At 04:51 PM 4/29/2010, Joseph Catron wrote:
>I'm sure New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are legitimately more
>segregated than Virginia Beach, Charlotte, or Nashville. However, it seems
>at first glance that this survey's methodology is deeply slanted in favor
>of the South:
>
>"[D]iverse urban populations of Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans are
>not factored into the black-white segregation rankings. First, all
>Hispanics, regardless of stated race, are excluded. The remaining
>black-white racial categories reflect 19th century definitions."
they were criticizing the segregation index that has been used to steer businesses away from cities. the section from which you plucked the quote was a criticism of an older segregation ranking as prelude to offering an improved one:
"An alternative definition of black-white integration is presented in this paper, not as a competitive model for ranking cities and metro areas, but to expose the biases and limitations of the segregation indexes."
>Unless
>I've missed some important nuance, the study tells us a lot more about
>ethnic differentiations between cities than within them.
If you dig into the data, they are looking at the integration of _blocks_, not entire cities. so, the ranking is about the proportion of people living in integrated blocks (where there are = or > 20% whites AND = or > 20% blacks).
The older model also emphasized that idea that blacks moved into white neighborhoods, rather than the other way around. In this study, it asks also about the percentage of whites who live in integrated neighborhoods, in neighborhoods with >80% blacks, in neighborhoods with some other mixtures, and in nieghborhoods with >80% whites.