ABSTRACT

Despite the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, residential and housing segregation by race and to a lesser extent ethnicity remains stubbornly entrenched in the United States. For several reasons, residential segregation by race and ethnicity is a particularly vexing social inequality. Primary among those reasons is that place of residence and its related property values and tax base play such a critical role in determining the level of access and proximity to a number of society’s rewards and privileges. As such, beneficiaries of residential segregation by race and ethnicity enjoy greater access and proximity than nonbeneficiaries to quality housing, education, health care, goods and services, and a range of fully functioning municipal services as well as the opportunity to build household wealth through home equity (Gotham, 2000; Ichiro & Berkman, 2003; Ludwig et al., 2012; Prakash, 2013; U.S. Housing Scholars and Research and Advocacy Organization, 2008). This greater access and proximity to society’s rewards and privileges over time allows for the perpetuation of inequality over generations between the beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries of residential segregation by race and ethnicity.