Blacks Slowly Leaving Cities: Good Thing or Bad Thing?

Blacks Moving From North to South.

Should there be black communities?

Should blacks just totally spread out and integrate themselves into the general American population?

Although there is black pride in black communities (because whites run as blacks move in), are they practical?

According to the U.S. Census count released this week, the number of black New Yorkers dropped 5%, the first dip in that group since 1860.  The Census put the city's population at 33.3% non-Hispanic white, 28.6% Hispanic, 22.8% non-Hispanic black and 12.6% Asian. New York's non-Hispanic black population dropped by 100,859, a 5% decrease, with Brooklyn losing the lion's share.  Keeping in line with national urban trends, New York's black population declined over the past decade—joining Detroit, Dallas and Washington, D.C.

The number of African Americans residing in the District declined by more than 11 percent during the past decade, with blacks on the verge of losing their majority status in the city for the first time in half a century.  Barely 50 percent of the District’s population was African American in 2010 — a remarkable shift in a place once nicknamed “Chocolate City.” The black population dropped by more than 39,000 over the decade, down to 301,000 of the city’s 601,700 residents. At the same time, the non-Hispanic white population skyrocketed by more than 50,000 to 209,000 residents, almost a third higher than a decade earlier. The loss of blacks comes at a time when the city is experiencing a rebound, reversing a 60-year-long slide in population and adding almost 20,000 new residents between 2000 and 2010.

America's blacks are leaving big cities in the Northeast and Midwest at the highest levels in decades and are returning to fast-growing states in the South in search of better job opportunities and quality of life.  The South - places such as Atlanta, Dallas and Houston - accounted for roughly 75 percent of the population gains among blacks since 2000. The gains came at the expense of Northern metro areas such as New York and Chicago, which posted their first declines in black population since at least 1980.  In all, about 57 percent of U.S. blacks now live in the South, a jump from the 53 percent share in the 1970s.  (WSJ, 3/25/2011, WashPost, 3/24/2011, AP/WKRG News 5, 2/15/2011)