Even whiter than we thought: What median residential exposure indices reveal about white neighborhood contact with African Americans in U.S. metropolitan areas

This paper expands upon earlier research concerning methodological issues with interracial exposure and isolation (p^*) indices. The earlier research, based on the fifty largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the United States, showed that due to skewness in the distribution of neighborhood racial compositions, these indices often overstate the degree of racial diversity in the neighborhoods of most individuals. That research showed that in the fifty largest metropolitan areas, a new measure, the median exposure or isolation index (p^*-md), provided a result more representative of the situation of most individuals. This paper expands the earlier research to include all U.S. metropolitan areas. Focusing on white exposure to African Americans, it is shown that in most metropolitan areas, the majority of whites live in areas significantly whiter than indicated by the p^* measure used in past studies. Moreover, the more segregated an area is, the more p^* understates the degree to which African Americans are excluded from most whites’ neighborhoods. Several implications of this finding for race relations are discussed. It is concluded that p^*-md provides a more accurate picture than p^* of the neighborhood racial composition of most white individuals.