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Racial Segragation Declines in Chicago
(IRN)-Racial segregation in Chicago and the suburbs is declining.

This is according to Census Bureau data crunched by Matthew Hall, a University of Illinois sociology professor. He says in Chicago, it's down because more black folks are willing to live in predominantly white areas,Rac where they are more welcome than in decades past, and more white people are willing to live in predominantly black areas.

"People have become more tolerant of different racial groups over the last 50 years, and that's, of course, accelerating as a place like Chicago becomes even more diverse," he said.

Segregation does hang on, though, for economic reasons, some racial steering by real estate agents, which is illegal, and a desire by people to live with people like themselves.

In the suburbs, segregation is more strictly economic, so there's less of it, Hall says.

In Downstate cities with significant black populations, such as Decatur, Peoria, Rockford and Springfield, segregation is high too. "Those smaller cities actually do have fairly high levels of segregation, especially in some of the older towns in Illinois that have historically received African-Americans during and after the Great Migration," Hall said. The Great Migration was the movement of 2 million African Americans out of the rural South to the industrial Midwest and Northeast from 1910 to 1930.

(Source: Illinois Radio Network)
12 17 10 by Newsroom
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