▪ Abstract  The publication of American Apartheid ( Massey & Denton 1993 ) was influential in shifting public discourse back toward racial residential segregation as fundamental to persisting racial inequality. At the end of the twentieth century, the majority of blacks remained severely segregated from whites in major metropolitan areas. Due to the persistence of high-volume immigration, Hispanic and Asian segregation from whites has increased, although it is still best characterized as moderate. This review examines trends in the residential segregation of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians and recent research focused on understanding the causes of persisting segregation. This discussion is organized around two broad theoretical perspectives—spatial assimilation and place stratification. After detailing the consequences of segregation for affected groups, I identify gaps in our understanding and goals for future research.

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This analysis uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen (NLSF) to study black immigrants and natives attending selective colleges and universities in the United States. In the NLSF, 747 black students were of native origin, and 281 were of immigrant origin, yielding an overall immigrant percentage of 27 percent. The overrepresentation of immigrants was higher in private than in public institutions and within more selective rather than less selective schools. We found few differences in the social origins of black students from immigrant and native backgrounds. The fact that most indicators of socioeconomic status, social preparation, psychological readiness, and academic preparation are identical for immigrants and natives suggests that immigrant origins per se are not favored in the admissions process but that children from immigrant families exhibit traits and characteristics valued by admissions committees. Prior to the civil rights era, Americans of African origin were largely excluded from selective colleges and universities in the United States through a combination of de facto and de jure mechanisms. Once discrimination in education was definitively banned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, things began to change. During the late 1960s, elite schools throughout the country began to undertake various "affirmative actions" to increase black enrollment. As outlined in the celebrated speech made by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Howard University, the initial justification for this policy was restitution for past wrongs:

This chapter depicts “the real record on racial attitudes” using a wide lens. Recounting results of mid-20th-century surveys as well as trends in the General Social Survey, it shows that formal principles of equal treatment (e.g., in schools and employment) came to be widely endorsed. However, it cautions against concluding that U.S. society became “postracial.” For example, in the 2000s white Americans remain more apt to attribute negative traits to blacks than to whites, reluctant to support interventions to redress persistent black–white inequality, and highly resistant to “special favors” for blacks. The chapter documents rising egalitarianism and dramatic change in some basic assumptions governing black–white relationships, together with little or no growth in reformist and interventionist orientations about racial matters. It highlights numerous “enduring frictions and conflicts that continue to make race such a fraught terrain.”

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