Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The End of White Flight

Not really a Chicago angle to this although there is a chart to consider which looks at percentage change in the white share of the population. If you go to this Wall Street Journal article you would see graphs for other cities such as San Francisco, Atlanta, and Washington, DC. Those cities are the focus of that article:
Demographic readjustments can take decades to play out. But if current trends continue, Washington and Atlanta (both with black majorities) will in the next decade see African-Americans fall below 50% for the first time in about a half-century.

Meantime, in San Francisco, African-American deaths now outnumber births. Once a "natural decrease" such as this begins, it's tough for the population to bounce back, since there are fewer residents left to produce the next generation. "The cycle tends to be self-perpetuating," says Kenneth M. Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

There are myriad factors driving the change. In recent years, minority middle-class families, particularly African-Americans, have been moving to the suburbs in greater numbers. At the same time, Hispanic immigrants (who poured into cities from the 1970s through the 1990s) are now increasingly bypassing cities for suburbs and rural areas, seeking jobs on farms and in meat-packing plants.

Cities have spent a decade tidying up parks and converting decaying factories into retail and living space. That has attracted young professionals and empty-nesters, many of them white.
It's a very interesting read if you're interested. At the moment this might be a problem in Chicago in or around the loop. You know this quote raises my eyebrows. I wonder if it raises a few with you...
"The city is experiencing growth, yet we're losing African-American families disproportionately," Mr.(San Francisco Mayor Gavin) Newsom says. When that happens, "we lose part of our soul."

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