In 1986, two scholars from Philadelphia set out to conduct an exhaustive racial analysis of cities and suburbs across the land. Three years later, their computers have revealed some dismal information: Chicago’s metropolitan area is the most segregated region in the country. Put it this way: according to their study, the likelihood of an inner-city black youth encountering a white person in the course of a day is less than 20 percent.
The scholars began their study when Massey was a professor and Denton a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. They wanted to measure precisely the degree of segregation in 60 metropolitan regions; to do so, they used statistics from the 1980 census–the most recent reliable data available.
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Massey and Denton also measured racial isolation, meaning the amount of contact between whites and blacks within a neighborhood.
What’s worse, the state has agreed to pay Sears’ relocation costs, squandering its limited supply of economic-development resources even as it causes disinvestment in the Chicago neighborhoods that need investment the most. It’s as though the state’s politicians wanted the south side to shrivel up and die.
The obvious solution to segregation is a program in which the federal government gives low-income black Chicagoans the subsidies they need to pay for suburban housing. Encouraging poor blacks to move to the suburbs would alleviate inner-city crowding, afford black youngsters an opportunity to study in the finest suburban schools, and move their parents closer to suburban jobs.
Denton, who does not necessarily advocate any of the proposals mentioned, says, “Some people say that blacks want to be segregated, although most studies I’ve seen show that’s not true. When asked what kind of neighborhood was ideal, blacks picked a community with a 50-50 racial split; whites said they wanted a community that was about 15 percent black. That study was done in Detroit.
