About this project
      The U.S. census made official last year what most of us already knew -- Metro Detroit is the nation's most segregated area.
      And while many people, regardless of race, seem outwardly content living politely separate lives here, some are unaware there's a price for that preference.

Reports in this series
Go Part I: Racial Attitudes
The Detroit News looks at Metro Detroit's sometimes startling attitudes toward segregation today, the extent and reasons for racial separation and how they play out in the lives of families white and black.

Go Part II: Paying for Preferences
Segregation is the norm for Metro Detroiters, but it carries heavy costs. From segregated schools to stagnant property values to a lack of exposure to the nation's increasing diversity, we pay for our preferences.

Go Part III: Where We're Headed
Are we fated to continue living apart? If so, what will the future toll be? The Detroit News looks at the factors that could break down racial barriers, the factors that keep them standing and how living patterns in other metropolitan areas have changed.

Go Part IV: Community Forum
Calling segregation a silent curse that can no longer be ignored, more than 200 people from across Metro Detroit gathered to look for ways to close the chasm between blacks and whites.

Go Part V: The Impact of Affluence
Blacks and whites in Metro Detroit pay steep but unequal prices for their segregated living patterns. The Detroit News study found that Metro Detroit is unusual in the way that blacks and whites live apart at virtually every income level.






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Sunday, January 27, 2002

Exclusive Report
Livonia mirrors area's barriers to integration
When Deano Ware and his family decided to move out of their integrated Detroit neighborhood, they chose the whitest city in America: Livonia. 01/20/02

Monday, January 28, 2002

Image
Max Ortiz / The Detroit News

Jonathan Wolbert, 9, of Flushing, Mich., studies a photograph included in a Smithsonian Institution exhibit celebrating African-American history during a stop in Pontiac this summer. Experts say a key to integration is for younger people to attach less importance to race.

Future
Attitudes, habits stall integration progress
The for-sale signs last spring told Laura McMullen an awful truth: The walls separating black from white in Metro Detroit still stand. 01/28/02

Thousands speak out on divide
Readers flooded The Detroit News with responses to the series, "The Cost of Segregation," many offering lifelong perspectives and heartfelt recommendations for narrowing the region's racial divide. 01/28/02

Metro area leaders: Segregation not an issue
L. Brooks Patterson says segregation doesn't matter in Oakland County. Ed McNamara has never addressed integration in Wayne County's public policies. And former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer doesn't believe segregation exists anymore. 01/28/02

Kilpatrick: Change 'has to start now'
Saying segregation is stifling Detroit's revitalization, new Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will hold public forums to spark discussion of how to close the region's racial divide. 01/28/02

Whites make small gains in Detroit
Across the United States, an influx of white residents to neighborhoods that had been nearly all-black has led to lower segregation levels. 01/28/02

Hispanic growth may aid integration
Greater integration of Metro Detroit's blacks and whites may depend in part on a much smaller, but overlapping group: the area's small but growing Hispanic population. 01/28/02

Diverse, upscale suburbs emerge
If stable, integrated neighborhoods are to arise in Metro Detroit in the next decade, they will probably emerge in the upscale Oakland County suburbs of Farmington Hills and West Bloomfield Township. 01/28/02

A Changing Community
Dramatic racial turnover alters face of Southfield
SOUTHFIELD -- For 50 years, James Lumzy has watched white families climb into moving vans. From the Detroit neighborhood where he grew up to the leafy Southfield subdivision where he's lived for three years, the retired auto parts worker has seen whites move away as he and other blacks have moved into the bigger, nicer, safer homes all families want. 01/28/02

Diverse Southfield strives to defy divide
Brenda Lawrence is the changing face of Southfield. Elected mayor just months after the 2000 census confirmed the city's status as a majority-black city, Lawrence became its first African-American mayor. 01/28/02

Pioneers
Couple takes bold step into Warren
What she didn't see was a neighborhood that, in 1990, had not a single black resident. And she didn't see a city with a history of sometimes tense race relations. 01/28/02

White pioneers
Young white couple wants to live in Detroit
DETROIT -- Sometimes, Rachael and Christoph Sanowski feel like they're swimming upstream. 01/28/02

Lessons From Elsewhere
Steps to bridge divide pay off
The nation is integrating twice as fast as Detroit. Segregation of blacks and whites in the nation's 100 largest metro areas dropped an average of 6.3 percent in the 1990s, compared to 2.6 percent in Metro Detroit. 01/28/02

Portland: Neighborhood boundaries fall
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Bohemian art galleries and co-op organic groceries are neighbors to African-American beauty salons and Malcolm X murals on Alberta Street. They testify to what has occurred in the last decade in this trendy Northwest city, and what has not happened in Metro Detroit: the breakdown of neighborhood boundaries between black and white. 01/28/02

Lessons From Elsewhere
Atlanta: Black-white gap shrinks
ATLANTA -- There is a loud metal click, and the large, black gates that lead into Highland City View Townhomes swing open. Andrew Barber waits inside with a brochure, a smile and a quick description of the condominiums' security system. 01/28/02

Shaker Heights: City works at integration
SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The grove trees and surrounding lakes conjure up a scene straight from a Thomas Kinkade painting. 01/28/02

Two Areas of Hope
Success stories offer lessons
The neighborhoods are an unlikely pair, aging Victorians surrounding a deserted baseball stadium and suburban tract homes hugging a freeway. 01/28/02

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