Despite stereotypes and history that depict the south as racist and segregated, the north is by far more segregated than the south. As a matter of fact the northeast and midwest are the most segregated areas in the United States with the top five Black-White segregated metropolitan areas being Milwaukee, Detroit, New York City, Chicago, and Cleveland. Of the top twenty most segregated metros one Birmingham is in the South and Los Angeles is in the West.

In the large urban cities of the north, African American populations remain mostly in the neighborhoods that were left to them as a result of “white flight” that took place after the civil rights movements and the riots of the 1960s. As blacks moved to new neighborhoods, whites moved further away to avoid forced school integration and the threat of dropping property values. Some of the large Metros that have low Black-White segregation are Las Vegas NV, Raleigh NC, San Jose CA, Phoenix AZ, Orlando FL, San Antonio and Austin TX.