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It's Mostly White People Who Prefer to Live in Segregated Neighborhoods

The idea that many Americans “voluntarily” choose to self-segregate by race is highly misleading.
A man walks past a banner of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., while walking through the Mechanicsville neighborhood in Atlanta.
A man walks past a banner of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., while walking through the Mechanicsville neighborhood in Atlanta. AP Photo/David Goldman
By
Daniel Denvir

In today’s New York Times, David Leonhardt discusses a new study showing that middle-income white and Asian Americans tend to live in middle-class neighborhoods, while middle-income black Americans tend to live in poorer ones. The article was published just as the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly upheld the federal government’s power to fight housing discrimination, and is a reminder that racial segregation remains a powerful force in shaping the American metropolis.

But Leonhardt also repeats one unfounded and damaging canard to explain segregation’s origins.