Black-White Segregation Decreasing, Slowly

Milwaukee has the worst black-white segregation in the United States, but even Milwaukee is less segregated than Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee were in 2000. In U.S. cities, segregation is decreasing, though slowly. "Most white residents of large metropolitan areas live in neighborhoods that remain overwhelmingly white, and while black neighborhoods have become more diverse, this is largely due to an increase in Hispanic rather than white residents," William H. Frey reports for the Brookings Institute. These northern Midwestern cities are some of the most segregated in the U.S. cities. In the southwest, cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix are among the most diverse of the countries 51 major metropolitan areas.

"After the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, black-white segregation began to decline, especially in growing parts of the country like Atlanta and Dallas to which blacks were relocating, where they faced less housing discrimination than in the past," Frey writes. Generally, white and black Americans were more likely to live in more diverse neighborhoods from 2013-2017 than they were in 2000.