It is clear that the black urban presence, which has been the pillar of many large cities, is diminishing. Detroit, Chicago and New York, three cities with the largest decline in the black population, were among the main destinations of blacks during the Great Migration from the South in the early part of the 20th century. Scott Simon talks with Politico's Brakkton Booker about the reasons for the exodus of African-Americans from big cities and the impact of these demographic changes. Politico's Brakkton Booker, who used to be here at NPR, joins us.
Enable JS and turn off any ad blockers. Miller's research also shows that black people who, against all odds, were able to move to the suburbs in the mid-20th century performed significantly better than their counterparts who lived within city limits. In a recent article, economists Alex Bartik and Evan Mast point out that, over the past 50 years, the proportion of the black population living in the 40 most populated central cities in the United States. Black flight is a term that applies to the migration of African-Americans from predominantly black or mixed urban areas of the United States to the suburbs and newly built housing on the outskirts of cities. We would also expect that the poorest households would have left cities in greater numbers than their richer counterparts, because they are the least able to cope with rising costs.
With the reverse movement of the New Great Migration, the South has been the region with the most black immigrants from the other three regions surveyed, especially between 1995 and 2000. The loss of jobs in old industrial cities has often displaced the population, as people migrate to other areas in search of a new job. They are used to evoke the stereotype of a black underclass, confined to public housing or housing for low-income people, which reinforces the belief that this population is, in some way, intrinsically destined for urban life and, at the same time, denigrates urban life by describing it as dirty, crowded and absolutely undesirable. From 1930 to 1970, employment rates were basically the same for working-age black men, regardless of whether they lived in the city or in the suburbs.
Since the 1950s, a period of significant restructuring of industries and the loss of hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs began in cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Those who have noticed the flight of blacks might assume that black Americans were forced to leave the central city because of gentrification, a phenomenon that receives disproportionate attention, perhaps because those of us who write about cities have a disproportionate chance of living in gentrified neighborhoods. So you're seeing that, with the decline of the black population in the city of Chicago, there are other populations that are going to fill that gap. In the early 20th century, in what would be called the Great Migration, African-Americans urbanized, anxious for the promise of a better life in the North, Midwest, and West.
Three out of ten black people live in households headed by women, and 5% live in households headed by men. The term “black flight” has also been used to describe African-American parents in some cities who move their children from public schools to charter schools or to suburban schools with open enrollment. The black flight has altered the hyperurban density that resulted from the Second Great Migration to cities (1940-1970), with excessive segregation in downtown areas, such as in Chicago, St. Approximately three out of ten single-race black people (31%) live in households headed by women, and 5% live in households headed by men.
