User:Ak.moore/sandbox

Within metropolitan Atlanta, racial residential segregation tends to be more prominent in highly urbanized counties in comparison to more suburban counties. DeKalb county and Fulton county, which are the most urban counties in metro Atlanta are the most segregated of the ten counties that constitute the metro area according to the Atlanta Regional Commission. Atlanta's Black population continues to be centralized in older urban neighborhoods and isolated from the growing number of employment opportunities that are becoming increasingly available in the suburban regions of the city as urban sprawl in the metro area increases. The continued racial residential segregation in Atlanta is also affected by racial stereotyping and race based perceptions. In regards to prejudice and racial segregation, negative racial stereotypes and the fear of group threat from Black residents contribute to white resistance to integration while negative racial stereotypes and the perception of whites as being discriminatory contribute to black resistance to integrate. Racial residential segregation in metro Atlanta is also highly correlated to economic residential segregation. For census tract groups within Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties, 22.14% of the population is below the poverty level for the block groups that are 81-90% black whereas, for block groups that are 81-90% white, only 1.40% of the population is below the poverty level. For the Hispanic and Asian populations, block groups that are around 31-40% Asian or 41-50% Hispanic tend to have higher poverty rates than blocks with a higher or lower percentage of Hispanic or Asian residents.

Nevertheless, in some ways metro Atlanta has become increasingly more integrated as the dissimilarity index for blacks or African Americans has decreased by 12.5% from 1980 to 2000 and the isolation index has decreased by 4.5%. On the other hand, the dissimilarity index and isolation index increased for Hispanics or Latinos as Atlanta had the second largest increase in residential segregation for Hispanics and Latinos out of the metropolitan statistical areas studied by the US Census Bureau. While Atlanta still maintains a dissimilarity and isolation index for African Americans and a dissimilarity index for Latinos that is higher than average for metropolitan areas in the US, the city's dissimilarity index for black residents is also decreasing at a higher than average rate which reflects the city's growing rate of integration.