BET.COM News

National News: Blacks Are Vanishing From Cities
August 1st, 2008

Blacks are vanishing from cities. Black folks are fleeing city life. In such disparate American cities as Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Houston and Atlanta, African Americans are evaporating as Whites are pouring back into the urban core, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. San Francisco’s vanishing Black problem has gotten to the point where Mayor Gavin Newsome even established a special team to work on ways to convince African Americans from leaving. In that city, Black deaths are dramatically outpacing Black births. In D.C., between 2000 and 2006, the White population grew by 24,000 Whites, while the Black population declined by 21,000. What was a 72-percent Black city in the 1970s is now 60-percent African American. The report attributes the population shift to rising real estate costs and Black flight to the suburbs.

Dr. Babacar Camara
Associate Professor