ELMWOOD PLACE, Ohio (WKRC) – Cincinnati has previously been declared one of the most segregated cities in America, ranking as high as fifth in a 2015 study by 24/7wallstreet.com, a financial news website.
So Local 12 set out to find out: Are we still that segregated?
Answering the question is the next part of our ongoing poverty investigation into redlining in Cincinnati.
Local 12 worked with the University of Cincinnati journalism department to analyze the racial makeup of Hamilton County and the city of Cincinnati. We discovered the answer to how segregated we are depends on how you look at the data.
We analyzed every ZIP code in Hamilton County through what is called the Simpson Diversity Index score.
The score, based on an index, measures a population’s density by race (it’s also used to measure the densities of other kinds of species in a biology setting).
A very low score means a community includes residents overwhelmingly from one race, either Black or white.
Nearly half of Hamilton County’s ZIP codes have an index indicating more than 75% of one race lives there.
UC political science professor Brian Calfano’s data journalism class helped analyze the ZIP codes. He says the issue is too complex to draw any specific conclusions. He points out pockets of such segregation exist in almost all major cities, a lasting repercussion of redlining.
“The top headline of here’s the ranking of how segregated a particular place is really doesn’t capture the whole story involved,” Calfano said. “I would back away from saying that we are some kind of poster child for segregated areas.”
Case in point: the 45216 ZIP code. It includes the village of Elmwood Place as well as parts of Springfield Township like Valleydale.
On paper, it’s one of the more integrated ZIP codes in the county. In reality, it’s three or four different neighborhoods made up of predominantly Black or white residents.
This area, and others like it inside Hamilton County, shows the complexity of the data and how people consider themselves part of a neighborhood or city, not a ZIP code.
That’s what really makes a place, says John Schrider, executive director of Cincinnati Legal Aid, which helps low-income people in the area with housing discrimination and foreclosure issues.
“That’s why you have to look at neighborhoods as neighborhoods,” Schrider said. “And, you know, it’s one thing to look at a ZIP code. It’s another thing to get in your car and drive around and look at the components of these ZIP codes.”
No matter where Cincinnati stands nationally when it comes to segregation, fair housing advocate Jeniece Jones says it continues today and it has a disparate impact on Black communities.
“Segregated communities who were segregated not by choice but by -- not by accident but design -- tend to see a lack of investment,” said Jones, executive director of Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Greater Cincinnati.
Brian Calfano is a professor of political science and the journalism department head at the University of Cincinnati College of Arts and Sciences where he leads a data journalism class.