As in many urban cities across the country, gentrification has led to a sharp decline in Charleston's black population. In the center of the peninsula, the black population has shrunk more than 50 percent over the past three decades, while skyrocketing rents and housing prices attract people with higher incomes. Among the exceptions are the coastal counties of Charleston and Beaufort, where the black population declined, and Richland County, where the white population declined. During the 1960s, the decade in which schools ceased to be segregated in Charleston, the city experienced great demographic changes, as more than half of the white population left the peninsula. Nationally, the white population is declining, but whites remain the dominant group, even though in some places they are a numerical minority, he said.
While blacks make up about thirty percent of the population of nearly 700,000 in the Charleston metropolitan area, Gunn said they haven't shared in the city's prosperity. Meanwhile, Gunn said that there are no historically African-American universities in Charleston and that African-Americans are underrepresented at Clemson and the University of South Carolina, the state's flagship schools. The most popular specializations in Charleston, South Carolina, are General Business (285 and 5.81%), General Business Administration and Management (214 and 4.36%), and General Psychology (210 and 4.28%). Black unemployment in South Carolina is 11.8 percent, compared to 4.6 percent among whites, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
In Charleston County as a whole, the white population has increased from 62 percent in 2000 to nearly 65 percent today. Charleston County lost a greater number of black residents over the past decade than any other South Carolina county, despite an overall increase in population growth. Fast-growing cities, Charleston, Columbia, Mount Pleasant, and Greenville, saw their black population decline. The table below shows the 7 races represented in Charleston, SC as a proportion of the total population.
