Drawing upon an ethnography of Korean American families in the Chicago suburbs, this article examines how Asian immigrant parents' engagement is shaped by race, ethnicity, class, and the suburban context. Their children's education was a driving force in parents' decisions to settle in the suburbs. Once they arrived, parents were motivated by…

"Equality of Educational Opportunity," also known as the Coleman Report, sought answers to two burning questions: (1) How extensive is racial segregation within U.S. schools?; and (2) How adversely does that segregation affect educational opportunities for black students? In answering the first question, James S. Coleman and his…

Nationwide, place-based initiatives aiming to improve school and community outcomes are in the midst of neighborhood demographic change. We explore this issue through a case study of the Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN). We discuss how the social and educational context of MPN poses several challenges to implementing Promise Neighborhood…

Past research has shown that racial inequality in urban areas--Black and White residential segregation and economic inequality--is associated with increased levels of homicide offending and that victimization among Blacks yet serves as a protection mechanism against such violence among Whites. However, few studies have considered alternative…

America's changing color line is perhaps best expressed in shifting patterns of neighborhood residential segregation--the geographic separation of races. This research evaluates black exceptionalism by using the universe of U.S. blocks from the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses to provide a "single" geographically inclusive national…

Background: Despite a powerful civil rights movement and legislation barring discrimination in housing markets, residential neighborhoods remain racially segregated. Purpose: This study examines the extent to which neighborhoods' racial composition is inherited across generations and the extent to which high schools' and colleges' racial…

Previous studies have shown that as the percent black or percent Hispanic grows, that group's residential segregation from whites tends to increase as well. Typically, these findings are explained in terms of white discriminatory reaction to the perceived threat associated with minority population growth. The present analysis examines whether…

For more than a century, communities across the United States legally employed strategies to create and maintain racial divides. One particularly widespread and effective practice was that of "sundown towns," which signaled to African Americans and others that they were not welcome within the city limits after dark. Though nearly 1,000…

Over 40 years ago the historic Kerner Commission Report declared that America was undergoing an urban crisis whose effects were disproportionately felt by underclass populations. In "America's Urban Crisis and the Advent of Color-blind Politics", Curtis Ivery and Joshua Bassett explore the persistence of this crisis today, despite public…

This paper provides new evidence on the mechanisms by which school desegregation in large urban districts led to public enrollment declines for whites and increases for blacks. The authors demonstrate that white enrollment declines in southern central districts were primarily the product of out-migration while enrollment declines in districts…

This article discusses a class project on residential segregation in Florida's metropolitan areas for which students analyzed trends regarding African Americans relative to white populations using data from 1980 to 2000. The project provided a means of teaching the importance of geographical perspectives to nongeography students in an…

Investigating the role of preferences in causing persistent patterns of racial residential segregation in the United States has a long history. In this paper, we bring a new perspective--and new data from the 2004 Detroit Area Study--to the question of how best to characterize black and white preferences toward living in neighborhoods with people…

In Birmingham, Alabama, more all White and all Black neighborhoods were found in 1977 than in 1970. White population increased where the prospect of having Black neighbors was low and housing units were increasing in number, whereas Black population increased in neighborhoods decreasing in terms of numbers of housing units. (Author/GC)

Examines changes in patterns of Black-White housing segregation in St. Louis (Missouri) between 1980 and 1988 using data from the 1988 Dress Rehearsal Census. St. Louis exhibited a persistent pattern of segregation from 1940 to 1980. Finds the city remains quite segregated compared to 1980 national averages. (DM)

Provides an ethnographic description of kinship and residential patterns among Blacks in the South Carolina Sea Islands. Indicates how the family structure of this group differs from that of United States mainland Whites and is similar to that of Blacks in Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S. (MJL)