Ever since the 2000 Census showed that Boston's non-Hispanic whites had dipped ever-so-slightly below 50 percent of the total population, there was been a lot of talk about the symbolism of being a "majority minority city" and what that means for politics and the business community. But the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that demographic trends are reversing:
In [many large] cities, whites are still leaving, but more blacks are moving out. Boston lost about 6,000 black residents between 2000 and 2006, but only about 3,000 whites. In 2006, whites accounted for 50.2% of the city's population, up from 49.5% in 2000. That's the first increase in roughly a century.
Conor Dougherty writes that "white flight" in such cities as Atlanta and Washington, DC, may have come to an end, and there may now be a "black flight" to the suburbs.
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