DNY59/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Milwaukee resident Exie Tatum III grew up in heart of the city and still lives there. The African American father owns a home in a predominantly Black neighborhood but has been house-hunting in pricey, majority-white suburbs, searching for an affordable home that he might someday pass along to his young son Charles through inheritance. "It would really change the game," Tatum said of owning a suburban Milwaukee home. But statistics suggest he's fighting an uphill battle. Despite 50 years of federal oversight under the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968, housing segregation persists in America's largest cities and urban centers -- and an exclusive ABC News analysis of mortgage-lending data shows a pattern of racial isolation remains consistent following decades of failed initiatives. The analysis shows that 20 of the nation's top 100 metropolitan areas have an "extreme dissimilarity index" of 50 or higher -- meaning at least half of the population would have had to move to another neighborhood in the area to achieve total integration in 2019. The Milwaukee metro area is at the top of ABC News' "extreme" segregation list, but that list also includes America's largest metro areas -- New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago. Also on the top 20 "extreme" list: Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Springfield, Massachusetts; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Providence, Rhode Island. ABC News' analysis of segregation and home lending patterns across America used data from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and the U.S. Census American Community Survey. Race and ethnicity information in the home lending data is collected voluntarily from the loan applicant or through visual observation by the lender, and by self-identification in the census data. The data were used by ABC's Owned Television Stations to compile the Equity Report, which allows readers to track and measure quality of life and equality in America's 100 largest metro areas in five categories: housing, health, education, policing, and the environment. Using the home lending and census datasets, ABC News calculated a dissimilarity index for metropolitan areas and census tract neighborhoods across the U.S. Indexes like the ones used by ABC News are often used by researchers to measure residential segregation between two racial or ethnic groups within a geographic region. It is based on a 0-100 scale, with "0" being total integration and "100" being total segregation. The ABC News analysis found that segregation persists across the nation, and that there is no indication that the racial composition of neighborhoods is rapidly changing in the nation's most segregated metropolitan areas. In 19 of those 20 extremely segregated metro areas, at least 40% of the homeowners who got a mortgage loan in 2019 -- white or non-white -- would have had to buy a house in a different neighborhood to create a naturally integrated pool of new homeowners. In eight of those metro areas with extreme segregation, at least half the new homebuyers would have had to settle into a new neighborhood in 2019 to make an integrated pool of new neighbors. Even in neighborhoods where some racial evolution is taking place, the analysis shows an overall disparity: It's easier for whites to buy homes in majority non-white neighborhoods than for non-whites to buy in mostly white sections of a metro area. In 2019, nearly two-thirds of the 347,000 white homebuyers (64.8%) who applied for mortgages in mostly non-white neighborhoods in America's largest metro areas got a loan approval -- an indicator of what many urban planners and demographers see as a continued pattern of gentrification in urban areas across the nation. Meanwhile, about 56% of the 715,000 non-white applicants got a loan in 2019 in those same majority non-white neighborhoods. In mostly white neighborhoods, the same pattern exists in the largest metro areas. About 69% of the 1.9 million loan requests from white applicants were approved, compared to about 55.8% of 613,000 applications from non-whites. The ABC analysis shows disparities were similar for applicants in the same income range ($50,000 - $100,000) who sought mortgage loans of $50,000 to $250,000. In majority-white neighborhoods, white applicants in those categories had a 67% approval rate, compared to 52% for non-white applicants. In mostly non-white neighborhoods, white applicants with similar incomes and loan amounts had a 63% approval rate, while the approval rate for similar non-white applicants was 55%. In some cities, the gentrification process is forcing more non-white residents out of urban neighborhoods, along with the small minority-owned businesses, cultural enterprises and institutions -- barbershops, hair salons, and churches -- that have catered to those residents for decades. Milwaukee under the microscope The ABC News analysis shows just how mortgage lending disparities in wealthy suburbs and poorer urban neighborhoods play out in the Milwaukee metro area. Overall, in 2019, whites filed four times more mortgage loan applications than non-whites, and had 73% of those loans approved, compared to 49% for non-whites. In Milwaukee's majority non-white neighborhoods -- mainly urban areas where gentrification was taking place -- non-white home seekers filed twice as many applications as whites, but had a lower approval rate -- 55% compared to 64% for whites. Meanwhile, in majority white neighborhoods, white home seekers filed seven times as many mortgage applications -- and the 73% approval rate among white applicants was higher than the non-white approval rate of 47%. For Milwaukee metro applicants with similar income and loan requests, the analysis shows the white approval rate in both mostly non-white and mostly-white neighborhoods was 1.5 times higher than the non-white approval rate. Tatum says he has seen and experienced the suburban housing disparities that the data seem to support -- and how they affect people of color. Demographically, Tatum has seen Milwaukee change dramatically over the years. But when it comes to segregated neighborhoods, he's seen some things stubbornly stay the same. "If you look at the north side of Milwaukee, you're going to see African-Americans," Tatum explained. "As soon as you cross the bridge to the south side, that's where the Latino community begins." By buying a suburban home that he could pass on to his son, Tatum would love to help break that decades-old pattern of segregation. National studies suggest that homeownership is a key factor in building generational wealth within families. A 2017 Federal Reserve study shows the average homeowner had a household wealth of $231,400 in 2016, compared to the average renter having a household wealth of $5,200. But U.S. Census data show that homeownership rates among non-white households -- particularly Black households -- falls far short of the white homeowner rate of 76%. For Tatum and other non-white city residents wanting to relocate to Milwaukee's suburbs, there's reason for optimism: The latest census data show that, for the first time, two suburban communities -- West Milwaukee and Brown Deer -- reported majority-minority population counts. Those communities are outliers, however. Other suburban neighborhoods in the Milwaukee metro area remain at least 73% white. For Black residents, the data is even more dismal: Less than 9% in the Milwaukee metro area live in the suburbs. A "baked" lending system Tatum and other non-white home seekers across the U.S. blame a financial lending system -- developed and regulated by the federal government -- that for decades has systematically kept people of color from getting home loans, particularly in