Black Segregation at Lowest Level in Century, Study Finds

Black segregation from other racial groups is now at its lowest point in more than a century, according to a new report out Monday from the conservative Manhattan Institute.

The study by Harvard University professor Edward Glaeser and Duke University professor Jacob Vigdor, both fellows at the think tank's Center for State and Local Leadership, analyzed every U.S. Census since 1890. Among their findings, the USA Today explains, was that no housing market in the country has a level of black isolation as high as the national average only four decades ago.

The study credited black suburbanization, gentrification, access to credit, fair housing laws, and immigration for the decline in segregation. The findings were generally well received by a wide swath experts -- although some offered "several caveats and an admonition that the study should not be seen as declaring the end of all segregation," according to the New York Times.

Some experts were more vocal in expressing their caution. "We're nowhere near the end of segregation," Brown University sociologist John Logan told USA Today. "There are still no signs of whites moving into what were previously all-minority neighborhoods and there is still considerable white abandonment of mixed areas."

Of particular concern for Logan and like-minded critics of the study were that the Manhattan Institute report focused only on blacks and non-blacks, throwing non-Hispanic whites, Asians, and others -- some of whom were not accounted for in previous censuses -- into the non-black category. "That's a wide spectrum and it does not necessarily address the black-white issue," Logan said.