White flight

daver · August 2007

New study shows that white flight is INTO New York City...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08102007/news/regionalnews/the_white_lie_regionalnews_bill_sanderson.htm

The city's white population has increased in every borough but Queens since 2001, a Post analysis of new U.S. Census data shows.

Overall, the number of white New York City residents rose by 1.6 percent from 2001 to 2006 - jumping by 74,000, to about 4.76 million.

Interesting.

But the white population declined in Nassau County by 3.3 percent, or 37,000 people, between 2001 and 2006 - almost equivalent to Manhattan's white-population increase.
<snip>
* The number of blacks in the five boroughs dropped by 1.4 percent from 2001 to 2006. The biggest such decline came in Queens, which lost about 19,000, or 3.7 percent of its black population.

* Staten Island's black population grew by 4,700, or 9.27 percent, and the number of blacks calling The Bronx home went up by 4,500, or 0.75 percent.

* Many blacks have gone to the 'burbs - Suffolk County's black population was up 5.9 percent and Nassau County's up 3.4 percent in the century's first five years.

So whites are moving back into NYC, and blacks are heading out to Staten Island and Long Island. Interesting. Also, it makes me question the whole "blacks getting priced outta NYC" theory. Staten Island and Long Island aren't generally cheaper places to live than Brooklyn or Queens. It might be interesting to cross reference this to income. The census data is freely available, but it is huge and would be a serious logistical PITA to try and cross reference this way. But it would sure be fascinating. My theory is that the "income gap" is narrowing, and now an increasing number of relatively affluent blacks are doing the same things that the whites (speaking in HUGE sweeping generalities, of course) used to do in the name of raising their families in safe environments with good schools, etc.

Or something else. I'm open to theories.

doctorj · August 2007

I think you're missing one of the main drivers: immigration. Remember: 40% of New Yorkers are born overseas. If the figures insist on lumping African and Carribean immigrants with African Americans under 'black', and Russian, Lebanese, and Afghani immigrants with 5th gen. Americans of Northern European extraction under 'white', then you're going to get a weird picture of the demographics. And that's before considering the 'Latino' catchall, or the varieties of Asians whose populations in the city are steadily rising.

daver · August 2007

Ah, good point. That would be interesting to check out also, how many are immigrants.

armchair_warrior · August 2007

i see alot of internal white migrants from all over the us settling here in nyc. from my moving

service, my none scientific observation. mostly female. asian girls make up the second largest group.

doctorj · August 2007

Two in five are immigrants; more if you include children of immigrants. When the population is rising at a medium pace, all the 'white' people and 'black' people born in America could stay put, no flight, and you could still get the big apparent shifts you're talking about over a couple of generations. Changes in where people come from who come to NY and suburbs are a major influence.

My limited understanding of the broad trends is that before civil rights, there was a lot of internal migration of African Americans was from South to North, and that since then, the trend stopped and then reversed. In NY, from the perspective of the B&W census they were 'replaced' by immigrants with darker than average skins globally speaking, giving the illusion of a static 'black' population for a while, at least to a quick column in a newspaper. Maybe it is these immigrants who are now moving to the suburbs. Since the 80s, because of the improving economy and globalization, immigration has broadened, less from the Carribean, more from Europe, Mexico, South America, Russia, Middle East, India, China, Korea, etc. etc., which makes it look 'whiter' in B&W.

White flight

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