segregation in certain areas admit that intense racial segregation in Americas largest cities, where most blacks live, still exists (Swain 214). One method of measuring residential segregation is with the index of dissimilarity, which ranges from 0 to 100, with 100 signifying complete apartheid and 0 perfect integration. Reynolds Farley and William Frey find a broad, though modest, degree of desegregation in which the average index score fell four points in the 1980s, from 69 to 65. Attempting to prove that racial segregation has decreased, they note that the most significant strides toward integration have been made in smaller, new metropolises (Swain 214). Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, on the other hand, disagree, stating, The larger declines in these metropolitan areas are generally attributable to unusual instability in housing patterns caused by a combination of gentrification, immigration, and rapid housing construction rather than to an ongoing process of neighborhood racial integration (Massey & Denton 63). Thus, this view sees residential segregation as not having decreased and levels of segregation still remaining high. In a study reported in USA Today, conducted by the Lewis Mumford Center at the University of Albany, of the 50 metropolitan areas with the largest percentage of blacks, here are the 10 areas where blacks and whites are most segregated: Detroit, Milwaukee Waukesha, Wisc., New York, Chicago, Newark, N.J., Cleveland, Cincinnati, Nassau Suffolk, N.Y., St. Louis, and Miami (USA Today 2001). Therefore, it seems relatively evident that residential segregation does, in fact, continue to plague American cities.A number of societal ills afflicting American cities include welfare dependency, poverty, and high unemployment rates. A main cause of such problems is argued to be the systematic exclusion of African-Americans, from adequate, accessible, and affordable housing. As typically defined, the afford...
