As a result of longstanding official policies, standard practices in the real estate industry, and private attitudes, the degree of racial separation in residence in the United States remains high. Three of the ten most segregated metropolitan areas in the United States are in Michigan. Metropolitan Detroit, home to about half of Michigan's residents, offers a particularly stark example of the persistence of black-white segregation. Many suburban communities on the borders of Detroit have remained almost completely white despite their proximity to adjoining minority-dominated city neighborhoods. Largely because of the patterns of residential segregation, but also as a result of years of official policies, American primary and secondary schools are seldom diverse.
Most students attend school with other students like themselves.
The costs of this persistent and pervasive racial separation are profound for minorities and non-minorities alike. Whites do not live near minorities, and they do not attend school together. Residential and educational distance fosters misconceptions and mistrust. It affords little or no opportunity to disrupt the perpetuation of racial stereotypes that are a basis and justification for racial separation. The high degree of separation by race reinforces and hardens perceptions of racial difference.