Headlines in the San Antonio Express and the Tampa Bay Times this week declared the nation’s cities to be “almost free of segregation.” USA Today reported that blacks were “less segregated than ever before.” The Sun-Times noted that while Chicago remained the nation’s segregation capital, the city “has experienced some of the sharpest declines” in the nation in big-city segregation in the last ten years.
These rosy revelations stem from a new study, brightly titled “The End of the Segregated Century,” funded by the conservative Manhattan Institute. Many of the conclusions reporters have drawn from the study are exaggerated, and some are simply wrong.