Neighborhood Racial-Composition Preferences: Evidence from a Multiethnic Metropolis

America's major urban centers are becoming increasingly multiethnic. Despite this increase in racial and ethnic diversity, extreme Black-White residential segregation remains the common pattern. As one of the most racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse cities in the world—and one of the most residentially segregated—Los Angeles represents the changing face of urban America. A multiracial sample of adults (N = 4025) is employed to examine neighborhood racial composition preferences—an important, individual-level explanation for residential segregation—and address three shortcomings in existing research. First, I assess composition preferences in a multiracial manner with an innovative replication and expansion of the Farley-Schuman showcard methodology used in the 1976 and 1992 Detroit Area studies. Second, I extend analysis of the cause of preferences beyond racial stereotypes to include parenting, homeownership, perceptions of social class difference, and common fate identity. Third, I test, directly, the effects of these factors on preferences for same-race neighbors. Results lend strong support to race-based explanations of preferences. As stereotypes toward out-groups become more negative, preferences for integration decrease; Blacks are consistently perceived in unfavorable terms, and are, consensually, the least preferred out-group neighbors. There is also limited support for so-called class-based explanations of preferences; homeowners prefer fewer Black neighbors. Generally, results suggest both greater resistance to integration with Blacks than previously thought, but more openness to integration than currently exists.