The dissimilarity index measures the relative separation or integration of groups across all neighborhoods of a city or metropolitan area. If a city's white-black dissimilarity index were 65, that would mean that 65% of white people would need to move to another neighborhood to make whites and blacks evenly distributed across all neighborhoods.
| Dissimilarity Indices | ||||
| Dissimilarity Index | Percent of | |||
| With Whites* | Population** | Total Population | ||
| White* | -- | 840,677 | 81.97% | |
| Black* | 68.6 | 141,745 | 13.82% | |
| American Indian* | 45.5 | 2,168 | 0.21% | |
| Asian* | 50.6 | 10,925 | 1.07% | |
| Native Hawaiian* | 81.0 | 292 | 0.03% | |
| Other* | 61.3 | 1,383 | 0.13% | |
| Two or More Races* | 35.3 | 11,929 | 1.16% | |
| White/Black* | 49.5 | 3,640 | 0.35% | |
| White/American Indian* | 38.1 | 2,923 | 0.29% | |
| White/Asian* | 49.9 | 1,534 | 0.15% | |
| White/Other* | 64.8 | 1,365 | 0.13% | |
| Other Combinations* | -- | 2,467 | 0.24% | |
| Hispanic | 42.0 | 16,479 | 1.61% | |
| Total Population | -- | 1,025,598 | 100.00% | |
* Non-Hispanic only.
* When a group's population is small, its dissimilarity index may be high even if the group's members are evenly distributed throughout the area. Thus, when a group's population is less than 1,000, exercise caution in interpreting its dissimilarity indices.
Source: William H. Frey and Dowell Myers' analysis of Census 2000; and the Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN).
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