Numbers of African Americans in Large Cities Continue to Drop

Black faces are disappearing from many of America’s largest cities, a report is showing.
Cities such as Washington, D.C., San Francisco and California are seeing a dip in the number of black people living there, the Wall Street Journal said.

Instead, the number of white people are resurging, a reversal on the 1990s when the cities experienced a “white flight”, which left neighbourhoods in the hands of black and Hispanic people.


The report said the reduction is so significant for cities such as San Francisco that its Mayor Gavin Newsome has created a special task force to help keep black people there. The report said in San Francisco, African-American deaths now outnumber births.


Data show that Washington, D.C., gained 24,000 whites and lost 21,000 Blacks between 2000 and 2006. The Black proportion of population has declined from a high of 72 percent in the 1970s to less than 60 percent last year. The same thing is happening in New York, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles. Among the reasons suggested for the change is rising real estate prices and the growing number of middle-class black families who have been moving to the suburbs in greater numbers. The report said Hispanic immigrants are increasingly heading to the suburbs.