Chicago: Black Ghettos

In 1990, the City of Chicago's population was 43% black, 42% white, and 12% Latino.
Of Chicago's 854 inhabited (people lived there) census tracts, 345 tracts, or 40%, were at least 98% black. The black ghetto is defined by 50 percent or more of the population being of African-American descent. Chicago has two (in)famous ghettos: Westside and Southside.
In Chicago, blacks have been particularly concentrated through the use of public housing projects. Read about Chicago's public housing projects and their demolition. Look at what is left of the Robert Taylor projects [Source: PAM BELLUCK, "Razing the Slums to Rescue the Residents," New York Times, 6 Septmber 1998]. The city wants to raze 11,000 apartments, nearly 40 percent of its public housing for families, over the next 15 years.

For an update (2006), view photos from the Bronzeville community.

Anwer: Let's take a tour in the classroom -- be there! The changing geography of racial segregation in US cities is illustated by a graph of Detroit. Notice that Whites were moving out of the city before the 1970s riots in the Black parts of Detoit. Similar trends occurred in other cities, such as Chicago.

Why are USA cities so residentially segregated? One analysis points to discrimination in the mortgage lending practices of banks. Steven Holloway argues (in his June 1998 Annals of the Association of American Geographers article) that "discrimination motivated by prejudice is contingent on the racial composition of neighborhoods." His evidence from Columbus, Ohio, indicates that blacks have a much higher rate of house loan denials in all-white neighborhoods than in black neighborhoods, especially for applicants making large loan requests; and white applicants for small loans had a higher denial rate in black census tracts than in all-white areas. Dan Immergluck of the Woodstock Institute of Chicago suggests that a similar pattern may characterize Chicago.