WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Blacks remain the most highly segregated minority group in neighborhoods across the United States, despite changes over the last 20 years, the U.S. Census Bureau said Wednesday.

Billed as one of the agency's most exhaustive studies ever of residential segregation, the report on trends between 1980 and 2000 showed Hispanics were the next most segregated group, followed by Asians, American Indians and Alaska natives.

But while blacks, traditionally the United States' largest minority group and who made up 12.9 percent of the total population in 2000, became less segregated over the period, the other groups became more so or showed a mixed trend.

Hispanics, who number 12.5 percent of population -- roughly the same as blacks for the first time -- generally became more segregated in areas of high Hispanic immigration.

The report also found some measures of segregation increased and others decreased for American Indians and that the greater the percentage of Asians in an area's population, the more they tended to be isolated and to live together.

SEGREGATION'S EFFECTS LINGER

While the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s brought an end to the forced segregation of the infamous Jim Crow laws, the debate continues about its lingering effect in areas of American life from education to housing.

Increases, decreases and stability in the concentration of minority populations also has additional ramifications for the ability of those populations to affect both local and national politics.

"The big fight right now in terms of politcs is going on in the suburban ring where the white population first moved and where now the black population is beginning to concentrate," said Ronald Walters, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland.

"It's not totally open yet but a lot (of residential decisions) are more open to choice than in the past," Walters added. "There's a subtle difference because in a lot of places you have ... a lot of illegal stuff going on with respect to where people can and cannot live and practices by people who sell and rent housing that is discriminatory."

The Census Bureau study found that blacks became less segregated in most of the 220 metropolitan areas under examination, even though changes were slight in many areas.

The most integration occurred in the West and South, particularly in California, Florida and Texas, with the Northeast and Midwest registering little to no movement.

In towns with at least 1 million people and 3 percent or 20,000 blacks, the most segregated in both 1990 and 2000 were Milwaukee-Waukesha, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; St Louis, Missouri; and Newark, New Jersey. The same five areas were also among the top six most segregated in 1980.

The least segregated areas for blacks were Orange County and San Jose, California; Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona; Riverside-San Bernadino, California and Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport, Virginia.

By most measures, Hispanics became less segregated in southern metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2000 and more segregated in western metropolitan areas for the same period.

New York remained the most segregated city for Hispanics as it has been for the past two decades, the report noted, while Providence, Rhode Island became much more segregated and Miami, Florida much less segregated for the community.

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[url]http://www.stopstart.freeserve.co.uk/smilie/sleep2.gif[/url]


Delta is ready when you are.

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What's this supposed to mean?

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Am I the only person that doesn't give a shit? Do people really not sleep at night worrying about worthless stuff like this? Who cares if Asians want to live around other Asians, or illegal aliens around other illegal aliens? Does it really fucking matter? I've got the same approach to diversity training at work. I'll go in and play the little diversity game then go back to business as usual once it's over.

The way I see it, I don't give a shit who you are, what color you are, where you're from, who you live next to, what you like or what you do. Just leave me the fuck alone and we'll get along just fine.

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Am I the only person that doesn't give a shit?

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WEELLL!!!
That about sums it up!!!![B)]

Seriously, classes, ethnic groups, etc will ALWAYS be here or anywhere you live in this friggen world.

There's no form of society, religion, or peice of legislation that can change that!!

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As a former resident, I knew Milwaukee had a problem but I did'nt know it was at the top of the census.

I do know that I feel a much higher need to carry a weapon in Milwaukee vs anywhere in TX. I was both shot at (a street punk with a snub nose near Marquette University who luckily did'nt know how to use it) and in a attempted mugging (for my leather coat) while my car was broke down by the 43/North Ave exit in Milwaukee. (a six-D mag-lite and a swift blow saved me from that situation) Maybe the ethnic crime rate is proportional to integration.

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I think there's something rotten in black society that has to be rooted out before they can truly integrate and join in the Great American Adventure as full partners.

You KNOW there's something totally wrong with their society when they make up 13 percent of the population yet about 80 percent of the jail population is black.

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[thinking]

Maybe there's something totally wrong with OUR society; that we single out blacks and prosecute them more harshly than the white folks. Maybe that's why Blacks compose a much higher percentage of inmates.

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Maybe there's something totally wrong with OUR society; that we single out blacks and prosecute them more harshly than the white folks. Maybe that's why Blacks compose a much higher percentage of inmates.

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Blacks, hispanics, and various Oriental ethnicities (particularly the Hmongs) have been the touch of death to communities everywhere they've gone in any numbers.  Crime rates skyrocket, property values plummet, and costs-of-living generally go up because minorities typically support legislation that increases taxes to provide funds for social welfare programs, which, not coincidentally, only really benefit minorities.  Kind of like locusts, they come, reap the benefits of the area, destroy it, and move on; that's mean, but it's the brutal truth.

Having a black or hispanic neighbor or two doesn't bother me at all, but when they start subplanting whites in any numbers, I know it's time to get out of Dodge.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Blacks remain the most highly segregated minority group in neighborhoods across the United States...blah blah, freaking blah blah......

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segregation will never go away. It is a fact of life that people of like cultures want to live together.

Be it black, white, mexican, martian whatever. People are more "comfortable" living in an enviornment they understand and can relate to.

given the choice most people will segrgate themselves naturally.

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[b]EXACTLY![/b] Now here's the bonus question: why do reuters/liberals/democrats throw a fit about it? Who's really the one's complaining, and why?

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I recently discovered that I'm more comfortable with people who speak english close to the same way that I do, regardless of color... a recent experience has convinced me that language plays a much larger part than appearance in determining whether or not I'm comfortable around a group of people.

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I've heard that an insult that (for example) a black person can throw at another black person is that he's "talking white."  It implies, "So you think you're better, you're educated, you're just an Uncle Tom."

Great attitude [:(!]

Gabe