A Spatial Approach to Negro Segregation in American Cities

Abstract

The main focus of this study is placed on reviewing and assessing the spatial regional characteristics of residential segregation against Negroes in American cities. Severe Negro segregation continues to exist, both legally and traditionally, in every field of American society. For example, segregation still occurs in such cases as marriage, education, and voting, and also in the use of such public services as hotels, restaurants, theaters, libraries, hospitals, swimming pools, beaches, parks, churches, and graveyards as well as public transportation facilities such as trains, street cars, busses, and their waiting rooms.In the passage of the century since the Civil War, various aspects of the Negro segregation system—the so-called Jim Crow Laws—have gradually become less effective but residential segregation against Negroes still remains. The present paper is concerned with Negro-White residential segregation as an aspect of the general processes of urban residential segregation and is an experimental effort to measure quantitatively the intensity of residential segregation against Negroes. Using an original method of mathematical analysis, the author formed indices of residential segregation against Negroes for the 122 SMSA's with populations of over 200, 000. As is shown in Table 1 and Figure 2, the distribution of indices of residential segregation is not homogeneous in the United States; instead, there are regional variations.(I) Residential Segregation in the South. In the South, the Negro segregation system has been maintained officially through legal means and such segregation has met the general approval of every White Southerner. All Negroes, as slave workhands before the Civil War, and as sharecroppers since the Civil War, have been housed in special quarters near the mansions of the white planters. It thus appears that the mixed residential system of Whites and Negroes in the South originated and continued with the development of the plantation economy. Consequently, the Negro segregation system in the South was not caused by the fact that the White Southerns, in contrast with the White Northerners, have been basically inhuman.(II) Residential Segregation in the North. The Negro segregation system has never existed officially in the North and, generally speaking, Negro segregation in the North has been illegal. The Northern industrial society has attracted an abundance of Negroes from the Southern agricultural society in the course of the rapid growth of manufacturing industries in the North. Many cheap and unskilled Negroes, densely concentrated in Negro ghettoes, became separated from the White community. Few white people have had any interest in the dense concentrations and bad conditions of the Negro ghettos.(III) Residential Segregation in the West. The Negro problem has not yet become a major social problem in the West. As the Negroes are newcomers, and their numbers are few in the population of the West, their social situation may be cosidered indefinite.In summary, the writer reaches two conclusions. First, it may be true that with rapid change in political, social, and economic conditions in the United States, Negro segregation has gradually been slowing down. It appears certain that the range of Negro segregation is expanding only in Negro residential choice and in Negro occupations. Second, to express the view that Negro segregation in the South is stronger than in the North is apt to invite misunderstanding. The regional differences in Northern and Southern Negro segregation reflect merely the differences in attitude toward Negroes. This does not explain the basic meaning of the racial prejudice which exists in North and South.