Who Goes There? US Spatial Homophily and Racial Hierarchy

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 13. Spatial Inequality

Abstract

Understanding whom Americans prefer as neighbors has long been central to research on stratification and segregation, because these preferences reveal the micro-foundations of prejudice, integration, and residential inequality. Yet most work treats neighborhood composition holistically, leaving open a basic spatial question implied by “social distance”: even when people nominally endorse multi-ethnic neighborhoods, do they still prefer to keep some neighbors farther away?

Using a nationally representative NORC AmeriSpeak sample (≈2,200), we find that Americans prefer multi-ethnic neighborhoods. However, this inclusiveness is conditional. Participants prefer their own racial/ethnic group to be predominant or at least co-equal. We then use experiments to show that firearm cues meaningfully reshape these patterns: gun ownership magnifies racial homophily, increasing the tendency to treat out-groups as less acceptable neighbors under otherwise comparable conditions. Finally, we show that distance moderates dispreference: respondents exhibit stronger in-group preference for immediate neighbors and, in turn, are more likely to place Black neighbors at greater distance—evidence of “quarantining” within an otherwise multi-ethnic block.

Taken together, the findings highlight a subtle but powerful mechanism through which stated openness to diversity can coexist with—and help sustain—spatial inequality and segregation in everyday neighborhood imaginaries.

Authors

• Justin Lucas Sola, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• Justin Pickett, University at Albany, SUNY