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September, 2003
By John R. Logan, Deirdre Oakley
and Jacob Stowell
In their analysis of the sources of urban riots in
the mid-1960’s the National Commission on Civil Disorders
observed that the country was dividing into two nations, increasingly
separate and unequal. Now several decades later and in a very different
social and political climate, Census 2000 reminds us that divisions
remain very deep. Analyses have shown that reductions in black-white
segregation have been slow and uneven. New minorities have become
much more visible since the 1960s, and while Hispanics and Asians
are less segregated than are blacks from whites, their levels of
segregation have been unchanged or rising since 1980.
Separate neighborhoods also continue to be unequal.
One of the major costs of residential segregation is that minorities
live in poorer neighborhoods with less resources than do whites
with comparable incomes. Analysis of the Boston metropolitan region
reveals that this national pattern persists here despite a decade
of widespread prosperity, and we find that disparities are experienced
most strongly by children.
We look at children’s experiences in the neighborhoods
where they live (how separate? how unequal?) and the schools that
they attend. These are both important to child development, but
we believe schools have a particular importance because of how they
affect children’s chances for achievement in their adult lives.
We also look very closely at differences within the metropolis between
the City of Boston, other smaller cities, and suburbs. It turns
out that the exclusion of minority children from suburban neighborhoods
and schools is the most significant key to racial inequality in
the Boston region.
Nearly 30 years after a court ordered Boston’s
city schools to desegregate (1974), school segregation continues
to be a major obstacle to equal opportunity for minority children
in the Boston metropolis. The issues are national in scope, but
in Boston we see especially clearly how limited are the impacts
of policies that are only implemented within city boundaries. Blacks
and Hispanics are unusually concentrated in the City of Boston and
a handful of older outlying towns and cities, while residential
suburbs where most whites live hardly share in the growing ethnic
and racial diversity of the region.
This study shows:
- Black and Hispanic children are highly segregated in the neighborhoods
where they live. They also live in unequal neighborhoods, as measured
by neighborhoods' income levels, poverty rate, unemployment, homeownership,
and other indicators.
- Neighborhood segregation is especially high in the City of Boston.
But seen from a regional perspective, the main source of segregation
is minorities’ exclusion from most residential suburbs.
Less than 10% of children under 18 in the Boston region lived
in the City of Boston in 2000. But nearly half of black children
lived in the City. A small set of older, denser suburbs (including
such places as Lynn, Lowell, Chelsea, Lawrence, and Worcester)
house a majority of Hispanic children.
- School segregation is lower in Boston than in other portions
of the region. This reflects the history of desegregation efforts
in the City, despite erosion of these gains in the last decade.
But again, the main source of segregation in the region is the
exclusion of minority children from schools in the residential
suburbs. Only 25-30% of black and Hispanic children in public
elementary grades attend schools in these districts, compared
to 85% of white children and more than half of Asian children.
- As a result, black and Hispanic students also attend unequal
schools, compared to white and Asian students, as measured by
the concentration of poor children in their elementary schools.
To view the COMPLETE
REPORT and study go to:
Segregation in Neighborhoods
and Schools:Impacts on Minority Children in the Boston Region
(in PDF Format) 
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