Ferguson,
Mo., stands out for the level of racial turbulence it has experienced
this month. But as an economically lagging community that has undergone
rapid demographic change in the last couple of decades, it’s not unusual
at all.
An
analysis performed for The Upshot by Andrew Beveridge, a sociology
professor at Queens College, shows that there are 117 communities of
5,000 or more people in the United States that, like Ferguson, were over
50 percent white in 1990 and shifted to over 50 percent black in 2010.
Not
all of them have the troubled racial history of Ferguson or its
demographic mismatch between the population and the police, but they do
resemble Ferguson in two ways: Most are suburban, and most are poorer
than their overall metro area.
If
you rank these communities according to the degree of change they have
undergone, Ferguson comes out somewhere in the middle. It ranks 51st out
of 117 in terms of the decline in the percentage of its population that
is white (which was 73 percent in 1990, but 29 percent in 2010), and
38th if ranked by the growth in its black population (25 percent in
1990, 67 percent in 2010).
And
by either measure, every community that has experienced more change
than Ferguson is also a suburb. For example, five other communities in
the St. Louis area have seen greater growth in their black populations
than Ferguson: In Glasgow Village, Mo., the black population rose from 5
percent to 82 percent over the same period. Across the Mississippi
River in Cahokia, Ill., it grew from 5 percent to 62 percent.
Many
other metro areas in the East, Midwest and South also have suburban
areas on this list. They include Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Chicago,
Cleveland, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Philadelphia and Washington. But in
the Rocky Mountains and on the Pacific coast, this phenomenon is
unknown.
And
more recently, the central cities in some of these metropolitan areas,
including St. Louis and Chicago, have seen their black populations start
to shrink, even as some of their suburbs were going the other way. Washington lost its black majority in 2011, while 10 of its suburbs were gaining enough black population to qualify for our list.
Changing Demographics in the Suburbs
Ferguson, Mo., is one of 117 American communities that went
from majority white in 1990 to majority black in 2010. Most, like
Ferguson, are suburbs; many have undergone more drastic change than
Ferguson, which was 25 percent black in 1990 and 67 percent black in
2010.
The 15 communities with the greatest percentage growth in black population, 1990 to 2010
Glasgow Village, Mo. (St. Louis)
Cahokia, Ill. (St. Louis)
Bellefontaine Neighbors, Mo. (St. Louis)
Dellwood, Mo. (St. Louis)
Midfield, Ala. (Birmingham)
Sharon Hill, Pa. (Philadelphia)
Irondale, Ga. (Atlanta)
South Holland, Ill. (Chicago)
Austell, Ga. (Atlanta)
Stockbridge, Ga.(Atlanta)
Accokeek, Md. (Washington)
Maple Heights, Ohio (Cleveland)
Spanish Lake, Mo. (St. Louis)
Marlton, Md. (Washington)
Lynwood, Ill. (Chicago)
In
all, 82, or 70 percent, of the 117 communities on the list are
considered suburban by the Census Bureau — that is, they are within a
Metropolitan Statistical Area but are not the central city of such an
area. Seven central cities are also on the list, all in the South (Baton
Rouge, at 229,493 population, is the largest of these); the remaining
28 are rural areas or nonmetropolitan towns, also all in the South.
The economics of these places vary widely. Many have 2012 median
household incomes that are far higher than Ferguson’s $37,517. Five of
the communities that have seen greater racial change than Ferguson have
median household incomes above $100,000. But all of these are in the
suburbs of Washington, which are among the most affluent parts of the
country in general.
And
except for these Washington suburbs and a handful of other places, most
of the communities on the list are struggling economically by
comparison to their neighbors. In all, nearly four-fifths of these
communities have lower incomes than the surrounding metro area as a
whole.
It’s
important to keep in mind that these statistics paint only a partial
picture of what’s going on in these communities. Not every place listed
in census data has its own local government or police force as Ferguson
does, and there’s no easy way to know the actual state of race relations
in these places.
But
rapid racial change and economic struggle, once thought to be
principally an issue for older central cities, are now clearly more
focused in the suburbs. Ferguson may be just the most visible example of
that.
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