Billsman
December 26th, 2005, 10:36:05 PM
http://www.northcoastus.com/north_coast_online/2005/06/the_myth_of_hyp.html
The Myth of Hyper-Segregated Buffalo
We've all heard the claims that Buffalo is a very segregated city -- in fact, "the eighth most segregated city" in the entire United States. And we're reminded of it frequently.
Several years ago, a young black woman, Cynthia Wiggins, was struck and killed by a car while crossing Walden Avenue from the bus-stop to her job in the Galleria Mall (which at the time didn’t allow buses from the East Side to enter the property.) Buffalo’s segregation was brought up as one of the reasons for her death. H.O.M.E. (http://www.homeny.org/Insight%20Articles/Sprawl.htm) has gone so far as to claim that we're actually the fourth most segregated city in the country. And one (http://mediastudy.com/articles/av6-27-02.html)local website (http://mediastudy.com/articles/av6-27-02.html) in lamenting the lack of whites at Juneteenth, called Buffalo a "hyper-segregated" city.
More recently, another website (http://suburbswithoutcity.com/mainsite.html) has gained some local notoriety by protesting the dearth of blacks in Buffalo's suburbs.
The only way to save the Buffalo region and to eliminate what it means to be poor in the city is to racially integrate all the federally subsidized suburbs, racially integrate all the white suburban public schools, take away or redirect back to the city the governmental incentives that allow for the free movement of mostly whites only, and to allow for the free movement of trapped African Americans and other racial minorities to move (or stay put) wherever they please in the Buffalo region.
<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O /><O:P></O:P>
It was the appearance of that website that really set me to thinking about Buffalo’s racial segregation. Are we really more segregated than all but 7 other American cities -- how can that be measured? Who came up with the number and Is it statistically sensible? And what would be the ramifications of, as Suburbs Without City (http://suburbswithoutcity.com/mainsite.html) put it, "all the federally subsidized suburbs were racially integrated?"
The "8th most segregated" figure, of course, comes from the U.S. Census Bureau itself which certainly lends it credence. But the Bureau's methodology for arriving at that figure is a throwback to 50 years ago. It was in the 1950s that America began to really look at the issue of black/white segregation and it was also about that time that the phenomenon of "white flight" to the suburbs began to concern American cities. In response, the Census Bureau devised the "segregation index."
The index uses population figures from each census tract within a city or metropolitan area, compares the percentages of blacks in each one with their representation in the overall population and then determines each tract's relative segregation. For example in 2000, the population of metro Buffalo was 1,170,111, 12% of which was black.
Using the segregation index, the Census Bureau calculated that 76.74% of the black population in Buffalo lived in segregated census tracts -- tracts where they comprised more than 12% of the population. Yup, if a census tract is 13% black, then it's segregated and the index assumes the rather, by today's standards, racist assumption that the surplus blacks must move out to achieve racial balance.
So, said another way, in order for Metro Buffalo to become integrated, 137,049 blacks would have to be dispersed throughout all the census tracts in Erie and Niagara Counties at a distribution of 12%/tract.
Think of the ramifications of that. There's already worry in Erie County about how a regional government might dilute the black community's political clout; imagine what spreading your constituents across the entire region at a ratio of 1:8 would do. Good bye to Louise Slaughter's tortured district for one; and so long Grassroots, and don't even ask me what it might do to George Holt's aspirations.
Now, if you've followed me this far, it might begin to make sense why Salt Lake City is ranked as the 5th least segregated city in America. 1.3% of its residents are black. That's hardly enough to segregate a block or two, let alone a city. In fact, the segregation index tends to favor newer cities in the south and in the west. The 5 least segregated cities are: Albuquerque, Honolulu, El Paso, Orange County, and, of course, Salt Lake. The bottom five, the worst offenders, are older northeastern and midwestern towns with substantial and established black populations: Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Gary, and Detroit.
A couple years ago, frustrated by a system that proclaims Salt Lake City integrated and Detroit segregated, researchers from the Employment and Training Institute (http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/ETI/integration/integration.htm) at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee began a study. There was a personal angle for them, too. Milwaukee is yet another city which has been tarred with the "hyper-segregated" label; and they hoped to find an alternate method that might more accurately reflect patterns of integration in American cities. They called it the integration measure.
Unlike the historic segregation index, the integration measure reflects a democratic perspective that both majority white and majority black neighborhoods may be considered integrated, that is, if an 80 percent white and 20 percent black population is acceptable for a residential block, then an 80 percent black and 20 percent white population should be acceptable as well. Using this new definition of black-white integration, this study analyzed the racial compositon of 8.2 million blocks in the U.S.
One of the biggest flaws in the Census Bureau's segregation index is its reliance on census tract data. The tracts are large enough to contain different neighborhoods which often are quite disparate in their racial make-up. My own census tract, for example, includes leafy blocks on Norwood Avenue almost exclusively inhabited by whites and moves across Richmond Avenue to take in 18th Street, 19th Street, Brayton and part of Massachusetts Avenue.
While the segregation figures for this tract might be interesting, they're essentially meaningless because the neighborhoods on either side of Richmond have virtually no daily contact with each other -- indeed, the residents of 18th Street likely don't know a soul on 19th. So the UMW team's decision to focus on individual blocks makes sense. It's at the block level, particularly in a densely-populated city, that most personal interaction takes place.
When the census data was analyzed according to the block by block criteria -- remember, if a block contains at least 20% blacks or at least 20% whites it's considered integrated -- the results are quite startling. Our friends in Salt Lake City drop from 5th to 98th place; only 0.1% of Salt Lake's residents live on integrated blocks. Not surprising given its tiny black population; and while It doesn't mean that Salt Lake City is segregated, you'd be hard-pressed to call it integrated either.
The most integrated city according to the study was Norfolk--Virginia Beach--Newport News where over 38% of residents live on integrated blocks. It rose from 13th under the government's ranking. It's followed closely by Charleston, SC and Columbia, SC where just about 1/3 of the inhabitants live on integrated blocks. Indeed, one of the interesting findings here was that, by and large it's southern cities that jump to the top of the most integrated rankings.
But the North and Midwest fare better, too. Milwaukee, which provided the impetus for the study, rises from 98th to 43rd for example. And what about Buffalo, you ask? Well, it turns out that 7.3% of all Metro Buffalo residents live on integrated blocks, not far behind the national median of 7.6% in Pittsburgh. That's enough to bring us up to a ranking of 55th.
Now, I'm not claiming that as some fantastic achievement. That only 7.3% of us live on substantially integrated blocks is perhaps nothing to crow about, but as this study points out, we're certainly not anywhere near the bottom. We don't have to think of ourselves as one of the most segregated cities in the country, we're squarely in the middle of the pack. We're almost average actually, and for a town that tends to rank at the bottom of all too many statistics I think we can take some satisfaction in that.
The UMW study won't end the debate over integrating the suburbs, but it certainly illustrates the numerical reality of demanding full integration. At the neighborhood block level -- where I'd maintain that it really matters -- racial integration is proceeding. In fact, over 49% of blacks in Buffalo live on blocks that are more than 1/5 white -- they may not be quite as isolated as we're led to think. And why assume that all blacks would crave integration and would be better off for having it?
Which leads us to ponder the 948 black Buffalonians who would have to move to the town of Boston to help us achieve full regional racial homogeneity. It might just be that they're making their decision to stick close to the City for entirely rational reasons which have nothing at all to do with governmental policies or supposed suburban anti-black sentiments.
Can we stop feeling bad now?
Resources
Racial Integration in Urban America: A Block Level Analysis of African American and White Housing Patterns (http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/ETI/integration/integration.htm)
US Census Bureau American Factfinder (http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en)
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal article from 2003 which inspired this post (http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan03/109872.asp)
The Myth of Hyper-Segregated Buffalo
We've all heard the claims that Buffalo is a very segregated city -- in fact, "the eighth most segregated city" in the entire United States. And we're reminded of it frequently.
Several years ago, a young black woman, Cynthia Wiggins, was struck and killed by a car while crossing Walden Avenue from the bus-stop to her job in the Galleria Mall (which at the time didn’t allow buses from the East Side to enter the property.) Buffalo’s segregation was brought up as one of the reasons for her death. H.O.M.E. (http://www.homeny.org/Insight%20Articles/Sprawl.htm) has gone so far as to claim that we're actually the fourth most segregated city in the country. And one (http://mediastudy.com/articles/av6-27-02.html)local website (http://mediastudy.com/articles/av6-27-02.html) in lamenting the lack of whites at Juneteenth, called Buffalo a "hyper-segregated" city.
More recently, another website (http://suburbswithoutcity.com/mainsite.html) has gained some local notoriety by protesting the dearth of blacks in Buffalo's suburbs.
The only way to save the Buffalo region and to eliminate what it means to be poor in the city is to racially integrate all the federally subsidized suburbs, racially integrate all the white suburban public schools, take away or redirect back to the city the governmental incentives that allow for the free movement of mostly whites only, and to allow for the free movement of trapped African Americans and other racial minorities to move (or stay put) wherever they please in the Buffalo region.
<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O /><O:P></O:P>
It was the appearance of that website that really set me to thinking about Buffalo’s racial segregation. Are we really more segregated than all but 7 other American cities -- how can that be measured? Who came up with the number and Is it statistically sensible? And what would be the ramifications of, as Suburbs Without City (http://suburbswithoutcity.com/mainsite.html) put it, "all the federally subsidized suburbs were racially integrated?"
The "8th most segregated" figure, of course, comes from the U.S. Census Bureau itself which certainly lends it credence. But the Bureau's methodology for arriving at that figure is a throwback to 50 years ago. It was in the 1950s that America began to really look at the issue of black/white segregation and it was also about that time that the phenomenon of "white flight" to the suburbs began to concern American cities. In response, the Census Bureau devised the "segregation index."
The index uses population figures from each census tract within a city or metropolitan area, compares the percentages of blacks in each one with their representation in the overall population and then determines each tract's relative segregation. For example in 2000, the population of metro Buffalo was 1,170,111, 12% of which was black.
Using the segregation index, the Census Bureau calculated that 76.74% of the black population in Buffalo lived in segregated census tracts -- tracts where they comprised more than 12% of the population. Yup, if a census tract is 13% black, then it's segregated and the index assumes the rather, by today's standards, racist assumption that the surplus blacks must move out to achieve racial balance.
So, said another way, in order for Metro Buffalo to become integrated, 137,049 blacks would have to be dispersed throughout all the census tracts in Erie and Niagara Counties at a distribution of 12%/tract.
Think of the ramifications of that. There's already worry in Erie County about how a regional government might dilute the black community's political clout; imagine what spreading your constituents across the entire region at a ratio of 1:8 would do. Good bye to Louise Slaughter's tortured district for one; and so long Grassroots, and don't even ask me what it might do to George Holt's aspirations.
Now, if you've followed me this far, it might begin to make sense why Salt Lake City is ranked as the 5th least segregated city in America. 1.3% of its residents are black. That's hardly enough to segregate a block or two, let alone a city. In fact, the segregation index tends to favor newer cities in the south and in the west. The 5 least segregated cities are: Albuquerque, Honolulu, El Paso, Orange County, and, of course, Salt Lake. The bottom five, the worst offenders, are older northeastern and midwestern towns with substantial and established black populations: Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Gary, and Detroit.
A couple years ago, frustrated by a system that proclaims Salt Lake City integrated and Detroit segregated, researchers from the Employment and Training Institute (http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/ETI/integration/integration.htm) at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee began a study. There was a personal angle for them, too. Milwaukee is yet another city which has been tarred with the "hyper-segregated" label; and they hoped to find an alternate method that might more accurately reflect patterns of integration in American cities. They called it the integration measure.
Unlike the historic segregation index, the integration measure reflects a democratic perspective that both majority white and majority black neighborhoods may be considered integrated, that is, if an 80 percent white and 20 percent black population is acceptable for a residential block, then an 80 percent black and 20 percent white population should be acceptable as well. Using this new definition of black-white integration, this study analyzed the racial compositon of 8.2 million blocks in the U.S.
One of the biggest flaws in the Census Bureau's segregation index is its reliance on census tract data. The tracts are large enough to contain different neighborhoods which often are quite disparate in their racial make-up. My own census tract, for example, includes leafy blocks on Norwood Avenue almost exclusively inhabited by whites and moves across Richmond Avenue to take in 18th Street, 19th Street, Brayton and part of Massachusetts Avenue.
While the segregation figures for this tract might be interesting, they're essentially meaningless because the neighborhoods on either side of Richmond have virtually no daily contact with each other -- indeed, the residents of 18th Street likely don't know a soul on 19th. So the UMW team's decision to focus on individual blocks makes sense. It's at the block level, particularly in a densely-populated city, that most personal interaction takes place.
When the census data was analyzed according to the block by block criteria -- remember, if a block contains at least 20% blacks or at least 20% whites it's considered integrated -- the results are quite startling. Our friends in Salt Lake City drop from 5th to 98th place; only 0.1% of Salt Lake's residents live on integrated blocks. Not surprising given its tiny black population; and while It doesn't mean that Salt Lake City is segregated, you'd be hard-pressed to call it integrated either.
The most integrated city according to the study was Norfolk--Virginia Beach--Newport News where over 38% of residents live on integrated blocks. It rose from 13th under the government's ranking. It's followed closely by Charleston, SC and Columbia, SC where just about 1/3 of the inhabitants live on integrated blocks. Indeed, one of the interesting findings here was that, by and large it's southern cities that jump to the top of the most integrated rankings.
But the North and Midwest fare better, too. Milwaukee, which provided the impetus for the study, rises from 98th to 43rd for example. And what about Buffalo, you ask? Well, it turns out that 7.3% of all Metro Buffalo residents live on integrated blocks, not far behind the national median of 7.6% in Pittsburgh. That's enough to bring us up to a ranking of 55th.
Now, I'm not claiming that as some fantastic achievement. That only 7.3% of us live on substantially integrated blocks is perhaps nothing to crow about, but as this study points out, we're certainly not anywhere near the bottom. We don't have to think of ourselves as one of the most segregated cities in the country, we're squarely in the middle of the pack. We're almost average actually, and for a town that tends to rank at the bottom of all too many statistics I think we can take some satisfaction in that.
The UMW study won't end the debate over integrating the suburbs, but it certainly illustrates the numerical reality of demanding full integration. At the neighborhood block level -- where I'd maintain that it really matters -- racial integration is proceeding. In fact, over 49% of blacks in Buffalo live on blocks that are more than 1/5 white -- they may not be quite as isolated as we're led to think. And why assume that all blacks would crave integration and would be better off for having it?
Which leads us to ponder the 948 black Buffalonians who would have to move to the town of Boston to help us achieve full regional racial homogeneity. It might just be that they're making their decision to stick close to the City for entirely rational reasons which have nothing at all to do with governmental policies or supposed suburban anti-black sentiments.
Can we stop feeling bad now?
Resources
Racial Integration in Urban America: A Block Level Analysis of African American and White Housing Patterns (http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/ETI/integration/integration.htm)
US Census Bureau American Factfinder (http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en)
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal article from 2003 which inspired this post (http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan03/109872.asp)