Copyright 2001
The Detroit News.

Census 2000: Snapshot of Michigan
Region is diverse, not mixed
Metro Detroit is most segregated area in nation, census shows

Most segregated areas Minority communities in many of the 100 top U.S. metropolitan areas are getting larger, but that doesn't mean blacks and whites are more likely to live near each other, as measured by the segregation index. On a scale of 0 to 100, the higher the number, the more separate the two populations are. Metro area 2000 Index 1990 1. Detroit 85.2 87.5 2. Gary, Ind. 82.8 88.5 3. Milwaukee-Waukesha, Wisc. 82.4 82.7 4. Chicago 77.6 82.4 5. Cleveland 77.6 82.4     Most integrated 96. Salt Lake City, Utah 37.0 50.4 97. San Jose, Calif. 35.4 39.7 98. Tucson, Ariz. 35.1 39.7 99. Orange County, Calif. 31.5 37.4 100. Albuquerque, N.M. 28.0 36.3    Source: Detroit News analysis of U.S. Census figures

By Joel Kurth, Oralandar Brand-Williams and Ron French / The Detroit News

    DETROIT -- On Lue Cullens' side of the tracks, the world is 99 percent black.
   On Eddie Lezuchowski's side, it's 90 percent white.
   Time was, the two adjoining neighborhoods in separate cities had nearly identical houses and similar residents.
   Now, those who remain in the duplexes of Detroit's struggling North End are virtually all black, while the western tip of Hamtramck is home to a mix of residents who speak as many as 18 languages -- but who are rarely black.
   Cullens and Lezuchowski, who for decades have lived just a short walk apart, today live in dramatically different worlds, separated by a waste-strewn railroad track that straddles the fault line of Metro Detroit's segregation.
   The neighborhoods -- divided by the Chrysler Freeway and railroad tracks -- offer stark evidence of Metro Detroit's highly segregated communities, which the 2000 census revealed are the most divided in the nation.
   What that means for our region, and what can be done about it, is not as black and white as our neighborhoods.
   Census figures released Wednesday showed that Metro Detroit is becoming increasingly diverse, yet races are living apart at a startling high rate.
   * Metro Detroit is the most segregated of the nation's 100 largest metro areas, according to a Detroit News analysis of statistics from the 2000 census. A segregation index, commonly used by researchers to measure housing diversity, revealed that Detroit rose from second-most segregated city in 1990 to most segregated in 2000, surpassing Gary, Ind. Milwaukee was third, followed by Chicago and Cleveland.
   * Metro Detroit, which consists of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Lapeer, Monroe and St. Clair counties, has a population that is 69.7 percent non-Hispanic white, and 22.9 percent black. Yet two of every three communities in Metro Detroit are more than 90 percent white; one of three is more than 95 percent white. On the other extreme, Inkster is 67 percent black; Detroit, 81 percent; and Highland Park, 93 percent.
   * In the 1990s, more than half (53 percent) of all white Detroiters left the city. Only one in 10 Detroit residents is a non-Hispanic white. Sterling Heights (111,743) and Warren (124,936) both have more white residents than Detroit (99,921).
   * More blacks moved to the suburbs, but the majority clustered in a handful of cities. There are 132 suburban communities, yet over a third of suburban blacks live in three communities -- Southfield, Highland Park and Inkster.
   * Southfield is becoming the region's premiere middle-class black suburb. The black population there grew in the 1990s from 29 percent to 54 percent of the total. White residents left at a rate of 40 per week during the decade, while 40 blacks per week moved in.
   
Why does it matter?
   The impact of such high levels of segregation is hard to quantify. Some studies have shown that high segregation leads to high poverty. One study found that high segregation can be linked to increased crime in both black and white communities throughout a metropolitan area.
   "It lets non-black, non-poor people think of inner-cities like foreign countries," said David Harris, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. "It has that psychological effect. It lets people completely pull away so they don't care as much about schools and abandoned buildings."
   That detachment makes convincing white suburbanites that segregation hurts them a hard sell, Harris says.
   "You have to argue that there's costs to segregation in that society is less efficient," Harris said. "There are more social service and criminal justice costs, and intellectual talent that's not going to be realized because of poor education. But those arguments are so ephemeral.
   "In reality, I think it (segregation) has a positive effect on whites and a negative effect on blacks," Harris said.
   
Racial strife
   Metro Detroit's reputation as a racially polarized region discourages the influx of people to the area, says University of Michigan researcher Reynolds Farley, the co-author of Detroit Divided.
   Farley says racial conflict is a thread woven into Detroit's history dating back prominently to the 1940s and hitting a high-point in the 1970s. He says it is this dubious legacy that hurts any effort to resolve the problem.
   "There was racial strife as to who would control the schools, the police department, the city," Farley said. "The solution was a kind of apartheid where whites moved to the suburbs and blacks were left to control the city."
   "Segregation has not harmed whites," Farley said. "But most whites would support blacks moving into their neighborhoods -- if they are in small numbers."
   In Cleveland, segregation has become a heated political issue. Recently, the City Council passed a ground-breaking fair housing ordinance. But even those efforts have resulted in only a slight decrease in segregation.
   Kristy Hannan lives in upscale West Bloomfield Township, where blacks make up 5 percent of the population. She said she was shocked and saddened the 2000 Census has declared Metro Detroit the segregation capital of the United States. A teacher in Walled Lake, Hannan said the district is marked by its diversity.
   "Diversity is a wonderful thing," Hannan said. "It makes us all grow. It makes us a complete society. That's what we should all be striving for."
   But Ronald Stachowski, a 51-year-old resident of Sterling Heights, which is 90 percent white, thinks segregation will continue to persist in Metro Detroit because "some people are living in other times, when they felt that blacks should live with blacks and whites should live with whites.
   Stachowski, a Hi-Lo driver for Ford's Visteon plant on 17 Mile and Mound Road, lives in an area of Dequindre and Ryan where ranch homes range between $180,000 and $200,000. He said his neighbors consists of mostly whites, a few Asians and a small number of blacks.
   "I think whites do tend to move out when more blacks moved into an area because of the reputation that whites have of blacks of being lazy and not keeping up their property," said Stachowski, who pointed out that he does not share those views. "People think their property values will go down."
   
They can't leave'
   Few spots illustrate more clearly the division between blacks and whites, as the railroad tracks separating Detroit and Hamtramck.
   Bordered by Woodland, Oakland, Holbrook and the freeway, Detroit's North End has become a mish-mash of older houses in various levels of upkeep. Once a blue-collar resting place for industrial workers both black and white, the neighborhood today is home to 761 residents -- all but seven of whom are black, according to census data.
   "I don't give a damn about segregation," said Cullens, a retired school janitor who has lived on Detroit's North End for more than 50 years. "I'm going to live in my house. You live in yours. What difference does it make? We can't all live in high-rises."
   Many like the Cullens have lived in the same homes for decades, scratching out an existence alongside half-standing homes and vacant cars. Several schools once served the North End. Now, there is one.
   A former gathering place, the United Neighborhood Association, closed long ago; it's shielded from vandals by a sturdy fence.
   "Anything to do with deteriorating neighborhoods, we've got," said Cullens, who lives on Cardoni near Lynn. "The people prospered, then they moved out. People who are here now are just hanging. They're here because they can't leave or until their house gets torn down and go move to the projects."
   Margaret Casey has lived more than 40 years nearby on Hindle. She said she and her neighbors regularly cross the tracks to shop in Hamtramck, but otherwise spend little time there. Casey doesn't worry about the dividing line between black and white.
   "Years ago, it was pretty even around here," she said. "But about 30 years ago, they moved one right behind the other."
   
Diverse, but few blacks
   Across the tracks in Hamtramck, a series of waves of immigration have made the city one of the more diverse in Metro Detroit.
   Overall, the city of 22,976 is 61 percent white, 15 percent black and 10 percent Asian, but the census' strict categorization of races masks Hamtramck's true diversity. Best known as a haven for Polish-Americans, the city also is home to immigrants from India, Bangladesh, the Mideast and Balkans.
   On the edges of Detroit, however, the line of demarcation can become vivid. A census tract bordered by the Chrysler Freeway, Holbrook, Caniff and Jos. Campeau has 3,742 residents. Only 192 -- about 5 percent -- are black, while 355 residents indicated they are multiracial.
   "There are blacks, but they haven't always felt comfortable here," said Lezuchowski, a 76-year-old whose family has owned the Norwalk Bar since 1932. "They didn't like people looking down at them, so they moved away."
   In 1999, the city settled a 31-year-old civil rights case brought by a group called Concerned Black Citizens that alleged Hamtramck used federal housing funds to drive out blacks by demolishing their homes in the 1960s. At the time, the Detroit Urban League called the practice "Negro Removal."
   In the 1950's, Lezuchowski, who claims he's always been a fan of diversity, would break beer glasses at his bar after blacks drank from them.
   The son of immigrants, Lezuchowski said he's excited that tensions have eased between ethnicities in Hamtramck in recent years. He said the different groups bring a richness to the community that others lack.
   "To me, the neighborhood hasn't changed much at all," said Leola Washington, who has lived more than 50 years on Hamtramck's Yemans street. "We used to have Polish neighbors. Now, we don't. It doesn't matter to me. People are people."
   

This story was reported by Joel Kurth, Oralandar Brand-Williams, Jodi Upton, Gordon Trowbridge and Ron French, and written by Ron French. You can reach French at (313) 222-2175 or rfrench@detnews.com.