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One of the more striking examples of white flight in recent times in Canarsie, Brooklyn. In 1980, most of it was 90%+ white, with the NE corner 2/3rd white. In 1990, around 80% white and the NE corner maybe 30% white. By 2000, almost all of Canarsie was under 20% white. Maybe the 90s the natives decided it was suddenly the time that they were tired of the big city. More like an influx of black newcomers was the trigger.
The presence of a few racists in the neighborhood isn't really evidence of a racist phenomenon.
This sort of thing was quite common in the '80s/'90s in white, working class neighborhoods in northeastern cities where household size had been shrinking, housing stocks subtly deteriorating, the number of 22-40 year olds steadily in decline, and households made up increasingly of old people who were retiring to warmer places, dying, or moving to nursing homes.
The Verrazano didn't open until 1965. At that point there was a steady, 20 year drain of the white population of Brooklyn to Staten Island and New Jersey.
White ethnic neighborhoods were once common. They're increasingly rare, because mass european migration is at least 70 years behind us, because white people continue to decrease as a % of the population in the country as a whole, and because they continue to leave the northeast for the south and west.
The presence of a few racists in the neighborhood isn't really evidence of a racist phenomenon.
This sort of thing was quite common in the '80s/'90s in white, working class neighborhoods in northeastern cities where household size had been shrinking, housing stocks subtly deteriorating, the number of 22-40 year olds steadily in decline, and households made up increasingly of old people who were retiring to warmer places, dying, or moving to nursing homes.
The Verrazano didn't open until 1965. At that point there was a steady, 20 year drain of the white population of Brooklyn to Staten Island and New Jersey.
White ethnic neighborhoods were once common. They're increasingly rare, because mass european migration is at least 70 years behind us, because white people continue to decrease as a % of the population in the country as a whole, and because they continue to leave the northeast for the south and west.
Or just move to the suburbs/exurbs, especially the latter as many of the first ring suburbs are changing as well.
This sort of thing was quite common in the '80s/'90s in white, working class neighborhoods in northeastern cities where household size had been shrinking, housing stocks subtly deteriorating, the number of 22-40 year olds steadily in decline, and households made up increasingly of old people who were retiring to warmer places, dying, or moving to nursing homes.
The change in Canarsie's demographics seemed awfully abrupt for it just to be the younger (22-40 year olds) generation deciding not to stay and the oldest residents dwellers retiring or dying. If that were the case, you'd expect a steady decline. Instead, it's a slow steady decline. And then at a certain point a drastic change. Perhaps it's not exactly racism, but those who stayed discovered that the community and neighbors they had were all gone so they had little reason to stay.
The change in Canarsie's demographics seemed awfully abrupt for it just to be the younger (22-40 year olds) generation deciding not to stay and the oldest residents dwellers retiring or dying. If that were the case, you'd expect a steady decline. Instead, it's a slow steady decline. And then at a certain point a drastic change. Perhaps it's not exactly racism, but those who stayed discovered that the community and neighbors they had were all gone so they had little reason to stay.
it's fairly common.
the white people in those neighborhoods were born there, raised their families their in the 50s-70s, the kids move away, don't come back, the population gets older and older then fades away quickly.
The same thing happened in a lot of Philly neighborhoods, especially in the Lower Northeast and the same process is continuing to happen further into the Northeast.
The changes were especially striking in Northeast Philadelphia, which went from 92 percent white in 1990 to 58.3 percent white in 2010. Despite losing one-third of its white residents during the period, the Northeast grew in population by 5.4 percent, thanks to an array of new arrivals.
The original white residents weren't leaving because other people were moving in - the Russians, Brazilians, Chinese, Jamaicans, etc were moving in because so many other people were moving out (read: getting old/dying).
It's also happening in places like Port Richmond, Fishtown, and much of South Philly but the difference in those neighborhoods is that those old people are being replaced by younger, (mostly) white people who are better educated and slightly better off . . . no one really takes notice when that happens.
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If that were the case, you'd expect a steady decline. Instead, it's a slow steady decline.
A long, steady decline is pretty much the profile of every inner city neighborhood in the Northeast and Midwest. If you go back to 1950 and graph the populations by race you get the same lines regardless of whether the neighborhood was majority white or majority black. The difference between Ft. Greene and a neighborhood like Canarsie or the difference between a place like Kensington and a place like Oxford Circle (in Philadelphia) is that the former are "inner city" while the latter have functioned more like inner-ring suburbs even though they're technically within the city limits.
For example here's the graph of Graduate Hospital neighborhood in Philly which is/was historically AA
Here is Port Richmond which is/has been historically irish/polish
The population curves are pretty much the same for both neighborhoods even though the demographics couldn't be any more opposite. The difference is that PR is still in decline while GH is on the rebound. That's as much to do with the latter's proximity to Center City and its historically high (for Philadelphia) number of rental units than with anything else.
Last edited by drive carephilly; 06-20-2014 at 11:33 PM..
Here's Ft. Greene. The census tracts from 1940 are a lot different from those of 1950 so it makes it a PITA to display that data but suffice it to say that the white population there was in decline before 1950. Middle class black families were filling the void and for a decade or so it was more or less one white family out, one black family in. White people kept moving out/dying off at a consistent rate but the black in-migration slowed then stopped.
Looking at the numbers in Canarsie you'd expect to see something similar. You see the population rise sharply as the neighborhood gets built out in the 50s and 60s then you see the decline typical of all of these neighborhoods. You would expect to see the trend line stay the same (losing 10,000 per decade) with the white population being somewhere around 15,000 instead of 5,000.
Instead we see the white exodus accelerate. The white population was leaving anyway, it just happened a decade sooner than one might expect. It's worth noting that in 1990 Canarsie was #5 in NYC for cocaine consumption. At least from the perspective of the people who were living there in 1990, crime was out of control and the neighborhood was falling apart. In the context of crime in NYC in the early 90s Canarsie was still relatively tame but the reason for such a huge influx of middle-class, black west indians was both rising fortunes and people fleeing crime in other neighborhoods.
So what is unique in Canarsie is 35,000 west indians moving in over the course of a decade. In a neighborhood of 45,000 that's more of an invasion (a 78% change) than it is normal neighborhood change. When 2,600 white people moved to Graduate Hospital from 1990-2010 (in a neighborhood of 11,000 - 24% change) people were up in arms. But at least that change was mostly a result of the addition of 700 new housing units (a 20% increase). Nothing of the sort happened in Canarsie.
That's for the graphs. But I think they proved my point, the drastic short-term shift for Canarsie shows white flight while the others just a steady decline in white population.
That's for the graphs. But I think they proved my point, the drastic short-term shift for Canarsie shows white flight while the others just a steady decline in white population.
Yeah, I don't know. If you're talking about 1950-2010 then it definitely shows the opposite of your point because the white exodus began a good 20 years before the black population in Canarsie was even relevant.
There's also the fact that Canarsie is huge . . . I only looked at the 24 census tracts south of Flatlands Ave. (which leaves out 1/3 of the neighborhood) because those census tracts were consistent throughout the period. Even in the 24 I looked at the influx of west indians wasn't evenly distributed across the entire area yet the decline in the white population was fairly constant. Of course, in a built out place like Canarsie in 1990 there only a certain number of housing units so a dramatic rise in the black pop. requires a dramatic drop in the white pop. but point is that the white population was declining in all census tracts - not just the ones that black people were moving to en masse.
I have to say, though, that if I'm reading your assumptions right about the motivations of the white people living there then I find it offensive for a few reasons.
1970-1980 the white pop declined by 10k while the black population increased by 1k, from 1980-90 whites drop by another 10k while the black pop. increased by 4k. That's not white people on the run from black people. That's economics. The jobs base in the city had been shrinking for a long time as manufacturing and everything else moved to the suburbs (but this fact has been discussed here ad infinitum) and public safety at the time was spiraling out of control and by 1990 crime in NYC was more in line with modern day Cape Town than any US city of today. So anyway, from 1990-2000 the white pop loses 24k while the black pop. increases by 34k. In 1990 there were roughly 11k white people over the age of 55 who we can be sure would either be retired or dead by the 2000 census. Just going by the previous decades' trends 10k of them would've been gone anyway.
Go back and take a look at the trend lines of the white and black populations in Ft. Greene and Graduate Hospital between 2000 and 2010. The trends of black flight accelerate as the white populations tick up and it's not because black people can't stand living around white people. It's partly because of the age structure of the (in this case black) population and partly because if more of your friends and family leave the neighborhood there's less of a reason for you to stay. It's just not the same neighborhood anymore. To assume that a white person's motivation is always racist every time they have an interaction with a black person is, well, racist. To look at multiple neighborhoods of differing ethnicities and see the same patterns emerge for all groups and then apply that kind of double-standard is doubly so.
From 1990-2000 in Canarsie homeownership went up and rents and house values went up - and that's in real $. It's frankly silly to suggest, a few d-bag teenagers and their parents aside, that the white people of Canarsie didn't understand this or that they were doing anything other than what black homeowners do today when white people knock on their doors with bags of cash.
They sell out and buy their dream house because deep down they wanted to move anyway.
I have to say, though, that if I'm reading your assumptions right about the motivations of the white people living there then I find it offensive for a few reasons.
I'm not sure why the topic would be offensive to you unless maybe you're from there, but from the numbers it looks like a good example of white flight.
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1970-1980 the white pop declined by 10k while the black population increased by 1k, from 1980-90 whites drop by another 10k while the black pop. increased by 4k. That's not white people on the run from black people. That's economics. The jobs base in the city had been shrinking for a long time as manufacturing and everything else moved to the suburbs (but this fact has been discussed here ad infinitum) and public safety at the time was spiraling out of control and by 1990 crime in NYC was more in line with modern day Cape Town than any US city of today.
It's probably neither. Canarsie from the demographic history was a place that attracted families with children at around the same time. Once some of those children moved out, population declined. I'd focus on the white % not the total. Take a location that obviously didn't white flight or drastic demographic change.
Population (and it was almost all white then) decreased 13% from 1970 to 1980 then another 6% in the next decade. Just household size. Canarsie is a bit more drastic, but that's a large piece. In any case the 90s decline is out of line with the other city nieighborhoods you posted, or just a slow drift as the population move out.
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It's partly because of the age structure of the (in this case black) population and partly because if more of your friends and family leave the neighborhood there's less of a reason for you to stay. It's just not the same neighborhood anymore. To assume that a white person's motivation is always racist every time they have an interaction with a black person is, well, racist.
Regardless of what the motive is, it's still white flight. I mentioned that reason earlier. It's bizarre how you think this turned into a general statement about white people, I'm talking about a pattern that occurred in some urban neighborhoods.
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To look at multiple neighborhoods of differing ethnicities and see the same patterns emerge for all groups and then apply that kind of double-standard is doubly so.
There are far fewer examples of neighborhoods that switch from most black to mostly white rapidly than the other way around. If you wish to discuss them feel free, but I was focusing on one thing at a time.
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From 1990-2000 in Canarsie homeownership went up and rents and house values went up - and that's in real $. It's frankly silly to suggest, a few d-bag teenagers and their parents aside, that the white people of Canarsie didn't understand this or that they were doing anything other than what black homeowners do today when white people knock on their doors with bags of cash.
They sell out and buy their dream house because deep down they wanted to move anyway.
Maybe, but this poster on the NYC forum thinks differently. Note leaving because the "neighborhood is changing" was triggered by Russian immigrants as well.
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Originally Posted by Bobby BK
Most of my family left Sheepshead Bay when the Russians came in. All of my family left Canarsie when the blacks came in. We received death threats from Italian neighbors in the early 90s for being seen with black people in our house, because the neighbors thought we might be the one to sell out to blockbusters.
Baldwin, NY is ok, but I definitely would not put in the top 100 places to live in the country.
Regarding Canarsie - remember the crime rate was a lot higher then it is today, especially the crack cocaine epidemic in the 80s. And Canarsie directly borders two poorer neighborhoods which had very bad crime rates at the time, East New York and Brownsville. In fact, instead of blaming middle class whites for leaving Canarsie in the 80s and 90s, I think it is remarkable that they stayed so long.
If you're referring to me, I didn't attach any blame on the middle-class whites or make any comment on whether their leaving was a bad choice. Though as for Canarsie's crime rate, I suspect the Mafia played a role it its high crime rate in the 70s and 80s.
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