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Moving Out When Minorities Move In

American Demographics, June 1, 2002 by Roderick J. Harrison

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There are corresponding increases in the percentage of blacks who live in metropolitan area tracts that are less than 10 percent black (to 14.5 percent in 2000, from 7.0 percent in 1960) and 10 percent to 50 percent black (to 35.6 percent from 22.8 percent). Indeed, in 2000, for the first time most African Americans (50.1 percent) no longer lived in majority black Census tracts. Segregation has thus been reduced primarily by relatively small percentages of blacks (less than 10 percent) entering predominantly white areas, especially in rapidly growing cities and suburbs. Desegregation in heavily black Census tracts and in metropolitan areas with large concentrations of blacks seems to have contributed less to the decline.

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These declines in residential segregation and increases in the percentages of blacks living in integrated tracts might suggest that, if anything, white flight has abated in the past several decades: Proportionally more whites and blacks than ever before are living together in racially integrated neighborhoods. Such a conclusion, however, would ignore patterns that may indicate that white flight from blacks and other minorities persists at significant levels. For example, a study of 1990 and 1980 Census data presented at the 1992 meetings of the the Alexandria, Va.-based American Statistical Association found that in 1990, 1 in 5 blacks lived in a Census block that had been less than 10 percent black in 1980. However, because this influx often pushed black representation above 10 percent during the decade, only 12 percent of African Americans actually inhabited blocks that were still less than 10 percent black in 1990.

Evidence of how the racial composition is changing in these and other neighborhoods that African Americans and other minorities have moved into would be needed to understand how and where white flight, as well as less racially motivated processes of residential transition and succession, might still be retarding the progress toward a nation whose increasingly diverse populations actually become each other's neighbors.

Roderick J. Harrison is an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Howard University. He directs the DataBank at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C. The center is a nonprofit institution that conducts research on public policy issues concerning African Americans. He can be reached at rharrison@jointcenter.org.

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Moving Out When Minorities Move In

American Demographics, June 1, 2002 by Roderick J. Harrison

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