Cities with the Lowest and Highest African American Population (Measures of Concentration and Isolation)
In this and the following three charts, we shall examine how racial minorities, and the Hispanic population, are settled in metro areas where they have the smallest and the largest numbers. Each group has its own panel. In this panel we shall examine African American patterns of settlement.
The Concentration measure indicates space occupied (density) relative to whites, by the same number of people. The Isolation measure indicates the proportion of African Americans within each area relative to whites. A value of 0.6 (60%), for instance, means that 6 blacks live in the same area with 4 whites. Isolation measures are provided for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians and Pacific Islanders. The left part of the graphic shows cities with the smallest black populations, the right part cities with the largest black populations. Absolute counts were used for ranking so that patterns encountered in small as well as very large metro areas can be shown side by side. All data are for 1990. Such measures for the 2000 census have been announced but have not been issued.
Values close to the zero line indicate equivalency with the majority white population. A concentration level at or near zero means that the relative space occupied by the minority is the same as that of whites. Higher values indicate more density, negative values indicate less density. An isolation measure at or near zero indicates that as many whites as minorities are living in the same neighborhood.
Looking at two pairs of cities will illustrate what these measures can tell us. Note first that levels of concentration can be quite high even when the minority population is quite low. This means that the same numbers occupy less physical space than whites. Thus Bismarck, North Dakota, has a concentration measure of 0.908, second only to Detroit, MI, with a measure of 0.918. But while African Americans in Bismarck live as densely (in as little space) as in Detroit, they are not as isolated. They are in neighborhoods where an equal number of whites live. Detroit, by contrast, has the highest isolation measure, 0.823, of any city shown. Isolation is related to population size; the races/ethnicities live together, for whatever reasons. In Bismarck, blacks were less than 0.1% of the population in 1990; in Detroit they were 22%.
Another pattern is shown by Laredo, Texas. In that city African Americans occupy much more space than an equivalent group of whites. They are less densely settled, are less concentrated. The concentration measure is negative. Their isolation level is low — lower than that of Asians and Pacific Islanders. In the same city, Hispanics live in very high isolation and have, based on this measure, only minimal contact with the non-Hispanic white population. This is easily understood when one notes that, in Laredo, Hispanics were nearly 94% of the total population in 1990.
Data for the large metro areas, which have large populations of African Americans, show both high concentrations and high isolation. The races separate into their own enclaves where the populations are large. Note that Hispanics and Asians have lower isolation measurements in these large cities than blacks. The one exception is Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA, where large Hispanic numbers produce isolated settlement patterns. In that metro area, Hispanics represented nearly 38% of total population in 1990, versus 11% for African Americans.
African Americans were less than 1% of total population in all of the smaller metro areas and significantly higher (19 to 20%) in the large metro areas; the only exception was Los Angeles-Long Beach, where the black population had an 11% share in 1990.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Housing and Household and Economic Statistics Division. Online. Available: census.gov/hhes.www.housing/resseg/def.htm. Presentation is from the work of Roderick J. Harrison and Daniel H. Weinberg. "Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation: 1990."
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