among African Americans]] is segregation. This segregation has created the inner city black urban ghettos that create [[poverty trap]]s and keep blacks from being able to escape the underclass. It is sometimes claimed that these neighborhoods have institutionalized an inner-city black culture that is negatively stigmatized and purports the economic situation of the black community. Sociolinguist, William Labov<ref>Labov (2008) Unendangered Dialects, Endangered People. In King, K., N. Shilling-Estes, N. Wright Fogle, J. J. Lou, and B. Soukup (eds.), Sustaining Linguistic Diversity: Endangered and Minority Languages and Language Varieties (Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics Proceedings). Georgetown University Press, pp. 219–238.</ref> argues that persistent segregation supports the use of [[African American English]] (AAE) while endangering its speakers. Although AAE is stigmatized, sociolinguists who study it note that it is a legitimate dialect of English as systematic as any other.<ref>Green, Lisa. 2002. African American English: a linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</ref> Arthur Spears argues that there is no inherent educational disadvantage in speaking AAE and that it exists in vernacular and more standard forms.<ref>Spears, Arthur. 2001. "Ebonics" and African-American English. In Clinton Crawford (ed.) The Ebonics and Language Education of African Ancestry Students. Brooklyn, NY: Sankofa World Publishers. pp. 235–247.</ref>

Historically, residential segregation split communities between the black inner city and white suburbs. This phenomenon is due to [[white flight]] where whites actively leave neighborhoods often because of a black presence. There are more than just geographical consequences to this, as the money leaves and poverty grows, crime rates jump and businesses leave and follow the money. This creates a job shortage in segregated neighborhoods and perpetuates the economic inequality in the inner city. With the wealth and businesses gone from inner-city areas, the tax base decreases, which hurts funding for education. Consequently, those that can afford to leave the area for better schools leave decreasing the tax base for educational funding even more. Any business that is left or would consider opening doesn't want to invest in a place nobody has any money but has a lot of crime, meaning the only things that are left in these communities are poor black people with little opportunity for employment or education."<ref>{{cite book |last=Newman |first=Katherine |title=No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City |url=https://archive.org/details/noshameinmygamew00newm |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Knopf |year=1999 |isbn=978-0375402548 }}</ref>

Today, a number of whites are willing, and are able, to pay a premium to live in a predominantly white neighborhood. Equivalent housing in white areas commands a higher rent.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kiel |first1=K. A. |first2=J. E. |last2=Zabel |title=Housing Price Differentials in U.S. Cities: Household and Neighborhood Racial Effects |journal=Journal of Housing Economics |volume=5 |year=1996 |issue=2 |pages=143–165 |doi=10.1006/jhec.1996.0008 }}</ref>  By bidding up the price of housing, many white neighborhoods again effectively shut out blacks, because blacks are unwilling, or unable, to pay the premium to buy entry into white neighborhoods. While some scholars maintain that residential segregation has continued—some sociologists have termed it "[[hypersegregation]]" or "American Apartheid"<ref name="American Apartheid">{{Cite book| author = Douglas S. Massey| author-link = Douglas Massey| author2 = Nancy A. Denton| author2-link = Nancy Denton| title = American Apartheid| publisher = Harvard University Press| location = Cambridge| year = 1993| isbn = 978-0674018204| oclc = 185399837}}</ref>—the US Census Bureau has shown that residential segregation has been in overall decline since 1980.{{R|census|p=59{{ndash}}60, 68, 72}} According to a 2012 study found that "credit markets enabled a substantial fraction of Hispanic families to live in neighborhoods with fewer black families, even though a substantial fraction of black families were moving to more racially integrated areas. The net effect is that credit markets increased racial segregation."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Ouazad |first1=Amine |last2=Rancière |first2=Romain |title=Did the mortgage credit boom contribute to the decline in US racial segregation? |url=https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/did-mortgage-credit-boom-contribute-decline-us-racial-segregation |website=VoxEU |publisher=[[Centre for Economic Policy Research]] |access-date=November 28, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120519175908/http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/7729 |archive-date=2012-05-19 |date=March 16, 2012 |url-status=live}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

As of 2015, residential segregation had taken new forms in the United States with black [[majority minority]] suburbs such as [[Ferguson, Missouri]], supplanting the historic model of black inner cities, white suburbs.<ref name=ASA72815>{{cite web|author1=Daniel Fowler|title=With Racial Segregation Declining Between Neighborhoods, Segregation Now Taking New Form|url=http://www.asanet.org/documents/press/pdfs/ASR_August_2015_Lichter_News_Release.pdf|website=asanet.org|publisher=American Sociological Association|access-date=August 4, 2015|format=News release|date=July 28, 2015|quote=The racial composition of Ferguson went from about 25 percent black to 67 percent black in a 20-year period.}}</ref> Meanwhile, in locations such as Washington, D.C., [[gentrification]] had resulted in development of new white neighborhoods in historically black inner cities. Segregation occurs through premium pricing by white people of housing in white neighborhoods and exclusion of low-income housing<ref name=Atlantic6215>{{cite news|author1=Alana Semuels|title=Where Should Poor People Live?|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/where-should-poor-people-live/394556/|access-date=August 4, 2015|work=The Atlantic|date=June 2, 2015|quote=For more than a century, municipalities across the country have crafted zoning ordinances that seek to limit multi-family (read: affordable) housing within city limits. Such policies, known as exclusionary zoning, have led to increased racial and social segregation, which a growing body of work indicates limits educational and employment opportunities for low-income households.}}</ref> rather than through rules which enforce segregation. Black segregation is most pronounced; Hispanic segregation less so, and Asian segregation the least.<ref name=CityLabs>{{cite news|author1=Alana Semuels|title=White Flight Never Ended Today's cities may be more diverse overall, but people of different races still don't live near each other.|url=http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/07/white-flight-never-ended/400016/|access-date=August 4, 2015|work=CityLabs|publisher=The Atlantic|date=July 30, 2015}}</ref><ref name=ASR815>{{cite journal|author1=Daniel T. Lichter |author2=Domenico Parisi |author3=Michael C. Taquino |s2cid=53632555 |title=Toward a New Macro-Segregation? Decomposing Segregation within and between Metropolitan Cities and Suburbs|journal=American Sociological Review|date=August 2015|volume=80|issue=4|pages=843–873|doi=10.1177/0003122415588558}}</ref>