Is Segregation Hardening
in Lexington?

Segregation in Lexington decreased from 2000 to 2010, but according to a Commonwealth of Kentucky study, increased from 2010 to 2017:

                                                    Kentucky Housing Corporation and Kentucky Department for Local Government. 2020, 73.

Regardless of the ups and downs of the DIssimilarity Index, what has not decreased in Lexington is racially concentrated poverty and affluence.  Sheryll Cashin talks about this in her 2001 book, White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality. There she notes, "It is affluent white space that is most practiced in the art of excluding Blacks and hoarding opportunity from all people who live elsewhere" (Cashin 2021, 106).

In 2017, Taylor Shelton produced a study for the Lexington Fair Housing Council that bears out Cashin's assessment that such segregation has been increasing, at least in Lexington. Shelton, former visiting scholar in the University of Kentucky Geography Department, analyzed Lexington's racially/ethnically concentrated areas of poverty (RECAPs) and affluence (RECAAs), and areas of racially/ethnically concentrated areas of relative poverty (RECArPs) and affluence (RECArAs). (For more detailed definitions of these terms, see Note at the bottom of this page.) 

By comparing the number of RECAPs and RECArPs—areas of poverty—over the years from 1970 to 2014, Shelton found that although there were just four such areas of poverty in 1970, that figure had doubled to a total of eight census tracts in 2014. "Put simply, far from segregation and poverty being a thing of the past, the problem of racially/ethnically concentrated poverty is at an all-time high in Lexington. Indeed, if anything, this problem has actually been underestimated up to this point" (Shelton 2017, 3).

Lexington is a relatively affluent city, and Shelton tells us that for many years racially/ethnically concentrated affluence has been more widespread than racially/ethnically concentrated poverty. From 1970 to 2014, there have never been more than eight concentrated-poverty tracts; there have never been fewer than 15 concentrated-affluence tracts. As of 2014, "the number of tracts classified as racially/ethnically concentrated areas of affluence has grown the fastest of any single classification, going from being entirely absent from Lexington’s landscape in 1970 to having nine such areas in 2014" (Shelton 2017, 10).

Three census tracts have remained areas of racially/ethnically concentrated poverty or relative poverty throughout the time periods of Shelton's study. These are tracts 3 and 4, "corresponding roughly to the city’s historically black communities in the East End and Northside," and tract 11, "which includes the historically black neighborhood along Georgetown Street." The tracts including Cardinal Valley and Woodhill have been concentrated areas of racially/ethnically concentrated poverty or relative poverty since 2010 (Shelton 2017, 5).

Unlike the consistency with which certain tracts have remained RECAPs or RECArPs), Lexington's areas of concentrated affluence have not always been concentrated geographically. Instead, over the period of Shelton's study, "the concentrations of affluent whites in the city have moved around consistently, tracking very closely with the development of new suburban neighborhoods on the city’s fringes in recent decades" (Shelton 2017, 10). (Although it is probably not the point Shelton is making, the above sentence hints at the fact that Whites, especially affluent Whites, have more freedom to move around wherever they want.) 

With the exception of neighborhoods like Chevy Chase, Ashland Park, Bell Court and Montclair, as of 2014 nearly all of the racially/ethnically concentrated areas of affluence and relative affluence were located outside of Man o’ War Boulevard, "stretching from Versailles Road in the west all the way along the city’s southern border with Jessamine County around to Winchester Road in the east."  This pattern, Shelton says, "suggests that as new developments are constructed at the city's fringes, they are supporting and exacerbating" the trend toward greater race and class segregation (Shelton 2017, 10). 

This is what Sheryll Cashin calls "the segregation of affluence." In her view, this kind of segregation "facilitates opportunity hoarding, whereby the most affluent neighborhoods enjoy the best public services, environmental quality, and private, public, and natural amenities. . ." (Cashin 2021,111).  The residential caste system, Cashin says, "is about power, politics, and distribution of resources away from those who most need public goods to people and communities with more than enough" (Cashin 2021, 5). 

Taylor Shelton's work clarifies one important local aspect of the politics Cashin Describes: influence on the Urban County Council. In 2014 all five areas of concentrated poverty were located in Council districts 1 and 2, and the three relatively poor tracts were in Council districts 7 and 11. By contrast, the predominantly wealthy and white tracts were located in parts of seven council districts. "That is, while the city's most marginalized residents are represented by only a few on the council, more than half of the council represents the interests of affluent whites, giving even greater weight to these voices in matters of urban planning and policymaking" (Shelton 2017, 10).

The distribution of concentrated poverty and affluence areas among Council districts may have changed since 2014 as a result of demographic changes and the Council redistricting that took place in 2022.

In an expanded article based on his 2017 study, Taylor Shelton provides evidence that may bolster another of Sheryll Cashin's assertions: that "concentrated Black poverty facilitates poverty-free affluent white space" (Cashin 2021,6). Using property ownership records, Shelton found that of the 7,061 Lexington residential properties in areas of racially/ethnically concentrated poverty or relative poverty, whose owner addresses could be identified, 4,168 (41%) were owned by people who lived outside the area.  Of those, 506 (about 17.4%) were owned by people living in areas of racially concentrated affluence or relative affluence. Another 1,606 properties were owned elsewhere in Lexington, with an additional 781 owned outside of Lexington altogether. Based on this data, Shelton asserts that "the limited financial resources of neighborhoods of concentrated poverty are exploited and extracted in order to enrich, and indeed produce in the first place, white-segregated affluent neighborhoods" (Shelton 2018, 1085-1086).

Note:  Defining RECAP, RCAA, RECArP and RECArAs)

Shelton defined a RECAP (racially/ethnically concentrated areas of poverty) as an area "where the majority of residents are non-white and where the poverty rate exceeds 40%, or where the median household income is less than half of the citywide median." He defines a RECAA (racially/ethnically concentrated area of affluence) as "any census tract where the hon-Hispanic white population exceeds the citywide average and where the median household income is greater than twice the citywide median."  

Shelton also describes areas that are relatively impoverished or affluent as compared to the rest of Lexington. He defines a racially/ethnically concentrated area of relative poverty (RECArP) as a majority non-white census tract and with "either a poverty rate between 20–40% or a median household income between 50–80% of the city-wide median." On the other hand, racially/ethnically concentrated areas of relative affluence RECArAs)  share with RECAAs the race/ethnicity threshold of being more white than the city as a whole, but "have median household incomes between 150–200% of the citywide median, or have poverty rates less than 5%."  

Shelton adds the criterion of poverty rate less than 5% to identify areas where "even if the median household income doesn’t meet the threshold of conventional affluence, the almost total absence of poverty from a neighborhood signifies a particular level of exclusion at work" (Shelton 2017, 2-3 ).