Black Flight? Gentrification? Both?

I have a bad attitude about Politico because of its Capitol Hill and White House coverage, but this lengthy article on the decrease of the Black population in Washington, D.C., and the shift in power dynamics of the city's politics that came with it, is well-done.

I lived in Washington between 1983 and 1986, which I now know was in the midst of that decades-long demographic shift. When I visited in 2010 I was shocked to see the changes in some of the areas they describe in the story. 

Aside from the density of detail about Washington itself, the other thing that stood out in the article was this table:

It shows the decrease in Black residents between 2000 and 2020 in the 10 U.S. cities that had the most Black residents at the beginning of the millennium. All but one of them lost Black residents, seven of them substantially.

I wish Politico's table had included percentage decreases, so I ran those numbers myself. Putting them in order starting with the largest decrease, they are:

New Orleans –36.2%
Detroit –36%
Chicago –24.9%
Baltimore –19.3%
Los Angeles –19.2%
Washington, D.C. –17.1%
New York City –8.9%
Philadelphia –4.7
Memphis –2.2%
Houston +4.4

The changes in New Orleans and Detroit may not come as a shock, given the wide coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the hollowing-out of Detroit, but the other cities' changes have gotten less attention.

Did the cities generally shrink in the same ways? In Detroit and Memphis, it's pretty close, but in the others it diverges, sometimes greatly.

By comparison, the same cities' overall populations in the time period changed in these ways (maintaining the same order for ease of comparison):

New Orleans –20.8%
Detroit –32.8%
Chicago –5.2%
Baltimore –10.1%
Los Angeles +5.5%
Washington, D.C. +20.5%
New York City +9.9%
Philadelphia +5.7
Memphis –2.6%
Houston +18.0

(All 2000–2020 total population increases and decreases based on U.S. census numbers)

From these percentages, we can see that while New Orleans and Baltimore both decreased in population, most of their decreases are accounted for from the decrease in Black residents. 

Chicago's population, on the other hand, almost recovered from its huge loss of Black residents, while L.A., Philadelphia, New York, and especially Washington brought in even more residents than the Black residents they lost. 

As the Politico article says, many of the Black residents leaving these cities, at least in Washington, are moving to the surburbs. Sometimes they're going to affluent places like Prince Georges County, Maryland, and sometimes they're going to places like Ferguson, Missouri, where there's no good public transit and the mid-century infrastructure is all breaking at the same time and the best source of municipal income is fining your residents for minor infractions. There's also a return to cities in the South that's underway, especially Atlanta. Something that I have only slight awareness of, I realize. 

I just know these population changes represent a lot of people who are going somewhere. It's a big change that's happening, and it's not getting enough attention.