Despite diversity, separation of races persists

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Gabriela Pingarron and her three daughters live, like many Hispanic families, in Oakland's bustling flatlands. They share a house with two other families and shop for tortillas on a busy commercial street, where Pingarron also wires money to her mother in Mexico.

Linda Borof and her husband have a three-bedroom home that fits right into their largely white neighborhood, among hills dotted with oak and bay trees. Borof walks to her store in an upscale business district, where she sells yarn and teaches knitting.

There are only about five miles between the two homes, but -- as is often the case in America -- they are worlds apart.

An Associated Press review of U.S. Census information on race in communities with more than 100,000 residents found that Hispanics were more segregated from whites in Oakland than in any other U.S. city and that blacks were most segregated from whites in Chicago.

How an area becomes segregated -- and stays that way -- is a complex equation involving economics, discrimination, immigration and personal choice.

In Oakland, the divide between whites and Hispanics falls mostly on economic lines. Affluent whites, along with some Asians and blacks, reside in the hills. Working-class Hispanics live in the flatlands, which has seen several waves of Mexican and Central American immigrants since the 1950s.

Blacks live throughout the city, although neighborhoods such as West Oakland have a heavier concentration of black residents.

"If I could live in the hills, I would. It's quiet and has good schools," said Pingarron, a 33-year-old administrative assistant. "It's not affordable for us."

Borof, who likens her home to a mountain retreat, also sees the separation. "It's definitely very divided," she said.

Oakland is exception

Oakland is one exception to the general residential patterns across the country.

The newer, growing cities of the West and South are typically more integrated, while communities in the Northeast and Midwest are more divided.

In Chicago, a persistent color line separates blacks and whites.

Willie Hudgies remembers there were a few whites in his South Side neighborhood when he moved into his three-bedroom bungalow in 1965. "It didn't take them long to all go," he said. "As soon as black people move in, white people move out."

Hudgies avoided driving or shopping in certain white neighborhoods during that period. "That's what you did for safety's sake," he said. "You stay in your own area."

Decades later, Hudgies, now 70, still hesitates to cross the line. He remembers Lenard Clark, a black teen-ager who was beaten into a coma by white youths in 1997 just blocks from the Progressive Baptist Church, where Hudgies is deacon.

"There are two or three streets I would not drive through after dark, even today," Hudgies said.

Nationally, the black-white divide is particularly strong. Blacks live apart from whites significantly more than other minorities do, according to the AP review.

"Whites seem to have less of a tolerance for living with blacks than they do with Asians or Hispanics," said Roderick Harrison, an analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.