Making Metros White? The Effects of U.S. Metropolitan Reclassification on Racial Compositional Change

Abstract

This analysis cautions scholars to be more attentive to what constitutes the “metropolitan.” Between 1990 and 2010, the Office of Management and Budget brought ninety-one metropolitan areas into existence and altered the boundaries of almost half of the others. Because metropolitan area reclassification not only creates new metropolitan areas but also frequently leads to the incorporation of peripheral, majority-White, counties, this article analyzes the effects of these territorial alterations on aggregate metropolitan racial diversity, changes in the aggregate counts of White people in metropolitan areas, and differences in the counts of census tracts in which White people form significant majorities. Using census data from 1990, 2000, and 2010, we demonstrate that the 2010 reclassification produces metropolitan areas that are relatively more White and relatively less diverse than those based on the 1990 definitions. In addition, using 2010 metropolitan boundaries rather than those from 1990 boosts the counts of predominantly White census tracts at the expense of other types. The reclassification process appears superficially to be race neutral, because it entails the periodic evaluation of intercounty economic linkages. We point out, however, that racialized residential processes help forge these new patterns of economic and social interaction.

本文提醒学者们更加关注“大都市”的构成。从1990年到2010年, 美国管理和预算办公室（Office of Management and Budget）建立了91个大都市, 并改变了近半数其余大都市的边界。由于大都市重新分类不仅创造了新的大都市, 而且经常合并白人为主体的邻县, 本文分析了区域变化对大都市种族多样性的影响、大城市白人总数的变化、以及白人占绝大多数人口普查区的人口差异。利用1990年、2000年和2010年的人口普查数据, 我们证明, 2010年重新分类产生的大都市, 比1990年大都市有相对更多的白人、相对较低的多样性。此外, 2010年大都市边界（而不是1990年边界）, 以牺牲其它类型人口为代价, 增加了白人为主人口普查区的数量。由于需要定期评估县际经济交流, 重新分类过程表面上是种族中立的。然而, 我们指出, 居住的种族化过程有助于形成这些社会经济互动的新模式。

Este análisis advierte a los estudiosos ser más atentos a lo que constituye “lo metropolitano”. Entre 1990 y 2010, la Oficina de Administración y Presupuesto creó noventa y una áreas metropolitanas y cambió los límites de casi la mitad de las demás. Debido a que la reclasificación de las áreas metropolitanas no solo crea nuevas áreas metropolitanas sino que también con frecuencia lleva a la incorporación de condados periféricos de mayoría blanca, este artículo analiza los efectos de estas alteraciones territoriales en la diversidad racial metropolitana agregada, los cambios en los recuentos agregados de gente blanca en las áreas metropolitanas y las diferencias en los recuentos de los tractos censales en los que los blancos forman significativas mayorías. Usando datos de los censos de 1990, 2000 y 210, demostramos que la reclasificación del 2010 produce áreas metropolitanas que son relativamente más blancas y relativamente menos diversas que las basadas en las definiciones de 1990. Además, usando los límites metropolitanos de 2010 en vez de los de 1990, se aumentan los recuentos de tractos censales predominantemente blancos a expensas de otros tipos. El proceso de reclasificación parece superficialmente neutro desde el punto de vista racial, porque conlleva la evaluación periódica de los vínculos económicos entre condados. Sin embargo, señalamos que los procesos residenciales racializados ayudan a forjar estos nuevos patrones de interacción económica y social.

Key Words:

• county reclassification
• metropolitan areas
• predominantly White neighborhoods
• racial diversity

关键词:

• 县重新分类
• 大都市
• 白人主体社区
• 种族多样性。

Palabras clave:

• áreas metropolitanas
• barrios predominantemente blancos
• diversidad racial
• reclasificación de condados

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Emily Walton and two referees who provided valuable feedback on previous versions of this article.

Notes

1 In New England, the delineating units are cities and towns instead of counties. Thirty of sixty-four of Louisiana’s parishes define the metropolitan space there. To simplify discussion and analysis, we reference these units as counties.

2 Reclassification usually involves counties being transferred from nonmetropolitan to metropolitan status. The reverse, from metropolitan to nonmetropolitan status, occurs far more rarely.

3 We used OMB’s whole race assignment method, which assigns multiracial people to the largest single-race group they select other than White. For example, someone who identifies as White and Asian is assigned as Asian and someone who identifies as Black and Native American is assigned to Black.

In the 2010 Census, 9 million people, or 2.9 percent of the population, selected more than one race. Three million of these were Latinx. In our taxonomy, as in many other U.S.-based research projects that fuse Latinx ethnic identification with that of race, ethnic identity trumps racial choice, which means this subgroup is classed as Latinx. The 2020 census found a large increase in the population that selected more than one race (33.8 million people representing 10 percent of all Americans). This jump overwhelmingly occurred among people who identified ethnically as Hispanic or Latinx—20.3 million of this group selected more than one race in 2020. Following the aforementioned procedure, in our taxonomy most of the increase in the mixed-race population in 2020 will be classed as Latinx.

4 The terms floating and fixed come from Johnson and Lichter (2020). Also, whereas the delineation of metropolitan areas and census tracts might alter periodically, county boundaries are stable. Although tract boundaries might alter, they do so within counties, not across county lines. The analysis that follows therefore uses census tracts to build counties, which in turn come to constitute metropolitan areas.

5 The count of all metropolitan-area tracts reported here is not the same as in the transition matrices that follow because those matrices were built from tracts of more than fifty people.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Wright

RICHARD WRIGHT is the Orvil E. Dryfoos Chair in Public Affairs and Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests center on “skilled” migration, immigration, and neighborhood racial segregation and diversity in the United States and England.

Mark Ellis

MARK ELLIS is a Professor of Geography and Executive Director of the Northwest Federal Statistical Research Data Center at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include internal and international migration, segregation and neighborhood change, and local labor markets.

Nicole Tiao

NICOLE TIAO earned their undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in 2021, majoring in Physics and History. E-mail: [email protected]. They write poetry, are interested in radical politics and pedagogies, and plan to attend graduate school soon.