Mixed Race Households, Residential Segregation, and Neighborhood Diversity

Steven R. Holloway, University of Georgia
Mark Ellis, University of Washington
Richard Wright, Dartmouth College
Margaret A. Hudson, University of Georgia

Most North American residential segregation research focuses either on White-Black patterns or clustering among newly-arrived immigrant groups. We analyze the geographies of mixed-race households in twelve large metropolitan areas using confidential 1990 Census tract-matched long-form data. We utilize Dissimilarity and P* indices to compare the residential patterns of the 6 most frequent cross-racial pairings (White-Latino, White-Asian, White-Black, White-Native, Asian-Latino, and Black-Latino) relative to each other and to single-race groups. We introduce the Neighborhood Diversity Exposure (NDE) index -- a modified P* -- to capture the amount of tract level ethnic and racial diversity to which households are exposed. Mixed-race households occupy to a limited extent "in-between" geographies, though highly conditioned by household status markers. Mixed-race households including a black partner occupy residential spaces more diverse than other mixed-race households, and more diverse than either of their single-race reference groups. We do not see evidence of new "mixed-race" enclaves.