<P> Historically, residential segregation split communities between the black inner city and white suburbs . This phenomenon is due to white flight where whites actively leave neighborhoods often because of a black presence . There are more than just geographical consequences to this, as the money leaves and poverty grows, crime rates jump and businesses leave and follow the money . This creates a job shortage in segregated neighborhoods and perpetuates the economic inequality in the inner city . With the wealth and businesses gone from inner city areas, the tax base decreases, which hurts funding for education . Consequently, those that can afford to leave the area for better schools leave decreasing the tax base for educational funding even more . Any business that is left or would consider opening doesn't want to invest in a place nobody has any money but has a lot of crime, meaning the only things that are left in these communities are poor black people with little opportunity for employment or education ." </P> <P> Today, a number of whites are willing, and are able, to pay a premium to live in a predominantly white neighborhood . Equivalent housing in white areas commands a higher rent . By bidding up the price of housing, many white neighborhoods again effectively shut out blacks, because blacks are unwilling, or unable, to pay the premium to buy entry into white neighborhoods . While some scholars maintain that residential segregation has continued--some sociologists have termed it "hypersegregation" or "American Apartheid"--the US Census Bureau has shown that residential segregation has been in overall decline since 1980 . According to a 2012 study found that "credit markets enabled a substantial fraction of Hispanic families to live in neighborhoods with fewer black families, even though a substantial fraction of black families were moving to more racially integrated areas . The net effect is that credit markets increased racial segregation ." </P> <P> As of 2015, residential segregation had taken new forms in the United States with black majority minority suburbs such as Ferguson, Missouri supplanting the historic model of black inner city, white suburbs . Meanwhile, in locations such as Washington, D.C., gentrification had resulted in development of new white neighborhoods in historically black inner cities . Segregation occurs through premium pricing by white people of housing in white neighborhoods and exclusion of low - income housing rather than through rules which enforce segregation . Black segregation is most pronounced; Hispanic segregation less so, and Asian segregation the least . </P> <P> Lila Ammons discusses the process of establishing black - owned banks during the 1880s - 1990s, as a method of dealing with the discriminatory practices of financial institutions against African - American citizens of the United States . Within this period, she describes five distinct periods that illustrate the developmental process of establishing these banks, which were as followed: </P>

Brief history of segregation in the united states