Wichita area has seen noteworthy decline in racial residential segregation | Commentary
New analyses of 2020 U.S. Census data from sociologists John Logan and Brian Stults reveal an important and encouraging trend: American cities and metropolitan areas continue to become less racially segregated over time. The progress has been slow, and segregation remains “a durable feature of America’s urban landscape,” as Logan and Stults assert. Even so, the data indicate that we are steadily becoming a more integrated society.
The decline in racial residential segregation in the Wichita region has been particularly noteworthy. One of the most common segregation metrics, the index of dissimilarity, measures the evenness of the distribution of population of two different groups — for instance, black people and white people. This index is typically measured on a scale ranging from 0 (perfect integration) to 100 (complete separation), with higher values indicating greater segregation between those two groups.
In 1980, the black-white index of dissimilarity in the Wichita metropolitan area (comprising Sedgwick, Butler, Harvey and Sumner counties) stood at 72.7, a very high value, though not nearly as high as deeply divided communities like Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia. In that year, Wichita ranked 63rd among the nation’s metro areas in its level of segregation. In the ensuing decades, Wichita’s absolute value on this index, and its ranking among U.S. metro areas, have declined steadily and substantially. By the 2020 Census, Wichita’s black-white index of dissimilarity had fallen to 50.4, according to Logan and Stults. This value placed the Wichita region at number 103 among all U.S. metro areas.
These trends toward greater integration have been evident across the Wichita region, but they are most significant within the city itself. Within the city limits, the index of dissimilarity between black and white residents has dropped from a value of 74.4 in 1980 to 44.8 in 2020.
To be clear, we still live in a highly segregated world, and to the extent that residential segregation limits access to important resources like jobs, healthy food, medical care and public transportation, it remains the “linchpin” of racial and ethnic inequality, as social psychologist Thomas Pettigrew famously noted. But these new data show that, frustrating though the pace may be, we are making steady strides toward integration, in Wichita and in cities nationwide.
Segregation is not simply an inevitable phenomenon that occurs because people naturally prefer to live near people who look like themselves. Rather, as sociologists and other scholars have consistently demonstrated, public policy related to housing, transportation, education and employment historically contributed to the construction of our segregated society, and effective public policy will be necessary if we hope to further dismantle the structures of segregation.
Fortunately, the city of Wichita has made several moves recently that may help to advance the cause of integration. The adoption of the city’s new non-discrimination ordinance is a step in the right direction that should help to remove some barriers obstructing minority groups’ access to housing opportunities in some neighborhoods.
Even more significant, in my view, is the creation of the new Wichita Land Bank, which should expedite the creation of affordable housing and promote neighborhood revitalization in the urban core, thereby encouraging reinvestment and diverse settlement.
In the long run, engendering a more integrated Wichita will require establishing a robust social infrastructure accessible to, and utilized by, all in our community. That will mean substantial new investments in public schools, public transportation and cultural amenities, and an economic development policy agenda centered around promoting wage growth and protecting the economic interests of working people. Combined with achievements like the non-discrimination ordinance and the Land Bank, these types of social investments will help us to preserve the gains we have made in reducing segregation and to take further steps in the direction of integration.