The Harvard Civil Rights Project released a study of the 2000 census data this week concluding that segregation in both urban and suburban communities still persists, despite the nation's increasing ethnic diversity

Gary A. Orfield, professor of education and social policy at the Graduate School of Education, authored the study, released Tuesday at a meeting with civil rights leaders and housing activists.

"We really haven't made any progress on segregation," Orfield said. "No serious efforts have been made to break the cycle."

Orfield worked together with the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research at the State University of New York in Albany to analyze the recently released census data.

Census data shows that the areas Asian Americans, Latinos and black people live in tend to differ starkly from the communities that white people reside in. Most black people live in areas that are predominantly black. In direct contract, most white people live in neighborhoods that are more than 80 percent white and only 7 percent black.

Seven out of 10 white people now live in suburban areas, compared to just four out of 10 black people.

Evidence of the trend towards segregation can be found in census data gathered from the Boston area. According to the 2000 census, middle class minorities are moving to the suburban communities around the Route 128 belt in record numbers, but this influx of minorities has corresponded with a dramatic drop in the white population.

More than 124,700 white people moved further out into the "high-tech corridor" along I-495, an area that is almost 93 percent white.