According to the 2010 US Census, all-white neighborhoods are vanishing, a statistic driven by the nation’s rising number of Hispanics and Asians, many of whom are immigrants. The result is that many areas are more diverse than at any time in American history.

And while demographers still say some Americans prefer to live among people who are like them, John Logan, a sociologist at Brown University, said the typical pattern is for Asians and Hispanics to move into white neighborhoods, paving the way for white acceptance of more blacks.

“It’s a glass-half-full-half-empty story,” said the Urban Institute’s Margery Turner, an expert on housing patterns. “Predominantly white neighborhoods are no longer as homogeneous as in the past. They’ve opened up tremendously. And yet, white people are, in general, not moving into neighborhoods that are predominantly black. Majority black neighborhoods are remaining majority black, or becoming more majority black, at the same time white neighborhoods are opening up.”

Logan agreed, saying that while it’s still rare for whites to move into minority neighborhoods, “There’s some self-selection. The kinds of people who don’t create barriers for Hispanics and Asians to move in as neighbors may be the kind who don’t move when African Americans move in. But the numbers are so large, it’s not like they’re unusual white Americans. They’re becoming the norm.”

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