Ethnic Preferences and Ethnic Perceptions in Multi-Ethnic Settings

Racism is a still a central topic in current debates about multiculturalism, but there is increasing evidence that appeals to racism—as the explanation for urban behaviors and the current patterns of residential separation—are overly simplistic. In a multi-ethnic/racial context in which groups have different agendas, it is no longer useful to cast societal divisions as issues of Black versus White. This is especially true for the residential mosaic. Survey responses from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality about racial attitudes reveal strongly held own-race preferences across quite different mixes of ethnic and racial groups. The evidence from the analysis reported in this paper suggests that these strongly held ethnocentric positions will continue to have important influences on the patterns of residential separation in urban areas. To argue that White preferences and White discrimination alone are the major forces in creating behaviors and patterns of separation in the urban fabric ignores the forces for separation, which are embedded in these ethnic differences and ethnocentrism more generally. The evidence from this study reaffirms the complex ethnocentric responses not only of Whites but also of other ethnic groups.