Philadelphia's Black Population Tops All Groups

[Mendoza Line]

Posted on Mon, Apr. 25, 2011

City's black residents now top all groups

Their numbers dropped, but other changes put them first. Population rose for the first time in 50 years.

By Michael Matza, Kia Gregory, and John Duchneskie

Inquirer Staff Writers

African descendants have called Philadelphia home for centuries, with the first U.S. Census, in 1790, listing 2,099 "free" blacks and 373 slaves.

Today, the city's black population is 644,287, according to the latest census, and for the first time it clearly outnumbers all other racial or ethnic groups.

This evolution happened even though the number of African Americans in the city, excluding Hispanics, declined about 1,800 over the last decade and their share of the population remained about the same.

Key to the new black plurality: the continued steep decline in the city's white population. In 2000, each group accounted for about 42 percent of city residents, but the white share is now 37 percent, after a loss of 82,000 people.

Meanwhile, an influx of Hispanics, Asians, and other groups - now 21 percent of the city's 1.5 million people - boosted Philadelphia's total for the first time in 50 years.

The black plurality coincides with another trend: More and more middle- and working-class African Americans are leaving the city for suburbia. Since 2000, the black population of the city's Pennsylvania suburbs jumped 26 percent - by 47,000.

"You need to look at it not only from a racial-ethnic point of view, but also the distribution of incomes," said Mark Mather, senior demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit in Washington that interprets census data.

Are relatively "higher-income blacks moving away from the city, leaving behind a poorer population without a lot of prospects?" he asked. "That wouldn't bode well."

In the last decade, average income in white households in Philadelphia rose 4 percent to $65,100, adjusted for inflation. But black household income fell 10 percent to $40,200. Overall, the average income in the city fell 1 percent.

Neighborhoods with the highest concentration of African Americans - West Oak Lane, Kingsessing, and Nicetown, among others - were slammed twice.

Many who could move out did. Many who remained experienced a significant drop in income. In Tioga-Nicetown, which is 94 percent black, average household income fell 35 percent in the last decade - the city's biggest drop - to $26,800. That's half of the citywide average.

As gentrification gathered speed in some predominantly black parts of the city, superheating property values, several things happened. Some homeowners cashed in and bought again, either in suburbia or other parts of Philadelphia. Some renters got squeezed out or were left stranded in pockets of poverty.

"Yes, Philadelphia has 42 percent blacks," said Voffee Jabateh, director of the African Cultural Alliance of North America, a Southwest Philadelphia advocacy group for African immigrants, but by and large "these are not blacks that have a strong economic voice."

U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Democrat whose district covers parts of North and West Philadelphia and Montgomery County, said he saw the movement of black residents to better neighborhoods as "identical in many ways to patterns of other demographic groups . . . as people make their way into the middle class."

Across Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester Counties, the proportion of black residents grew in 176 of 238 municipalities, mirroring a national trend, though still fewer than 10 percent of Philadelphia-area suburbanites are black.

In the 1950s, said Norristown municipal administrator David Forrest, mortgages "were more available to whites than blacks," leading to "primarily white suburbanization."

Black upward mobility and more available credit, particularly in the last decade, he said, spurred movement to inner-ring suburbs, especially in southeastern Delaware County, where better schools, lower housing density, and public transportation lured people from Southwest Philadelphia, including large numbers of African immigrants.

Sharon Hill and East Lansdowne for the first time became majority-black towns, according to the census. They joined Yeadon, Colwyn, Darby Borough, Chester, and Chester Township - already majority black in 2000 - as new pillars in the inner ring of predominantly African American suburbs.

"It's the upward mobility of people coming out of the city," said Mary Bell, manager of demographic and economic analysis for the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. "The impact is biggest in Delaware County because the houses there are more affordable."

Unlike Delaware County, where a fifth of the population is black, Bucks and Chester Counties experienced little change. According to the 2010 census, fewer than 6 percent of residents of those counties are black.

In Montgomery County, the number of black residents grew from 55,303 in 2000 to 67,582 in 2010, nudging its percentage of the total population to 8.4 percent.

Suburban diversity also was spurred by the arrival of Latinos, up 105 percent last decade, and Asians, up 72 percent.

[Chris46139]

Phillybirds moved to the burbs and population rose, no coincidence there

[PHILLYBIRDS20]

actually this is true. Took my peeps with me

[FalconFreak]

most of the whites who left now live in Atlanta...