The Black community in Canada: past and present

[Docere]

Black-White Index of Dissimilarity

New York MSA 0.73
Chicago MSA 0.715
Los Angeles MSA 0.597
Boston MSA 0.574
San Francisco MSA 0.551
Toronto CMA 0.512
Minneapolis MSA 0.477
Seattle MSA 0.424

[kwoldtimer]

What is an Index of Dissimilarity and what do the numbers mean?

[Kilgore Trout]

It's a measure of segregation. The higher the number, the more the group in question is concentrated in certain pockets.

For instance, here's a 2017 dissimilarity index for immigrants in the big three Canadian CMAs:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/.../tbl11-eng.htm

You can see that the cities of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are all similar, but Montreal's CMA has a much higher dissimilarity index because off-island suburbs had significantly less immigrant population than the city, whereas immigrants are more evenly spread throughout the suburbs of Vancouver and Toronto.

[Docere]

Of the NA metropolitan areas listed, Blacks represent a larger share of the population in NYC and Chicago but the rest have similar Black shares. Not surprisingly NYC and Chicago are the most segregated. Minneapolis and Seattle are lower than the other American cities and these cities weren't major centers in the Great Migration.