Agents of Change: Mixed-Race Households and the Dynamics of Neighborhood Segregation in the United States

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2012-01-03 02:49Z by Steven

Agents of Change: Mixed-Race Households and the Dynamics of Neighborhood Segregation in the United States

Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Available online: 2011-12-08
DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2011.627057

Mark Ellis, Professor of Geography
University of Washington

Steven R. Holloway, Professor of Geography
University of Georgia

Richard Wright, Professor of Geography
Dartmouth College

Christopher S. Fowler Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow in Applied Spatial Statistics
Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology
University of Washington

This article explores the effects of mixed-race household formation on trends in neighborhood-scale racial segregation. Census data show that these effects are nontrivial in relation to the magnitude of decadal changes in residential segregation. An agent-based model illustrates the potential long-run impacts of rising numbers of mixed-race households on measures of neighborhood-scale segregation. It reveals that high rates of mixed-race household formation will reduce residential segregation considerably. This occurs even when preferences for own-group neighbors are high enough to maintain racial separation in residential space in a Schelling-type model. We uncover a disturbing trend, however; levels of neighborhood-scale segregation of single-race households can remain persistently high even while a growing number of mixed-race households drives down the overall rate of residential segregation. Thus, the article’s main conclusion is that parsing neighborhood segregation levels by household type—single versus mixed race—is essential to interpret correctly trends in the spatial separation of racial groups, especially when the fraction of households that are mixed race is dynamic. More broadly, the article illustrates the importance of household-scale processes for urban outcomes and joins debates in geography about interscalar relationships.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, History, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Tri-Racial Isolates, United States on 2011-04-19 04:56Z by Steven

A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States

Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Volume 43, Number 2 (June 1953)
pages 138-155

Edward T. Price
Los Angeles State College

A Strange product of the mingling of races which followed the British entry into North America survives in the presence of a number of localized strains of peoples of mixed ancestry. Presumed to be part white with varying proportions of Indian and Negro blood,** they are recognized as of intermediate social status, sharing lot with neither white nor colored, and enjoying neither the governmental protection nor the tribal tie of the typical Indian descendants. A high degree of endogamy results from this special status, and their recognition is crystallized in the unusual group names applied to them by the country people.

The chief populations of this type are located and identified in Figure 1, which expresses their recurrence as a pattern of distribution. Yet each is essentially a local phenomenon, a unique demographic body, defined only in its own terms and only by its own neighbors. A name applied to one group in one area would have no meaning relative to similar people elsewhere. This association of mixed-blood and particular place piques the geographic curiosity about a subject which, were it ubiquitous, might well be abandoned to the sociologist and social historian. What accounts for these cases of social endemism in the racially mixed population?

The total number of these mixed-bloods is probably between 50,000 and 100,000 persons. Individually recognized groups may run from fewer than 100 to as many as 18,000 persons in the case of the Croatans of North Carolina. The available records, the most useful being old census schedules,’ indicate that the present numbers of mixed-bloods have sprung from the great reproductive increase of small initial populations; the prevalence in each group of a small number of oft-repeated surnames is in accord with such a conclusion.   The ancestors of the mixed-bloods…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , ,