From the moment segregation in America had a name, it has referred to the separateness of blacks and whites.
But during the last decade, while blacks were making some progress in residential integration, Latinos and Asians became more isolated from other racial groups in the vast majority of the nation's large metropolitan areas, from Chicago's red-bricked grid to Phoenix's beige sprawl, a Times analysis of 2000 census data shows.
Though Latinos and Asians spread into new regions of Southern California and the nation, the borders around their own core neighborhoods stiffened, as newcomers displaced the remnants of other racial groups.
A Times analysis found that while African Americans remain the most segregated group in the nation's top 25 metropolitan areas, Latinos and Asians are beginning to close the gap.
In 21 of 25 population centers, Asians were more likely to live apart from other races in 2000 than in 1990, according to the dissimilarity index, which calculates how evenly ethnic groups are spread within communities. Latinos became more segregated in 19 of 25 areas.
Demographers and community leaders are struggling to classify these tightening knots of ethnic population, which share characteristics of both African American ghettos and earlier immigrant enclaves, yet do not match the pattern of either.
Some find the trend troubling, proof that "we're still a society that arranges itself around race," said Karen Narasaki, president of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.
Others, however, say the new concentrations of Latinos and Asians are transitory and should not be viewed through the poisonous prism of segregation.
"These places, they don't have the rigidity or underpinnings of a true ghetto," said David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA. " 'Segregation' and 'isolation' have negative connotations. These are just points on the curve."
The words--and the substance beneath them--carry a heavy penalty. Segregated neighborhoods are often poorer and more dangerous, trapped in a cycle of bad schools, dilapidated housing and negligible job prospects.
Opposite Trend Seen Among Blacks
Segregation no longer has the formal framework it had decades ago, when real estate agents and lenders discriminated legally and restrictive covenants carved out urban reservations for minorities.
