Segregation forever?

• Author: Sanchez, Julian
• Position: Data - Brief Article

When Brown v. Board of Education turned 50 this year, the Brookings Institution offered some qualified but heartening news about the state of racial integration in America: While a majority of neighborhoods (55 percent) in the 10 largest metropolitan areas were racially homogenous in 1990, just 10 years later a majority (52 percent) were racially mixed. But when it comes to political ideology, segregation is getting stronger.

In April, Austin American-Statesman reporter Bill Bishop penned a series on what he called the "great divide": Americans' 8rowing tendency to live and work with others who share their ideology. In 1976 only 26.8 percent of voters lived in "landslide counties," where one contender captured 60 percent or more of the votes for a major-party candidate. By 2000...