Economist: Black flight
Now it is the turn of America’s blacks to leave for the suburbs.
IN THE 1990s black Americans began returning in significant numbers to the South. This marked a reversal of the Great Migration, in which their parents and grandparents fled Jim Crow racism in the 1920s and 1930s for jobs in the industrial cities of the north-east, Midwest and West. But since 2000 the destination of many inner-city blacks has shifted again, according to details from the latest census. From Oakland to Chicago to Washington, DC, blacks are surging from the central cities to the suburbs.
Analysis of 2010 census data by William Frey, chief demographer for the Brookings Institution, shows that more than half the cities with large concentrations of blacks have seen significant declines in their black populations. About half of black Americans now live in the suburbs, up from 43% in 2000.
This is proving a mixed blessing. Well-educated blacks are finding better jobs, bigger houses and newer schools, just as white-flight suburbanites did in previous generations. But many lower-income migrants from the inner cities are finding poverty, crime and poor social services when they arrive in their new homes. In the past decade, poverty has increased more than twice as fast in the suburbs as it has in the cities. ...
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