Full Citation
Title: A Place-Based Examination of Racial Residential Integration in U.S. Suburbs, 2000–10
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2020
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Abstract: What futures emerge as racial and ethnic diversity expands, and people of color become the majority in the United States? The nation is experiencing immense demographic changes in which populations of color are growing as the white population ages and declines. With this shift, racial and ethnic diversity has moved from the city core to places typically thought of as white spaces. Most people of color now live in suburbs and immigration to rural areas is a demographic lifeline for declining small towns. As racial segregation is the norm in the U.S., this growing diversity has far-reaching implications for racial inequality and may provide the basis for a more equitable society. However, there is a dearth of research on diversity outside the city and its outcomes. Will these demographic shifts lead to greater racial integration or fragmentation in American society? My dissertation grapples with this question by exploring the emergence of racial residential integration in suburbs across the nation. Drawing from Census data, the first article makes use of spatial analyses to identify the features of places that support integration. While prior research suggests that integrated communities are mere anomalies in a ubiquitously segregated landscape, I find that millions of people live in stably integrated communities. Destabilizing stereotypes of the “vanilla suburb,” integrated places are most frequently multiethnic across Blacks, Latinxs, Asians, and whites. Furthermore, whites do not flee from multiethnic suburbs, precluding the homogenizing forces of re-segregation. Beyond racial and ethnic composition, specific local characteristics facilitate the emergence of these communities: unincorporated suburbs that lack local governments, which historically excluded people of color; new housing stock built after the passage of antidiscrimination legislation; and economies that support racial integration in workplaces like the military and public sector. Where conventional urban sociology focuses on industrial cities like Chicago or New York, my work points outward to sprawling metro areas like DC, Miami, and Riverside to understand a ii new sociology of suburbs, where whites and people of color live near each other in ways that are stable across time. From a Civil Rights Movement perspective, residential integration may remedy the ills of segregation. For my second and third articles, I focus on two key outcomes, public education and income, to assess whether racial integration in communities indicates movement towards racial equality. Using geocoded data from the National Center for Education Statistics, I investigate the relationship between integrated communities and integration in schools. Historically, public schools are crucial institutions for the upkeep of segregation; however, I find that integrated suburbs host public schools with both high white enrollment and multiethnic diversity. Thus, students of color attend schools with white students, generally representing substantive cross-racial contact within institutions. Second, I explore economic inequality as it materializes across suburbs. Using median household income data, I find that integrated suburbs display smaller racial-economic disparities compared to other areas types like predominantly Black, predominantly Latinx, and micro-segregated, diverse environments. Both Black and Latinx median household incomes are roughly 20% higher in integrated suburbs compared to other area types, while whites’ and Asians’ substantially higher median household incomes remain unchanged across areas. Therefore, integrated places show smaller gaps in income between different racial groups, pointing towards greater equality. Using a spatial, place-based approach, I contend that the demography of the twenty-first century requires new theory that centers on multiethnic race relations as the U.S. undergoes rapid demographic change. While study after study details the causes and consequences of rigid urban segregation, this project contributes to an understanding of how multiethnic communities outside the city provide openings for racial integration to emerge and persist. Furthermore, findings may guide the formation of policies that mitigate the social problems of entrenched segregation. iii Multiethnic diversity in local contexts may attenuate white prejudice, allow communities to unsettle persistent forms of racial discrimination, and signal future trends as the US grows increasingly diverse. Most importantly, racial residential integration may be a path toward a more equitable society that provides people of color access to the higher quality place-based resources generally available to urban and suburban whites.
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Authors: Rastogi, Ankit
Institution: The University of Wisconsin- Madison
Department: Sociology
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Publisher Location: Madison, Wisconsin
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Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Housing and Segregation, Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity
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