Latino/White and Latino/Black Segregation in the Southeastern United States: Findings from Census 2000

Examining the spatial dispersion of immigrant and ethnic groups in urban settings can provide insight into the social and political relations between these groups and the majority populations with which they share urban space. With the recognition from Census 2000 that Latinos and Blacks comprise nearly the same proportion of the country's total population, issues surrounding residential settlement patterns of Latinos vis-à-vis Whites and Blacks demand greater attention from geographers. Utilizing the dissimilarity index as a measure of residential segregation, this paper investigates the changes in Latino/White and Latino/Black segregation from 1990 to 2000 for 74 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the southeastern United States. In addition to concluding that Latino/White segregation has increased on average while Latino/Black segregation has declined, positive associations between overall population growth as well as Latino population growth and the Latino/White dissimilarity indices emerged. Finally, an inverse relationship with reference to Latino/Black segregation exists and begets questions of what forces are driving these extant urban geographies.