Chicago Tribune

Date: Thursday, June 21, 2001 Section: News Page: 1 Zone: N

Source: By David Mendell, Tribune staff reporter.

(Los Angeles Times reporters Ray Herndon and Sandra Poindexter provided data analysis for this report.)

Headline: MIDWEST HOUSING DIVIDE IS STILL RACE

Heartland cities among nation's most segregated

The United States has endorsed the ideal of racial and ethnic integration,championed by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as America's moral imperative, butthe nation's heartland remains stubbornly segregated.

As the rapidly growing South and West became more integrated during the1990s, Midwestern cities continued to represent the bulk of the most segregated large metropolitan areas, according to a new analysis of 2000census data.

Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Indianapolis all ranked among the 10 metropolitan areas with the mostblack-white segregation, the Los Angeles Times analysis found. And Hispanicsin Chicago, Cleveland and Milwaukee live in more pronounced segregation thanLatinos in any other major metropolis.

Decades ago, Chicago and big urban centers in the Midwest were destinationsfor blacks fleeing racial oppression in the South. But today, these citiesstand as vivid case studies in the plodding progress to achieve a nationallandscape in which individual communities reflect the diversity of the whole.

"Clearly there is something in our collective histories throughout the FrostBelt that breeds a pattern of racial isolation," said Marc Levine, directorof the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Though the causes of segregation are complex, social scientists point toseveral reasons for the Midwest's glacial movement toward diversity:entrenched attitudes about where people of certain races should live; economic disparities between whites and minorities; and a housing industryrife with institutionalized racism.

High-growth cities such as Dallas, Phoenix and Las Vegas, experienced highlevels of integration for some--but not all--minority groups over thedecade. Demographers believe the many new residents of these regions wereless influenced by preconceived notions of where minorities should live.

The analysis used a "dissimilarity index," a common tool of demographers andsociologists that gauges segregation. The index tracked block-by-blockhousing patterns by race and ethnicity in 33 of the largest metropolitanareas.

Every big city in the country, including Chicago, took some strides towarddiversity in the 1990s, the analysis found. But change in the Midwest was sosmall that some researchers considered it negligible and ultimately damagingto the country's racial climate.

The index highlights an issue that has long bedeviled civil rights advocatesand demographers: National efforts to end segregation, such as fair housinglaws and affirmative action, have narrowed only slightly the prevailingracial and ethnic divide in many middle-American metropolitan regions.

Despite a decade of unbridled economic prosperity, the vast majority ofblacks in many Midwestern population centers still lived in primarily blackcommunities in 2000.

In Chicago, the African-American population fell by about 20,000 over the1990s and now stands at 1 million. At least some of these blacks appeared tohave moved to southern suburbs already populated with blacks, such asHarvey, South Holland and Matteson. Coupled with whites moving to mostlywhite suburbs, that left the region still extremely segregated.

In Milwaukee, migration of blacks to the suburbs is almost imperceptible.The census showed that the suburban black population of Milwaukee Countyrose only 2 percent over the last decade, with 96 percent of all blacksliving within the Milwaukee city limits.

"Even as you have this growth of integration in the south and west, youstill have very little breakup of these large racially isolated ghettoselsewhere," said demographer Roderick Harrison of the Joint Center forPolitical and Economic Studies in Washington. "In many parts of the country,we seem to be crossing into some new dynamics between the races, or at leasta moderation in the dynamics. But not everywhere."

RACIAL INEQUITY

In Cincinnati, where blacks make up 43 percent of the population, activistssuggested that segregation played a key role in riots this spring after awhite police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager.

"You have all these white police officers who live out in the white suburbsand the only time they ever see a black person is when they're arrestinghim," said Karla Irvine, executive director of a fair housing agency inCincinnati and a member of the local NAACP board. "We also have concentratedpublic housing in certain neighborhoods away from white populations, and itmakes for very little interaction between blacks and whites."

In Milwaukee, many middle-class blacks have settled in mostly black cityneighborhoods on the north side.

That trend follows a history of racial inequity in the Milwaukee area. Untilthe civil rights era, some suburbs enforced laws that forbade blacks to buyhomes in their communities or to walk the streets after 10 p.m.

Recent studies have shown that blacks with incomes similar to whites inMilwaukee are four times more likely to be denied home loans. In the robust1990s, unemployment for blacks in the region hovered in the double digits.

"This is a city where the lines of demarcation are strictly adhered to, and the messages sent are undeniable," said Bill Tisdale, president of a Milwaukee-based fair housing group.

Chicago's legacy of segregated neighborhoods is similar to those of otherMidwestern cities.

In the 1960s and 1970s, real estate profiteers played on white fear to makea quick dollar as blacks kept arriving from the South. In the evenings,white residents in some integrating neighborhoods were besieged withanonymous phone calls announcing, "They're coming! They're coming! Sell now!Sell now!"

As a result, many South Side neighborhoods, such as Roseland and Englewood,changed from nearly all white to nearly all black almost overnight.

"When we moved in more than 30 years ago, you'd say to people who wereliving here, `Hi neighbor.' And he'd look at you kind of strange and thenyou'd never see him again--he moved out," said Cass Hood, owner of aconstruction company in Roseland.

Amid this "white flight," property values plummeted, contributing to theimpoverishment of many black families. In addition, those new blackneighborhoods suffered disinvestment by financial institutions.

Neighborhoods were redlined into zones bereft of economic activity: No loanswere granted. City services were cut. Businesses and groceries, like thewhite residents, were gone.

Eventually, the initial black settlers with a measure of wealth moved away,leaving behind the poor.

To stem this tide, Congress passed civil rights legislation aimed at ending conditions that exacerbated segregation.

REDLINING OUTLAWED

In 1977 redlining was officially outlawed by the Community Reinvestment Act,which requires banks to lend money throughout regions they serve, includingpoor neighborhoods, without taking undue risks. In 1988 the Fair HousingAmendments Act strengthened the enforcement of local open housing laws andsteeply increased damage awards for housing discrimination.

Still, historic housing patterns had been set. Even today, it could takegenerations to heal old wounds, experts predict.

A 1997 study by the non-profit Leadership Council for Metropolitan OpenCommunities found segregation persisted in Chicago because of continuedracial steering by real estate providers, a general social environmenthostile to minorities, zoning that discourages the construction ofmoderate-income housing, and decisions by minorities not to expose theirfamilies to potential hostility in "certain traditionally exclusionarycommunities."

The report, called "Black, White and Shades of Brown," didn't name names.But it concluded there had been a failure of regional leadership to confrontracism.

"In so many communities, economic development is prominent in the minds ofthe elected officials, but ultimately, it is human relationships that makecommunities strong," said John Lukehart, vice president of the LeadershipCouncil.

"BLACKFISH BAY"

Perhaps no community reveals more about the Midwest's flagging progresstoward integration than the Milwaukee neighborhood some African-Americanscall "Blackfish Bay." The nickname is derived from its stark racial contrastto the affluent, nearly all-white lakeshore suburb of Whitefish Bay.

For decades, whites have been leaving the small, leafy neighborhood wedgedtightly between large tracts of urban blight. As whites have departed,middle- and upper-income blacks have moved into the stately homes that overlook lush green lawns on the city's north side.

The area is more commonly known as the Sherman Park neighborhood or HistoricGrant Boulevard District. Several black residents said they have no interestin being pioneers of suburban integration.

Willie Buchanan, 66, a retired welder, bought a two-story, brown-brick housethere three years ago. Digging a bed for new sod in his front yard recently,he said he moved where he felt most comfortable. Buchanan's choice isindicative of many middle-class blacks who shun white areas.

"You like to live around people who you feel want to be your neighbor," saidBuchanan, who is black. "I just know if I would move out to the suburbs,there would be a few people who didn't want me around, a few people whoprobably would say things behind my back they'd never say to my face."

"I don't think prejudice is as bad as it used to be. But it's still around,so I just decided to move here."

A 1999 study by the non-profit Woodstock Institute found that blacks in theChicago area overwhelmingly chose to buy homes in black areas. African-Americans tend to purchase houses on the Far West Side, Far SouthSide, in a cluster of western Cook County suburbs and in suburbs in southernCook County east of Interstate Highway 57.

WHITE PIONEERS

Milwaukee's Earl and Elaine Klabunde are pioneers of another sort--whiteGrant Boulevard residents who stayed put.

They still live in the house they bought in 1958, as neighborhoods on all sides have turned from nearly all white to mostly black.

The Klabundes said they considered moving, especially after their nearbychurch followed its congregation to the suburbs.

"We adopted a black girl and raised her, and perhaps that helped us keep adifferent attitude about black people," said Earl Klabunde, 71, a retiredpublic school music teacher.

But later, Klabunde said changes in nearby neighborhoods have unsettled himtoo. Crime was high years ago, he said, and a neighbor was mugged onKlabunde's front lawn. Those incidents have subsided, although he lamentedthat pockets of nearby poverty seem intractable.

"You watch CNN and see the problems in the Third World countries, but you can go just a couple of blocks over and see things here that are just unbelievable," he said.

Today, a small number of whites have begun moving back into theneighborhood.

LATINOS ALTER PATTERNS

In the Chicago area, the tide of Hispanic immigrants and fast rise in thenumber of Asians are changing the dynamics of segregation. Latinos soon willoutnumber blacks as the region's most populous minority. As more Latinos,particularly Mexicans, come to the U.S., they become more segregated,researchers said.

Census data show Latinos and Asians are far more likely than blacks tosettle in historically white suburbs that offer plentiful jobs. That has ledto a demographic paradox:

Segregation for Latinos is greater in Chicago than in any other majormetropolitan region in the country. At the same time, Latinos in Chicagolive in less segregated neighborhoods than black residents.

Much like the flood of European immigrants of the early 20th Century,Latinos are creating ethnic enclaves of their own, where Spanish is the predominant language. In the 1990s, Cicero joined Stone Park as a majority Hispanic suburb, and Berwyn and Melrose Park should soon follow suit aswhite populations in those inner-ring western suburbs dwindle.

Researchers will closely watch these immigrants to see if they shapeAmerica's composition or if America shapes them, Harrison said.

"This country has tremendous assimilative pressures, and I think thequestion is what happens to these young generations of immigrants," he said."For all the talk of valuing one's heritage and language, youths tend to bethe consumers of mass culture and be shaped by the culture. Will they holdon to their history and Spanish language, or will they give in to America'sculture like most of the European Anglo immigrants early in the 20thCentury?"

The answer certainly will help determine where Americans of all colors--inthe Midwest and elsewhere--choose to call home.

Memo: The 2000 census.

Captions: PHOTO: De Ante Coleman, 5 (left), and brother Damari, 7, ride bicycles through Sherman Park, a largely black neighborhood in Milwaukee.Tribune photo by Milbert Orlando Brown.

PHOTO (color): Elaine and Earl Klabunde have lived on Grant Boulevard since1958. The predominantly black neighborhood is nicknamed "Blackfish Bay," areference to white, affluent Whitefish Bay. (North Final edition, Newssection, Page 1.)

PHOTO: Booker T. Gutter (left), who has lived on Grant Boulevard inMilwaukee's Sherman Park, talks with John Schuessler, who moved into thearea several months ago. Tribune photo by Milbert Orlando Brown. (NorthFinal edition, News section, Page 22.)

GRAPHIC: Chicago metro area one of the most segregated in U.S.

Among 33 of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., Chicago ranks in thetop five for segregation among blacks, Latinos and Asians, according to thedissimilarity index. Although black segregation in Chicago has decreasedover the past decade, the city saw increases in Latino, Asian and whitesegregation.

Oakland, Sacramento: Rank among most integrated for three of four majorracial groups.

Seattle, Riverside/San Bernardino: Among most integrated across four racialgroups.

Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York: Rank among most segregatedfor three of four major racial groups.

Phoenix: Among most segregated for Latinos but among most integrated forblacks and Asians.

Dallas: Among most integrated for blacks but among most segregated forLatinos and Asians.

Orlando: Among the most integrated across four racial groups.

Philadelphia: Among the most segregated of largest metros.

THE DISSIMILARITY INDEX

The dissimilarity index shows the distribution of one racial/ethnic groupagainst all others across a metro area. It is the percentage of that groupthat needs to move to achieve complete integration. Scores of 40 and belowshow low segregation. Moderate segregation ranges from 40 to 60. A score of60 or higher shows high segregation. For example, Chicago's index of 79.8for blacks means that percentage of African Americans must move to achievecomplete integration.