Census 2000: Accessing and Utilizing Data Resources
August 13-15, 2001
Web-based Exercise
"In the Eyes of the Beholder"
A Web-based exercise on the interpretation of segregation trends, using data from the census.
A story published this spring in the Atlanta Constitution is titled "Rainbow Atlanta: Census Shows Racial Barriers Disappearing in City, Suburbs."
Your exercise has two parts:
First, read the article on the web at: http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/newspdf/atlantajournal.pdf.
Second, use the data that you will find on the Mumford web page to evaluate the conclusions in the article. The easy way is to go to the opening census web page, http://www.albany.edu/mumford/census, and click your way to the data pages. If you have trouble finding the right page, it is here:
http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/WholePop/WPSegdata/520msa.htm.
You have the necessary knowledge of dissimilarity and exposure indices to interpret what you find. As you browse through the data, be sure to take the following steps:
Look at the whole metropolis and then check the city and suburbs separately. Sometimes residential patterns move in different directions in these two zones.
Look at data for both the whole population and the under-18 population. Nationally, the trends for the child population were less encouraging than for the population as a whole, especially for black-white segregation.
Finally, compare what you find for blacks (and black-white segregation) with what you find for Hispanics (and Hispanic-white segregation). Hispanics are a rapidly growing minority in many places, and their experience should be taken into account.
Write a short summary of your conclusions, and email them to John Logan:
j.logan@albany.edu. I'll be very interested in what you conclude.