Uses United States census data from the 1990 and 2000 to examine the earnings attainment for Black immigrant women (Africans and English-, French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbeans) and native-born Black women (African Americans). Data for both samples reveal sizeable earnings differences between the five groups. African, English and French Caribbean immigrant women exhibit noticeably higher average earnings than African Americans. However, with controls for earnings-related measures, the African immigrant advantage is eliminated in the 1990 sample, but not the English and French Caribbean immigrant advantage, nor the Spanish Caribbean immigrant disadvantage. No significant earnings difference was found between African Americans, English and Spanish Caribbean immigrants in the 2000 sample. Conversely, African and French Caribbean immigrants' earnings were significantly lower than those for African Americans.
Controversy exploded in 2005 over a paper at the Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society and the Institute of British Geographers which claimed that ethnic segregation in Britain was increasing, ghettos had formed and some British cities were more segregated than Chicago. The paper asserted that indexes failed to measure segregation and should be abandoned in favour of a threshold schema of concentrations using raw data. These assertions were repeated by Trevor Phillips, Director the Commission for Racial Equality, in an inflammatory speech claiming that Britain was sleepwalking into American-style segregation. The argument of this paper is that the index approach is indeed necessary, that ethnic segregation in Britain is decreasing, that the threshold criteria for the claim that British ghettos exist has manufactured ghettos rather than discovered them. A Pakistani ghetto under the schema could be 40 per cent Pakistani, 30 per cent White, 20 per cent Indian and 10 per cent Caribbean. In 2000, 60 per cent of Chicago's Blacks lived in a true ghetto of tracts that were 90-100 per cent Black. Adapted from the source document.
