Harvard Study Finds Continuing Segregation

The Harvard Civil Rights Project released a study of the 2000 census data this week concluding that segregation in both urban and suburban communities still persists, despite the nation's increasing ethnic diversity

Gary A. Orfield, professor of education and social policy at the Graduate School of Education, authored the study, released Tuesday at a meeting with civil rights leaders and housing activists.

"We really haven't made any progress on segregation," Orfield said. "No serious efforts have been made to break the cycle."

Orfield worked together with the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at the State University of New York in Albany to analyze the recently released census data.

Census data shows that the areas Asian Americans, Latinos and black people live in tend to differ starkly from the communities that white people reside in. Most black people live in areas that are predominantly black. In direct contract, most white people live in neighborhoods that are more than 80 percent white and only 7 percent black.

Seven out of 10 white people now live in suburban areas, compared to just four out of 10 black people.

Evidence of the trend towards segregation can be found in census data gathered from the Boston area. According to the 2000 census, middle class minorities are moving to the suburban communities around the Route 128 belt in record numbers, but this influx of minorities has corresponded with a dramatic drop in the white population.

More than 124,700 white people moved further out into the "high-tech corridor" along I-495, an area that is almost 93 percent white.

"These middle class minorities are ultimately not ending up in the same type of situation as middle class whites," Orfield said.

The number of Latinos living in racially diverse areas is also dropping.

"Latinos are especially at risk, because they are more likely to be in inferior schools," Orfield said. "This will limit the education opportunities for Hispanics, especially with the recent removal of bilingual education in states like California."

Experts argue that a solution to this tendency towards segregation can only be reached by a conscious and purposeful effort. These steps would include more serious fair housing enforcement and support for dwindling interracial communities.

"The system that is in place is not benign-it is vicious," Orfield said. "It has got a momentum of replicating itself and is going to cause huge problems. The race problem hasn't gone away."