TNC examines two papers on the slow decline of segregation:
Black people are less segregated right now than they’ve been since the dawn of the 20th century. In one sense that should make you happy. In another sense it should scare you. The “good” news means that black people went not from hypersegregated to integrated, but from hypersegregated to very segregated. Progress. Yay. Still let’s live in the good news for just a moment. If black/white segregation has declined over the past two decades–and it has–can we not assume that it will continue to decline on its own?
[Douglass] Massey argues that ultimately segregation is at the root of most of the social ills affecting black people, because it concentrates all of the problems of poverty on the shoulders of one group–whether everyone in that group is poor or not.
The Dish 