For Immediate Release: Friday, February 3, 2012
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Karen Conner, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

Racial segregation continues, and even intensifies

In a commentary released today by the Economic Policy Institute, Richard Rothstein critiques the recent Manhattan Institute report heralding the end of segregation by pointing out that the report measures “dissimilarity indices” that mask important demographic and economic trends. For instance, a more relevant measure would be an index that measures the “exposure” of African Americans to the majority white population. By that measure, segregation is today greater than it was in 1940, and has remained mostly unchanged since 1950. Rothstein concludes that, “Race-conscious policy remains necessary to undo the effect of racial residential rules established over the course of a century.” Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and senior fellow at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law.  Click here for the full commentary.