American cities look like a patchwork with their racially miscellaneous population grouped according to the color of their skin. Racial minorities usually find social inclusion difficult, because limited economic opportunities and career prospects simply do not allow them to mix up with the Caucasian majority. Racial segregation is obvious in metropolitan areas where the population exceeds the point of 1 million people, especially if these cities are racially diverse. Despite the common opinion, diversity does not come along with the tolerance, quite on the contrary.
Like discrimination, segregation is a broad term which, nevertheless, requires the presence of certain markers. The first indicator of segregation is the localization. Classically, an indigent Afro-American population is concentrated in ghettos. Poverty and unemployment do not allow people to find more deserving housing and push the population to crimes, consequently, city slums are notorious with their thievish inhabitants. Ghettos are usually surrounded by small areas where residents of various races live mixed. The remaining city areas are inhabited with a homogenous Caucasian population. They are called zip codes or regions with residents of the same racial origin. In most segregated cities of the US such as Cleveland, Detroit, or Milwaukee more than 50 percent population live in zip codes.
Another marker which allows defining segregation is a gap in a poverty and employment rate between Caucasians and minorities. In the most segregated cities, Afro-Americans, Hispanic, and Asian people are 20 percent poorer and 15 percent more unemployed than homogeneous Caucasian population. The broader this gap stretches, the fiercer racial segregation becomes. Apparently, people of the same racial origin beware residents with the different skin color and do not want to mix up with them. Economic segregation usually comes along as all ghettos and heterogeneous areas are low-income, unlike homogenous zip codes.