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RETHINKING SEGREGATION
- Author(s):
- Paul Bordreaux
- Date:
- 2020
- Group(s):
- Michigan State Law Review
- Item Type:
- Article
- Permanent URL:
- https://doi.org/10.17613/kc38-qv65
- Abstract:
- In this time of high racial tensions, it is worth revisiting the debate over de facto housing segregation. For more than half a century, from the Fair Housing Act of 1968 through the recent Supreme Court decision in Inclusive Communities, law has ostensibly set a goal of housing integration. How can we assess this goal in an age when most Americans live in expanding suburbs? This Article analyzes the traditional assumptions about segregation and concludes that: (1) the longstanding perception that Black Americans are trapped inside central cities is no longer true, as most Black Americans now live in suburbs; and (2) today’s re-emergence of racial segregation in the suburbs appears to be significantly the result of private ordering. The conclusions are based on demographic, sociological, and economic sources (with a special focus on the Washington, D.C., area), which are used to develop a simple model of how small preferences can lead to widespread suburban segregation. These conclusions may be discomforting for both progressive and conservative viewpoints of race relations. But the Article also concludes that the old legal goal of integration of minority races into a majority-White culture may, today, be seen as both naïve and patronizing. De facto segregation may be inevitable and may hold some surprising benefits for minority persons in a rapidly diversifying twenty-first century America.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 1 year ago
- License:
- Attribution
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2020.4-03-bordreaux.pdf