Black flight

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This relatively affluent suburb east of Fort Worth, Texas has seen an influx of African-American residents with a black population increasing from 3% in 1995 to 21% in 2006. In addition, the median income in the community has also increased from $87,540 in 2000 to an estimated $93,710 in 2006.^{[citation needed]}

Black flight is a term recently applied to the movement of African Americans from predominately black or mixed inner city areas to suburban areas and outlying edge cities of newer home construction. While more attention has been paid recently, from 1960-2000 nine million African Americans moved to the suburbs, from motivations similar to white middle class seeking newer housing and attractive environments.^[1] From 1990 to 2000, the percentage of African Americans who lived in the suburbs increased nearly five percent, to 39 percent. Most who moved to the suburbs after WWII were middle class. ^[2]

(The term "black flight" also has been used to describe black parents in cities moving their children from public schools to charter schools, but that is not the subject of this article.)^[3]

Early years of residential change accelerated in the late 1960's after passage of civil rights legislation gave African Americans more choices in housing and jobs in some areas. This also coincided with major restructuring of industries and loss of industrial jobs in northeast and Midwest cities. Together in the late 20th century, these events led to reduced density in formerly black neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, which have had absolute population decreases.

Since the 2000 census, a pattern of decrease in black population greater than white departures has occurred in several major cities: New York, Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, DC. ^[4] In Los Angeles, the percentage of population that is black has dropped by half to 9.9% since 1970. ^[5] More importantly, in addition to moving to suburbs, African Americans have been returning to the South, especially the states of Georgia, Texas, and Maryland. ^[6] In many cases, they are following the movement of jobs to the South. Because more African Americans are attaining college degrees, they are better able to take advantage of opportunities.^[7] Most African American migrants have gone to the "New South" states, where economies have grown from knowledge industries, service and technology. The top five metropolitan areas attracting African Americans in addition to Atlanta include Orlando, Tampa and Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; and Charlotte, North Carolina.^[8]

Achieving higher education has contributed to an increase in overall affluence within the African-American community, and thus given people more choices on jobs and housing. The most important long-term trend has been increasing median income in the African-American community, both in absolute terms and in relation to that of white citizens.^[9]

[edit] History

US cities have demonstrated a pattern of waves of more established, "older" (and usually wealthier) populations moving from older areas to newer and better housing. More recent, and usually poorer, immigrants or migrants, take over the older housing as it is vacated. This progression or succession of residents has been obvious for centuries in New York and its boroughs, which can trace waves of migrant and immigrant residents.^[10] Their movements are obvious in the commuting suburbs as well.

Calling such movement "flight" obscures the pattern that populations repeatedly change throughout metropolitan areas that attract continuing waves of migrants or immigrants, and change as a result of job movement. In his "After the Fact" (1995), the anthropologist Clifford Geertz documented similar changes in a city in Morocco. Poor rural migrants moved into the center city, and the older, more established and wealthier populations moved to the outskirts.

Many middle-class African Americans started in the 1960s to move to the suburbs for newer housing and good schools, just as white Americans had done before them. In the last 25 years, for example, Prince Georges County, Maryland, in the suburban Washington, DC, area, became majority African American and in 2006 was the wealthiest majority-black county in the nation. ^[11] Similar to whites, African Americans continue to move to more distant areas. Charles County, Maryland has become the next destination for middle-class black migrants and the school system is now majority black.^[12] Similar patterns are seen in other metropolitan areas of the country, such as Atlanta, which has some affluent majority-black suburbs.

Job losses in former industrial cities have often pushed population out, as people migrate to find new work. In the 1950s and 1960s, numerous blacks from Chicago began to move to suburbs south of the city to improve their housing. Industry job losses hit those towns, too, and many people have left the area altogether.^[13] Chicago lost population from 1970-1990, with some increases as of the 2000 census, and decreases again from 2000-2005.^[14] Many of the people who left were black, which drew from the businesses, churches, and other community institutions. The concentration of poverty and deterioration of inner city public schools in many cities also contributes to pushing black parents to move their families to suburban areas, with traditionally better funded schools, to seek better opportunities for their children.

Black flight has altered the hyper-urban density which had resulted from the Second Great Migration to cities from 1940-1970, with hyper-segregation in large central cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, and East St. Louis. In 1950 few northern cities yet had large percentages of blacks, nor did southern ones: Washington, DC was 35 percent African American and Baltimore was 24 percent. From 1950-1970, the black population increased dramatically in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Newark, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. By 1960 75 percent of blacks lived in urban environments, while whites had been moving to suburbs in large numbers following WWII.^[15]

With the reverse movement of the New Great Migration, the South has been the gaining region for black migrants coming from all three other census regions, especially from 1995-2000. The chief gaining states have been Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Maryland, Virginia and Tennessee. In the same period, Georgia, Texas and Maryland attracted the most black college graduates.^[16] Chicago, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, DC have all lost black population. Since 2000, for instance, nearly 55,000 blacks have left Chicago, although one million still live in the city. ^[17]

As of 2006, black Americans occupy 15% of all suburban housing built in the last 10 years. Twenty years ago, American blacks occupied only 2% of all newly constructed housing.

In Los Angeles overall, the black population is 9.9%, half of what it was in 1970, a proportion that also reflects much increased Hispanic and Asian immigration. ^[18] The large inner-city area of South-Central Los Angeles offers an example of change caused by succession, where new immigrants replace former residents who move away or where a generation dies off. In 1985 African Americans made up 72% of the population of the area. In 2006 the black proportion of the population had decreased to just 24%. The Latino population had risen from 21% in 1985 to 69% in 2006, as one population replaced another.

[edit] Gentrification

In some cases, longtime black renters have been priced out of their inner city neighborhoods because of rising rents caused by gentrification. Owners who want to move to smaller housing cannot afford it. In other cases, rising home values increase property tax assessments which many longtime homeowners cannot afford. ^[19]

In still other areas, historic preservation activists instigate a trend of code enforcement of architectural details of older historic homes and apartment buildings. The restoration costs are often too much for lower income homeowners.

[edit] Inner city home value appreciation

In still other instances, longtime black homeowners in central city areas have "cashed out" at retirement age and profited from increasing home values. These longtime residents have relocated to condominiums that are more affordable in outlying suburban areas, or in other regions altogether.^[20]

[edit] Economic disparities

The economic disparities between some classes of whites and blacks have diminished. Black Americans today have a median income level much higher than they did in the 1990 census and even compared to the 2000 census, after inflation is considered. African Americans occupy a higher percentage of high-paying jobs within the USA than they used to. This has led to a rapidly increasing black upper-middle class. Many of America’s suburbs are becoming diversified with black and white residents coexisting in affluent neighborhoods.

With the economic division within similar classes declining between races, African-American movement to the suburbs has resulted in some suburbs becoming more diverse. Other times middle and upper class blacks have chosen to settle in chiefly African-American communities, so their children can grow up in a strong community of their own.

Replacing the African-American population as the primary "lower income" minority in some areas are Hispanics. Hispanics have an average income almost half that of other white Americans, and nearly $10,500 lower than the average African American. Concerns about Hispanic immigration are also concerns about class and language.

The extent to which increased economic prosperity among African Americans has led to genuine integration between whites and blacks is debatable. While many suggest that the narrowing economic divide is helping the USA to become an increasingly color-blind society, some studies such as Mary Pattillo-McCoy's Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class (University of Chicago Press, 1999) suggest that segregation and discrimination remain a reality.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• White flight
• Gentrification
• Urban decay
• Historic Preservation
• Mortgage discrimination
• Planned shrinkage
• Redlining