RacialResidential SegregationandExclusionin Illinois...4 Al in dexof sm-laritycalculations...

Racial ResidentialSegregation and Exclusion inIllinois

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Metropolitan Chicago remains one ofthe most residentially segregated

areas in the United States. According to the2000 census, black-white segregation in theChicago metropolitan area was the fifthhighest in the nation and Latino-white seg-regation, although much lower than black-white segregation, was relatively high aswell, ranking 11th.

In the case of black-white segregation, thelevels in Chicago are what two prominentsociologists call “hyper-segregated” andindicative of an “American Apartheid.”1While there is little debate that the levels ofsegregation in the Chicago metropolitanarea are high, there is considerable debateabout its causes. And there is virtual si-lence about how much segregation there isin Illinois places outside the Chicago met-ropolitan area.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide aportrait of racial residential patterns ofwhites, blacks, and Latinos, throughoutthe state of Illinois. We find: (1) there arerather few communities with racially/eth-nically diverse populations that can beconsidered integrated; (2) black-white seg-regation levels are more severe than areLatino-white levels; and (3) there are largeswaths of the state of Illinois that lackracial/ethnic diversity of any kind, inte-grated or segregated.

Thus, inequality among whites, blacks,and Latinos on the dimension of housingis not just a problem in the city of Chicago,but throughout Illinois – in cities and smalltowns alike. And housing inequality ismarked not only by a question of segrega-tion within diverse communities, but alsoby the near-complete lack of diversity inmany communities. After a discussion of

the levels of segregation and exclusionthroughout the state, we take up the ques-tion of what causes these patterns, whatsome of the consequences are and, finally,what policy steps might be taken to ad-dress them.

Data andMethods

To measure the level of segregation in alocation, researchers often rely on some-thing called the index of dissimilarity,which gauges the degree to which twogroups are evenly distributed throughoutan area. Suppose, for example, that a par-ticular city had an overall population thatwas 80 percent white and 20 percentAfrican American. A dissimilarity score of75 would mean that 75 percent of whites(or African Americans) would have tomove to a different neighborhood in thecity in order to have all neighborhoods be80 percent white and 20 percent black.The dissimilarity index has a theoreticalrange from 0 (no segregation) to 100(complete segregation). In the followingsection, we provide the dissimilarityindex scores for black-white and Latino-white segregation for three different kindsof Illinois places:2 (1) metropolitan placeswithin the Chicago metropolitan area; (2)other metropolitan3 places falling outsidethe Chicago metropolitan area; and (3)non-metropolitan places in the state ofIllinois. Because it is not possible to calcu-late meaningful dissimilarity scores inplaces that lack diversity, we further re-strict our report of segregation scores toinclude only those places that, accordingto the 2000 census, had (1) at least 500 res-idents; (2) at least 10 percent white popu-lation; and (3) either at least a 10 percentAfrican American population or at least a10 percent Latino population. The calcula-

Racial Residential Segregation and Exclusionin IllinoisByMaria Krysan

1 Douglas Massey andNancy Denton.American Apartheid:Segregation and theMaking of the Under-class (Cambridge:Harvard UniversityPress, 1998).Under-class. Cambridge:Harvard UniversityPress.

2 We use the Censusgeographical desig-nation of “place”throughout thisreport. Roughly 86percent of Illinoisresidents live in oneof the 1,315 “places”identified by the2000 Census. Thosenot living in placesare generally charac-terized as peopleliving in, “small set-tlements, in theopen countryside, orin the densely set-tled fringe of largecities in areas thatwere built-up, butnot identifiable asplaces.” (U.S. Bureauof the Census, Geo-graphic Areas Refer-ence Manual, p. 9-1).

3 We rely on OMB andCensus designationsto determine whatconstitutes a “metro-politan statisticalarea”and note thatits definition meansthat some individualcommunities thatare classified as met-ropolitan are quitesmall and rural. Ac-cording to the Officeof Management andBudget, a Metropoli-tan Statistical Area“ha[s] at least oneurbanized area of50,000 or more pop-ulation, plus adja-cent territory thathas a high degree ofsocial and economicintegration with thecore as measured bycommuting ties.”(OMB Bulletin No.07-01: Update ofStatistical Area Defi-nitions and Guid-ance on Their Uses).

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tions are based on the 2000 census anduse data at the block level, thus providinga finer grained measure of segregationthan is typical (most studies of metropoli-tan areas use the larger geographical unitof the census tract).4

What Is Segregation Like in the ChicagoMetropolitan Area?

In Table 1, we show a rank order of theblack-white dissimilarity scores for allplaces within the Chicago metropolitanarea that meet the criteria outlined above.As a rule of thumb for interpreting the dis-similarity scores, researchers typically clas-sify places with scores below 40 as “low,”between 40-60 as “moderate,” and 60 orabove as “high.” The table has been color-coded as tan, blue and pink, respectively,to reflect these three levels of segregation.

There are quite a range of segregation levelsin metropolitan Chicago, from a low of 29in Hillside to a high of 92 in Dixmoor. Thecity of Chicago itself is among the most seg-36

The Illinois Report 2009

4 All index of dissimi-larity calculationsreported in thischapter were gra-ciously provided tothe author by Pro-fessor DomenicoParisi, MississippiState University.

Table 1ChicagoMetro Places:Black-White Segregation

Place Name Dissimilarity Index,2000

Hillside 29.3Willowbrook 31.1Berkeley 33.1Bolingbrook 33.3Dolton 34.0Forest Park 38.3South Holland 38.5Riverdale 39.1

Preston Heights 41.8Olympia Fields 42.7University Park 42.8Park Forest 42.9Sauk Village 43.8Oak Park 45.1Hazel Crest 46.1Richton Park 46.2Burnham 48.2Zion 48.6Waukegan 50.2Glenwood 50.7Flossmoor 50.9Country Club Hills 50.9Aurora 50.9Broadview 52.1Lynwood 52.4Homewood 53.4Crete 55.7Calumet City 56.2North Chicago 58.8

East Hazel Crest 60.9Blue Island 66.9Alsip 67.9Chicago Heights 68.2Matteson 70.7Evanston 70.8Crest Hill 72.6Fairmont 73.0Joliet 75.0Lansing 76.5Markham 79.3Chicago 88.3Summit 89.3Justice 91.0Dixmoor 92.5

Source: Figures derived from calculations based on the 2000census and provided by Professor Domenico Parisi, MississippiState University.

Low SegregationMedium SegregationHigh Segregation

Figure 1ChicagoMetropolitan Communities:Percent Distribution of Low,Moderate and High SegregationLevels

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

18

39

4844

34

17

LowSegregation

ModerateSegregation

HighSegregation

Black-White Segregation

Latino-White Segregation


There is virtualsilence abouthowmuchsegregationthere is inIllinois placesoutside theChicagometropolitanarea.

Institute of Government & Public Affairs

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regated of the Chicago metropolitan areaplaces, with a score of 88. Eighty-two per-cent of communities are either highly (34percent) or moderately (48 percent) segre-gated; with 18 percent falling into the “low”category. Figure 1 shows the distribution ofcommunities across these three categories.

The levels of segregation for whites andLatinos in the Chicago metropolitan areaare quite different from the overall pat-terns reported for segregation betweenblacks and whites. Table 2 shows thatLatino-white segregation levels range from28 in Lyons, Berwyn and Elmwood Park to80 in Hodgkins. Although the range issomewhat similar to that observed forblacks and whites, the distribution ofplaces across the three categories of low,moderate and high are strikingly different.Figure 1 illustrates this quite clearly. Forexample, there are twice as many commu-nities where black-white segregation fallsinto the “high” category (34 percent) ascompared to communities where Latino-white segregation is classified as “high”(17 percent). At the other extreme, abouttwo in 10 communities had black-whitesegregation levels that were considered“low,” while almost four in 10 communi-ties had Latino-white segregation levelsthat were considered low.

What Is Segregation Like in MetropolitanAreas Outside of Chicagoland?

For metropolitan areas that lie outside theChicago metropolitan area, the story is notmuch different from that inside theChicago metropolitan area. First, the black-white segregation levels shown in Table 3(pg. 38) reveal that there are far fewer (just20) communities that meet the criteria forcalculating segregation scores.

But in terms of the distribution of commu-nities across the three levels of segregation,they are quite similar to those in theChicago metropolitan area. As Figure 2(pg. 38) shows, the vast majority of com-

munities (90 percent) have black-white lev-els of segregation that are either “high” (40percent) or “moderate” (50 percent). And,as was the case in metropolitan Chicago, asTable 4 (pg. 38) shows, the 10 places wherewhite-Latino segregation levels could becalculated have generally lower levels ofsegregation – just two of the 10 fall into the“highly” segregated level, with one(Momence) just barely making it into thiscategory with a segregation score of 60.

LowSegregation

MediumSegregation

HighSegregation

Table 2ChicagoMetro Places: Latino-White Segregation

Source: Figures derived from calculations based on the 2000 census and provided by ProfessorDomenico Parisi, Mississippi State University.

Place Name DissimilarityIndex, 2000

Lyons 27.6Berwyn 27.6Elmwood P ark 27.7Romeoville 28.7Stone Park 28.8Round Lake Heights 29.5Schiller Park 29.8Boulder Hill 30.6Ingalls Park 30.8Berkeley 31.1Cicero 31.6Sauk Village 32.0River Grove 32.6Park City 33.0Bridgeview 33.0Burbank 33.4Glendale Heights 33.5Dixmoor 33.6Posen 34.5Beach Park 34.8Summit 35.9South Elgin 36.0Forest View 36.1Hillside 36.3Blue Island 36.4Streamwood 36.8Bolingbrook 36.9Rockdale 37.8Round Lake 38.1Northlake 39.7

Franklin Park 40.0South Chicago Heights 40.2Plano 40.9Round Lake Park 41.4Stickney 41.6Montgomery 41.7Carpentersville 41.9Zion 42.0Calumet City 42.1


Hainesville 42.2Round Lake Beach 42.3Highwood 42.8Bensenville 44.0Burnham 45.2Melrose Park 45.7Hanover Park 45.8Wood Dale 46.1Carol Stream 47.2Woodstock 47.4Harvard 48.1Marengo 49.3North Aurora 49.6Waukegan 50.4Des Plaines 50.7Addison 50.8Genoa 51.0Fairmont 51.1Warrenville 52.3Wheeling 52.3Hoffman Estates 53.7Elgin 53.9Wauconda 53.9Long Lake 55.8North Chicago 58.4

Villa Park 61.0West Chicago 61.3Mundelein 61.5Joliet 62.0Aurora 63.0Chicago Heights 63.3Chicago 63.5Rolling Meadows 65.1Prospect Heights 66.0Palatine 67.8Mount Prospect 68.8Rosemont 72.9Hodgkins 80.4

Figure 2 shows further evidence thatblack-white segregation levels are high,relative to Latino-white segregation levels.

What is Segregation Like In Non-Metropolitan Areas?

There has been very little analysis of ruraland small-town America’s residential seg-regation patterns. In a 2007 study of na-tional levels of segregation in non-metro-politan areas, demographer Daniel Lichterand his colleagues5 concluded that, de-spite very different histories, the patternsof segregation in small-town Americawere surprisingly similar to those in met-ropolitan areas. The results for Illinois leadto a similar conclusion. Table 5 shows the12 non-metropolitan places in the statewhere there were sufficient African Ameri-cans for black-white segregation scores tobe meaningfully calculated. Well over half38


5 Daniel T. Lichter etal. “National Esti-mates of Racial Seg-regation in Ruraland Small-TownAmerica,”Demogra-phy 44(3) (2007):563-581.

Figure 2Non-ChicagoMetropolitanCommunities: Percent Distribution ofLow,Moderate and High SegregationLevels

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

10

20

50

60

40

20

LowSegregation

ModerateSegregation

HighSegregation





Table 3Metro Places Outside ChicagoMetroArea: Black-White Segregation


Cahokia 33.2Fairview Heights 37.9

O'Fallon 41.6Rantoul 43.0Shiloh 51.6Belleville 52.8Madison 57.7Urbana 58.0Champaign 58.2Lebanon 58.9Peoria 59.8Danville 59.9

Decatur 61.2Springfield 64.2Rockford 66.1Rock Island 66.2Kankakee 66.5Alton 67.0Pontoon Beach 72.2Centralia 74.0


Table 4Metro places outside ChicagoMetroArea: Latino-White Segregation


Fairmont City 33.0Silvis 39.8

East Moline 47.9St. Anne 48.0Belvidere 48.3Capron 52.5Moline 54.2Rockford 57.0

Momence 60.4Rankin 81.4



of these communities score “high” in theirsegregation levels; and just one – Baldwin– scores in the “low” category. And thepattern that Lichter calls “black exception-alism” pertains to non-metropolitan segre-gation scores as well: of the 10 non-metropolitan places for which we couldcalculate Latino-white segregation scores,shown in Table 6, there are none that are“highly” segregated, seven that are “mod-erately” segregated, and three that fall inthe “low” segregation category. Figure 3shows this pattern quite clearly.

In summary, across the state we find thatin all three types of places – Chicago met-ropolitan, non-Chicago metropolitan, andnon-metropolitan areas – the vast majorityof communities are segregated at moder-ate to high levels. This is particularly thecase for black-white segregation; roughlytwice as many communities, across allthree types, have “low” levels of Latino-white segregation as compared to black-white segregation. Segregation is not just aproblem in the state’s largest metropolitanregion of Chicago.


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There has beenvery littleanalysis ofrural andsmall-townAmerica’sresidentialsegregationpatterns.

Figure 3Non-Metropolitan Communities:Percent Distribution of Low,Moderate and High SegregationLevels

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

8

3033

70

58

0

LowSegregation

ModerateSegregation

HighSegregation





Table 5Nonmetropolitan Places: Black-WhiteSegregation


Baldwin 34.9

Mounds 49.7Ullin 52.7Carbondale 53.9Tamms 56.4

Sparta 60.9Cairo 61.0Carrier Mills 61.8Freeport 62.3Mount Vernon 65.7Mound City 70.0Clayton 88.6


Table 6Nonmetropolitan Places:Latino-White Segregation


Hillcrest 31.1De Pue 38.4Cobden 38.5

Rock Falls 41.2Onarga 44.6Sterling 44.7Mendota 49.4Rochelle 49.7Arcola 54.6Beardstown 59.4




6 This chapter doesnot discuss exclu-sionary policies ap-plied to Latinosbecause Loewen’sanalysis focuses onthe more commonkind of SundownTown in the State ofIllinois – those tar-geted specifically atAfrican Americans.

7 James W. Loewen.Sundown Towns: AHidden Dimension ofAmerican Racism(New York: Simonand Schuster, 2005):213-214.

Equally striking, though, is that there arefew non-metropolitan places that are atleast 10 percent African American or 10percent Latino. This highlights an impor-tant observation about housing patterns inIllinois: there are many communities (met-ropolitan and non-metropolitan alike) thathave so few African American and Latinoresidents that it makes little sense to calcu-late levels of segregation within them.

What About Places That Are Not Diverse?

Overall, according to the 2000 census, thestate of Illinois is about 15 percent AfricanAmerican and 12 percent Latino. Inspec-

tion of Figures 4 and 5, which provide thepercentage black and percentage Latino bycounty, reveals that African Americans andLatinos are not evenly distributedthroughout the state of Illinois. Indeed,there are large swaths of the state whereblacks and Latinos simply do not reside.

Looked at another way, we can calculatethe percentage of Illinois residents wholive in places with more than 500 residentsand are either 10 percent or more AfricanAmerican or 10 percent or more Latinoand are at least 10 percent white (the set ofplaces for which we present dissimilarityscores in Tables 1 through 6). Approxi-mately 40 percent of Illinoisans who live incensus-defined places live in communitiesthat do not meet these criteria. In otherwords, they live in places with very littleracial/ethnic diversity. To a great extent,these are white Illinois residents living inoverwhelmingly white communities.

The absence of African Americans frommany places throughout Illinois is thetopic of a recent major study by sociologistJames Loewen (2005).6 He argues that thereason there are few, if any, African Ameri-cans in any particular community is oftennot due to “natural” causes of demogra-phy, migration, or market forces. Rather, inmany cases, the absence of African Ameri-cans in a community is the result of formaland informal policies, particularly duringthe nadir of race relations: 1890-1940.These practices and policies drove out ex-isting black residents and/or kept othersfrom moving into the town. SundownTowns, as Loewen defines them, are “anyorganized jurisdiction that for decadeskept out African Americans (or others)”7and are so-named for the policy of suchcommunities: “No coloreds after dark.” Inhis meticulous research, Loewen used his-torical census data to identify suspectedSundown Towns, based on the presenceand then absence of African Americansamong their residents, and then conductedadditional research through oral history,

Figure 4Percent of PersonsWho Are Black/African American Alonein Illinois by County

0 - 1.0%

1.1 - 8.0%

8.1 - 18.2%

18.3 - 34.9%

Source: Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF 1)100-Percent Data

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newspapers of the past and present, localhistories, and other sources. This was doneto determine if towns with an all-whitepast were all-white on purpose. Loewenestimates that roughly 75 percent of Illinoistowns were “Sundown” at some point intheir history.

Based on census-data research, Loewenidentified about 500 communities in Illi-nois as probable Sundown Towns. To date,he has done more detailed research into219 of these 500 and concluded that 218could be confirmed as Sundown Towns.Sundown Towns, he finds, used a varietyof tactics to secure their status as a white-only community. Perhaps the most visibleof these tactics was violence.

The 1908 riot in Springfield is one such ex-ample. Ultimately this riot was unsuccess-ful at expelling its black population, likelyowing to at least three factors: the largeblack population; Springfield’s status asthe state capital; and that it was AbrahamLincoln’s hometown. But the riot neverthe-less had an effect on other communities inIllinois. As Loewen explains,

“The Springfield riot stands as a proto-type for the many smaller riots that leftcommunities all-white between 1890and 1940, most of which have neverbeen written about by any historian. In-deed, the Springfield riot itself spawneda host of imitators: whites shouted“Give ‘em Springfield!” during attackson African Americans…the Illinois StateRegister reported, ‘At Auburn, Thayer,Virden, Girard, Pawnee, Spaulding, Buf-falo, Riverton, Pana, Edinburg, Tay-lorville, Pleasant Plains and a score ofother places in central Illinois a Negro isan unwelcome visitor and is soon in-formed he must not remain in thetown.’ Buffalo, a little town twelve mileseast of Springfield, became all-white onAugust 17, 1908, two days after the Na-tional Guard ended the Springfield riot.Not to be outdone by Springfield,

whites in Buffalo posted the followingultimatum at the train station: ‘AllN - - - - - - are warned out of town byMonday, 12m, sharp. Buffalo SharpShooters.’”8

Springfield itself remained highly segre-gated as of 2000. With an index of dissimi-larity score of 64, it ranked seventh highestamong non-Chicago area metropolitancommunities.

Some Sundown Towns that used violenceto remain all-white have overcome theirpast. To take one example, Oak Park was aSundown Suburb in 1950, as is clear fromthe response to the arrival of the renowned


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Figure 5Percent of PersonsWho Are Latino (of Any Race): 2000

0.2 - 1.0%

1.1 - 8.0%

8.1 - 18.1%

18.2 - 23.7%

Source: Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF 1)100-Percent Data

8 James W. Loewen.Sundown Towns: AHidden Dimension ofAmerican Racism(New York: Simonand Schuster, 2005):94-95.

chemist Percy Julian and his wife, AnnaRoselle Johnson, the first African Americanwoman to earn a PhD in sociology. Thewater commissioner refused to turn on thewater in their newly purchased 15-roomhouse, they received threatening phonecalls, and there was an attempt to burntheir house down.9 Today, Oak Park is astably integrated community with a repu-tation for its commitment to diversity anda range of housing-related programs insti-tuted to ensure its openness. In 2000, itwas 22 percent African American and itsindex of dissimilarity reveals that it is“moderately” segregated; as of the 2000census, it ranked 33rd out of the 44Chicago metropolitan communities in-cluded in Table 1.

Violence was not the only strategy for cre-ating and then maintaining SundownTowns. It is perhaps just the most visible –but no more or less successful than a myr-iad of other tactics that communities un-dertook to keep their towns white.Communities threatened violence on anentire group by lynching one of its mem-bers, thus encouraging the departure of thegroup. Local ordinances were passed pro-hibiting African Americans from being intown after sundown and whistles blewfrom places like the town’s water towereach day at 6 p.m. to warn blacks out oftown. Police chiefs escorted the waywardblack traveler or would-be resident out oftown. Citizens used “freeze out” tactics,such as refusing service to blacks in publicsettings, not allowing their children to playwith black children, and not hiring blacksas employees. African Americans whowere living in Sundown Towns would bebought out, or individuals wishing to de-velop new suburbs would buy out blackproperty owners in rural areas where theywere locating their new – all white by de-sign – communities. Suburbs in particularused restrictive deed covenants prohibit-ing the sale of property to blacks and es-tablished private associations to permitexclusion of certain group members.

Loewen’s detailed analysis gives countlessexamples of these tactics used throughoutSundown Towns in Illinois and the rest ofthe nation.

While explicit Sundown Town policieshave faded into the past, informal policiesand persistent reputations of communitiesas unwelcoming of African Americansmean that the consequences of these ear-lier policies and practices continue. Al-though it is difficult to know for sure,Loewen estimates that about one-half ofconfirmed Sundown Towns are no longerso, based on census data analysis andother research indicating that the commu-nities have shed their past status.10 Thismeans, of course, that about one-half ofthem still are.

A Side Note

We take a brief detour at this point to iden-tify a particularly troubling kind of resi-dential segregation; a situation where theblack population in a community is liter-ally confined. Loewen has identified anumber of communities in Illinois thathave Sundown Town pasts (and perhapspresents) that now house state correctionalinstitutions.11 There are many instanceswhere the census reports a sizeable blackpopulation in a particular community, butcloser inspection reveals that only a smallnumber of householders are black. Instead,the vast majority of the black populationenumerated in the census is actuallyhoused in a prison. For example, the townof Ina, according to the 2000 census, had1,027 black residents; but all except twowere living in the Big Muddy River Cor-rectional Facility. According to Loewen,there are nine federal or state correctionalfacilities in confirmed Sundown Townsand Counties in Illinois, and another fourin suspected Sundown Towns. As Loewenargues, the kind of black-white contact cre-ated in such settings is hardly conducive tobuilding trust between blacks and whites,and the geographic and sociological dis-42


9 James W. Loewen.Sundown Towns: AHidden Dimension ofAmerican Racism(New York: Simonand Schuster, 2005):128.

10 James W. Loewen.Sundown Towns: AHidden Dimension ofAmerican Racism(New York: Simonand Schuster, 2005):410.

11 James W. Loewen.Personal communi-cation with the au-thor, 2008.

tance between home and the prison makesit hard for prisoners to maintain ties withtheir families and makes it harder for fami-lies to visit. Loewen describes the thoughtsof a resident of a Sundown Town that got aprison in 1970, as an illustration of howsuch a situation fosters stereotypes andnegative racial attitudes: “Since that time,you get constant remarks about black peo-ple and how bad they are. Of course, [pris-oners] are the only black people theyknow.”

Contemporary Causes of Racial ResidentialSegregation

The very existence of Sundown Towns, asLoewen notes, is a feature of Illinois andAmerican history that is “hidden in plainsight.” Citizens and researchers often failto recognize how and why all-white com-munities have come to pass. If they noticethem at all, they are often viewed as a“natural” outcome of market forces andpersonal choices about where differentracial groups “prefer” to live. Loewen’sanalysis is a reminder of how this historyof creating all-white communities sets thestage for patterns of segregation across thestate of Illinois. It is against this historicalbackdrop that we turn now to the questionof how and why racial residential segrega-tion persists into the contemporary era –40 years after the 1968 Fair Housing Actdeclared discrimination on the basis ofrace in the sale and rental of housing to beillegal.

Much of the scholarly research on segrega-tion until recently has focused on metro-politan areas – places where blacks andLatinos are not excluded from so much asthey are segregated within. The historicalrole of local, state and federal governmentsin creating segregation within any particu-lar community or region is undeniable –from restrictive zoning ordinances to thefederal government’s policies on publichousing, transportation, and redlining inhome loan programs12 – public policies ex-

acerbated the private actions of white resi-dents, neighborhood associations, and thereal estate industry who engaged in tacticsranging from intimidation to protests to re-strictive covenants.13

Set against this historical backdrop, thereare generally three explanations offered forthe persistence of racial residential segre-gation: discrimination, economics, andpreferences. The first is that despite beingmade illegal in 1968, racial discriminationin housing continues to exist, and has theeffect of barring racial minorities from ac-cessing some neighborhoods. The best evi-dence available indicates thatdiscrimination in the housing market per-sists, although often in more subtle andcomplex ways than in the past. In the cur-rent era, it may often be the case that vic-tims are not even aware that they havebeen discriminated against. It is less thatthe door is slammed in the face of minorityhomeseekers and more that phone calls arenot returned, fewer options are offered,less help is given, less enthusiastic follow-up is provided, more hurdles are placed intheir path, they are given fewer options,and they are steered to communities wheretheir own group dominates.14 In the mostrecent nationwide audit-study15 of housingdiscrimination, the U.S. Department ofHousing and Urban Development foundthat African Americans and Latinos facesignificant discrimination in housing,


The bestevidenceavailableindicates thatdiscriminationin the housingmarketpersists,although ofteninmore subtleand complexways than inthe past.

12 James H. Carr and Nandinee K. Kutty, eds. Segregation: The Rising Costs for America(New York: Routledge, 2008).

13 Stephen Grant Meyer. As Long as They Don’t Move Next Door: Segregation and RacialConflict in American Neighborhoods (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).

14 Margery Turner and Stephen L. Ross. “How Racial Discrimination Affects the Searchfor Housing,” in Xavier de Souza Briggs, ed., The Geography of Opportunity: Race andHousing Choice in Metropolitan America (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution,2005).

15 An audit study is conducted by matching two homeseekers on a range of charac-teristics, with the only difference being their race/ethnicity. Each of the homeseek-ers approaches a real estate agent/landlord, expressing an interest in renting/purchasing a home. Detailed records are taken on how the auditors are treated bythe real estate professionals. In cases where the white auditor is treated more favor-ably than the black and/or Latino auditor, discrimination on the basis of race/eth-nicity is in evidence. 43

although levels had declined somewhatsince 1989. But they also reported thatracial steering – the act of showing minor-ity clients neighborhoods where theirgroup predominates, while showing whiteclients only predominately white neigh-borhoods – had increased. Studies of themortgage industry also suggest that mi-norities are more likely to be denied ahome loan and also more likely to be of-fered only sub-prime loan products, to bethe victims of predatory lending practices,and to face more difficulties and more ex-pense in securing property insurance.16

A second explanation for the persistence ofracial residential segregation is that peopleprefer it that way; put simply, if blacks,whites and Latinos live in different areas, itis because they want it that way. Studiesgenerally show that whites and AfricanAmericans hold incompatible preferencesabout the racial composition of the neigh-borhoods they would like to live in.Whites want relatively few African Ameri-cans in their neighborhood while AfricanAmericans prefer a more even mix ofwhites and blacks. But it is problematic toconstrue these kinds of preferences as re-flections of “personal choices” that are be-nign and neutral. Indeed, much researchdemonstrates that preferences are not“neutral” and “unproblematic” but ratherconstrained and complicated. For example,one study shows that to describe AfricanAmerican racial residential preferences asfor “50-50” or majority-minority neighbor-hoods and to then conclude, as some have,that segregation is caused by minoritypreferences, is problematic. Indeed, if welook more in-depth at African Americanpreferences using different methods, wefind that they are far from “segregationpromoting.” In a recent study in theChicago metropolitan area,17 we find that81 percent of African Americans who havesearched for housing in the last 10 yearshad among their search locations at leastone community where blacks were in theminority. This is compared to just 25 per-

cent of whites who searched in a commu-nity where whites were in the minority.And, by asking whyAfrican Americanshold the preferences they do, we discoverthat it is less because of a “neutral” in-group preference and more because of adesire to avoid discrimination in largelywhite communities. Furthermore, whitepreferences for white communities are notshaped by neutral forces but instead byracial stereotypes about blacks and neigh-borhoods that have black residents inthem.18

The third explanation for segregation is ar-guably the one that most citizens prescribeto: money talks and so the reason blacks,whites and Latinos live in different neigh-borhoods is because people live wherethey can afford to live. Owing to the eco-nomic segregation of many Americancities, it is “natural” that we have racialresidential segregation so long as we con-tinue to have racial economic inequality.But despite the intuitive appeal of this ar-gument, as Ingrid Ellen concludes, “virtu-ally every study that has examined the roleof income differences in driving segrega-tion has found that income differences be-tween blacks and whites account for only amodest share of segregation patterns.”19

Apart from these three main explanationsfor segregation, we also include in this dis-cussion some attempt to understand whySundown Towns continue to be all white –even in those cases where the policies, prac-tices and tactics are a thing of the past.Loewen suggests that the persistence ofracial exclusion in these communitiescomes from the “upstream” and the “down-stream.”20 From the upstream, while theremay be willingness on the part of a commu-nity to rent or sell to AfricanAmericans,

“… precisely owing to that racial past,few African Americans may seek hous-ing in the community. The town orcounty has built a reputation as an en-tity, based on policies and incidents44

The Illinois Report 200916 Kathleen C. Engeland Patricia McCoy.“From Credit Denialto Predatory Lend-ing: The Challengeof Sustaining Minor-ity Homeowner-ship,” in James H.Carr and NandineeK. Kutty, eds., Segre-gation: The RisingCosts for America(New York: Rout-ledge, 2008); Gre-gory D. Squires andCharis E. Kubrin.Privileged Places:Race, Residence, andthe Structure of Op-portunity (Boulder,CO: Lynne ReimerPublishers, 2006).

17 Tyrone Forman andMaria Krysan.“Racial Segregationin MetropolitanChicago Housing.”Policy Forum 20(3),(Institute of Govern-ment and PublicAffairs, 2008).

18 Ingrid Gould Ellen.Sharing America’sNeighborhoods: TheProspects for StableRacial Integration(Cambridge, MA:Harvard UniversityPress, 2000); CamilleZubrinsky Charles.Won’t You BeMyNeighbor? Race,Class, and Residencein Los Angeles (NewYork: Russell SageFoundation, 2006);and Reynolds Farleyet al. “Stereotypesand Segregation:Neighborhoods inthe Detroit Area.”American Journal ofSociology 100(3)(1994): 750-780.

19 Ingrid Gould Ellen.Sharing America’sNeighborhoods: TheProspects for StableRacial Integration(Cambridge, MA:Harvard UniversityPress, 2000).


stretching back for decades. It is noteasy for acts by individuals to undo thiscorporate character. Indeed, the town’sactions as an entity, along with the repu-tations that have built up, may precludethe possibility of nondiscriminatory actsby individual would-be sellers orrenters.”

In other words, communities have reputa-tions, and the degree to which the reputa-tion – and possibly the reality – of acommunity is unwelcoming to certaingroups of people raises a barrier to mem-bers of that group even attempting tosearch for housing. Related to this, com-munities may simply be unknown amongcertain racial/ethnic groups. If the knowl-edge residents of different backgroundshave about a community is shaped by thecomposition of that community, then thesepatterns of knowledge – or the lack ofknowledge – may constitute an importantbarrier to integrated living. It is difficult tomove into a neighborhood if you don’tknow anything about it.

In a survey of Chicago residents, we foundthat whites, blacks and Latinos all tend toknow more about communities in whichtheir co-ethnics live.21 But African Ameri-cans and Latinos, relative to whites, knowabout a broader range of communities –racially mixed and racially segregatedalike. For African Americans and Latinos,the few “blind spots” are communities thatare both predominately white and geo-graphically distant from the city, thus cre-ating a barrier to the possible integrationof communities like this. But there areplenty of predominately white communi-ties about which African Americans do nothave a blind spot relative to whites; assuch, there are clearly other barriers, per-haps discrimination or perhaps “negative”knowledge about howAfrican Americansare treated in these communities. For theirpart, whites are far less likely than Latinosor African Americans to know about heav-ily African American communities. And

what is troubling for the encouragement ofintegration is that whites’ blind spots alsoinclude communities that are raciallymixed (either with Latinos or AfricanAmericans) – even those where whites arein the majority.

From the “downstream,” once a minorityperson decides to make a home in a formerSundown Town, there may be acts of ha-rassment and unwelcoming behavior thatmake life difficult; and again, owing to itspast, there may be unstated policies thatblack newcomers should be challenged byauthorities because they “don’t belong.”22This kind of harassment may result in thefirst black pioneers not staying in the com-munity. Thus discrimination and prefer-ences are inextricably linked: blacks’reluctance to enter communities or neigh-borhoods that have a reputation for hostil-ity toward blacks can hardly be constructedas a free choice. And it is the choices ofwhites to continue to move into all-whitecommunities that must be equally under-stood as problematic. The most recent re-search shows that it is less the case thatwhites move out of neighborhoods that be-come diverse, which was more common inthe heyday of “white flight,” but it is thecase that when they choose where to move,they choose to move into whiter neighbor-hoods.23 Given the regularly high levels ofmobility, these individual choices, in theaggregate, mean that whites do little toovercome the persistence of overwhelm-ingly white communities.

Finally, as noted previously, there has beenlittle research that examines the causes ofsegregation in rural and small-town Amer-ica. In the most detailed analysis on thistopic, Daniel Lichter and his colleaguesconclude that there are substantial paral-lels between patterns in metropolitan andnonmetropolitan areas:“Racial residential segregation in ruralplaces increases with growing minoritypercentage shares and is typically lowerin “newer” places (as measured by


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21 Maria Krysan.“Racial Blind Spots:A Barrier to Inte-grated Communi-ties in Chicago.”Critical Issues Paper,(Institute of Govern-ment and PublicAffairs, 2008).


23 Ingrid Gould Ellen.“Continuing Isola-tion: Segregation inAmerica Today” inJames H. Carr andNandinee K. Kutty,eds., Segregation:The Rising Costs forAmerica (New York:Routledge, 2008).

growth in the housing stock), whileracially selective annexation and the im-plied “racial threat” at the periphery ex-acerbate racial segregation in ruralplaces.”24

We focus our discussion on the causes andconsequences of segregation more heavilyon African Americans than Latinos becausethere is substantially less research that ex-amines Latino-white segregation. A fewpatterns are noteworthy. First, althoughthere is some evidence that Latino-whitesegregation may be increasing, it is still thecase that Latino-white segregation is farlower than black-white segregation. Sec-ond, while racial/ethnic differences in eco-nomic background explain only a smallfraction of black-white segregation pat-terns, the same is not true for Latino-whitesegregation. As Latinos climb the economicladder they become more residentially inte-grated with whites, to a much greater de-gree than is true of blacks. It is also the casethat the longer Latinos have been in theUnited States, the less segregated theyare.25 From the standpoint of preferences, itis generally reported that white attitudestoward living with African Americans aremore negative than toward living withLatinos. In other words, black “exceptional-ism” holds for preferences for racial inte-

gration; from the standpoint of whites,blacks are the least desirable neighbors fol-lowed by Latinos and then Asians.26

Consequences of Segregation

Racial residential segregation has been de-scribed as the “structural lynchpin” of racialinequality in America. Because so much ofwhat happens to a person is driven bywhere they live – things like where they goto school, what services they receive, andtheir access to transportation, medical serv-ices and employment opportunities – racialresidential segregation is implicated in per-sistent racial inequalities. Numerous stud-ies have documented the deleteriousconsequences of residential segregation foroutcomes among blacks including infantand adult mortality, educational attainment,employment, death rates from homicide,rates of single motherhood, and the accu-mulation of equity in homes. Others havepointed out the effects of segregation on thequality of schools, employment opportuni-ties, health and personal networks, and ac-cess to social resources.27

Recently, attention has been paid not onlyto how economics influence where peoplelive, but also how where people live shapestheir economic outcome. ResearchersMelvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro makethe point that while income inequality be-tween blacks and whites may have reducedsomewhat, there are tremendous disparitiesin black-white wealth: for every $1 inwealth held by a black household, whitehouseholds have $12.28 Because homeown-ership is the most common form of wealthaccumulation in the United States, the dis-crimination faced by blacks in terms of ac-cess to homeownership and theconsequences of segregation on the value ofproperties that blacks do own, there havebeen deep inequities in the accumulation ofwealth between whites and blacks. Wealth,in turn, affects a range of outcomes for mi-norities, for example, a family’s ability tofund their children’s college education.29


Segregationalso takes itstoll on thepolitical,economic, andsocial vitalityof entireregions.

24 Daniel T. Lichter et al. “National Estimates of Racial Segregation in Rural and Small-Town America.”Demography 44(3) (2007): 563.

25 Richard Alba, John R. Logan, and Brian Stults. “The Changing NeighborhoodContext of the Immigrant Metropolis,”Social Forces 79 (2000): 587-621.

26 Camille Zubrinsky Charles. Won’t You BeMy Neighbor? Race, Class, and Residence inLos Angeles (New York: Russell Sage Foundation (2006).

27 For examples of many of these, see the recent edited volume, Segregation: TheRising Costs for America (Carr and Kutty, 2008).

28 Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro. BlackWealth/WhiteWealth: A NewPerspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1995).

29 James H. Carr and Nandinee K. Kutty, eds. Segregation: The Rising Costs for America(New York: Routledge, 2008); Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro. BlackWealth/WhiteWealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge,1995).

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From the standpoint of race relations, seg-regated neighborhoods do little to helpbreak down racial tensions and negative at-titudes.30 Social scientists have shown thatcontact between groups is an importantway to reduce negative inter-group atti-tudes. But this contact must feature (1)equal group status; (2) common goals; (3)inter-group cooperation; (4) authority sup-port; and (5) friendship potential.31 Livingside-by-side and working to solve neigh-borhood problems and build community isone context in which these conditionscould be met. And failure to do so meansthat there are few opportunities for peopleof all races and ethnicities to interact in away that breaks down negative stereo-types.32 By living in segregated neighbor-hoods and Sundown Towns, we aremissing an opportunity to cultivate morepositive race/ethnic relations. Segregationalso takes its toll on the political, economic,and social vitality of entire regions.33

Dismantling Patterns of Segregation andExclusion

There is no panacea for reducing the levelsof segregation and exclusion that existthroughout communities in Illinois. Thecauses of segregation, as outlined above,are complex and inter-related, making itdifficult to point a finger at one cause andimagine solving the problem with a singleremedy. Based on the discussion above,however, several areas are worthy ofattention.

Despite the passage of the Fair HousingAct of 1968, there remains substantial evi-dence of persistent housing discrimination.As Carr and Kutty observe, “HUD’s en-forcement powers have for various reasonslargely remained underutilized. In 2003,HUD brought only four racial discrimina-tion cases, although it had received morethan 2,700 complaints that year.” Supportfor testing and prosecuting cases of dis-crimination in the buying and renting ofhousing and in the securing of mortgages

and property insurance are necessary toolsfor addressing inequities in the housingsystem.

Altering preferences that work against inte-gration is a far more complicated policygoal. In the abstract, individuals of all racesgenerally profess an interest in more inte-


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30 Camille ZubrinskyCharles. Won’t YouBeMy Neighbor?Race, Class, and Resi-dence in Los Angeles(New York: RussellSage Foundation(2006).

31 Gordon W. Allport.1954. The Nature ofPrejudice (New York:Doubleday Anchor,1954); Thomas F.Pettigrew. “Inter-group Contact The-ory,” Annual Reviewof Psychology 49(1998): 65-85.

32 James W. Loewen.Sundown Towns: AHidden Dimension ofAmerican Racism(New York: Simonand Schuster, 2005).

33 Gregory D. Squires.“Prospects and Pit-falls of Fair HousingEnforcement Ef-forts” in James H.Carr and NandineeK. Kutty, eds., Segre-gation: The RisingCosts for America(New York: Rout-ledge, 2008).

Maria Krysan is a member of theIGPA faculty and an associate pro-fessor of sociology at the Univer-sity of Illinois at Chicago. Herresearch focuses on racial residen-tial segregation and racial atti-tudes. She is co-author (with H.Schuman, L. Bobo and C. Steeh) ofthe book Racial Attitudes in Amer-ica: Trends and Interpretations(Harvard University Press, RevisedEdition, 1997), and is responsiblefor a website that updates the datafrom that book (http://www.igpa.uillinois.edu/programs/racialattitudes). In addition to a recentedited volume with Amanda Lewis,called The Changing Terrain of Raceand Ethnicity, her most recent workhas appeared in the Annual Reviewof Sociology, Demography, SocialProblems, Social Forces, SocialScience Research, and The DuBoisReview. She is a principal investiga-tor on an NIH-funded grant, “HowDoes Race Matter in Housing?Search Strategies, Experiences andPreferences,” a project that contin-ues her interest in racial attitudesand residential segregation.Krysan received her Ph.D. from theUniversity of Michigan in 1995.

grated neighborhoods than those wherethey actually live. The challenge is to createsituations where those abstract preferencescan be translated into behavior. The affir-mative marketing component of fair hous-ing legislation is consistent with this need.Affirmative marketing refers to the activepromotion of racially diverse, majorityblack, and majority Latino neighborhoodsto whites and the encouraging of Asians,blacks, and Latinos to consider moving intomajority-white neighborhoods. Programsthat seek to overcome the informationalbiases that lead people to avoid certainneighborhoods, or to have little knowledgeof them, should be supported. Policies thatprovide resources to community-based or-ganizations that work with real estateagents, landlords and civic leaders to mar-

ket their communities in a way that makesthem attractive and accessible to people ofall races and ethnicities would speak to thisissue.

For Sundown Towns in particular, Loewenidentifies three things a community cando: “(a) Admit it (‘We did this’); (b) Apolo-gize for it (‘We did this, and it was wrong’)and (c) Proclaim they now welcome resi-dents of all races (‘We did this, it waswrong, and we don’t do it anymore’).” Buthe also argues that there are state and fed-eral responses that can be taken to penalizeSundown Towns – in the form of denyingfederal and state tax dollars for programsand projects until they take action to makeup for their past practices.

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