While California's Bay Area has long been championed as one of America’s most diverse regions, a new report describes it as deeply segregated with pockets of concentrated White wealth that are driving socioeconomic inequality.
The report published by the nonprofit Bay Area Equity Atlas mapped racial and economic segregation across the nine-county Bay Area’s 1,572 census tracts and found that one in 10 neighborhoods in the region are highly segregated areas of largely White wealth. Meanwhile, 27 census tracts are segregated areas of Black, Latino or Asian American and Pacific Islander poverty — indicating a higher number of segregated affluent communities of White people than low-income communities of color.
The top segregated neighborhoods, according to the report, are in seven of the Bay Area’s counties, with more than half located in San Francisco, San Mateo and Contra Costa counties. San Mateo County alone has the most segregated neighborhoods in the Bay Area, with one in five census tracts concentrated in areas of White wealth.
