Residential Segregation of Blacks and Racial Inequality in Southern Cities: Toward a Causal Model

This paper examines the relation of non-white residential segregation to black-white differentials in education, occupation, and income for southern cities as of 1960. Utilizing van den Berghe's paternalistic-to-competitive theory of race relations in an industrializing society, a causal model is postulated and empirically examined which views the black ghetto as instrumental in institutionalizing inequalities. The 1960 census data for a sample of southern cities provide some support for conceptualizing residential segregation as an “intervening” variable, between age of city and percent non-white, on the one hand, and the status inequality measures, on the other. A discussion of the theoretical significance of the residential factor, and of the methodological complexities involved in such research, follows.