January 7, 2011 | 10:49 AM | By

UnChocolate “By 2020, if not sooner”

FILED UNDER: Around the City

Flickr: vpickering

This brief but information-packed blurb from DCist’s On this day in 2010-feature caught my attention this morning, via their roundup, even if the numbers are a year old:

D.C. Wire reported some new census figures earlier today that show that Washington, D.C.’s African-American population continues to dwindle, while the presence of whites, Latinos and Asians continues to grow. The city is now about 54 percent black, 40 percent white, 4 percent Asian and 9 percent Hispanic. Those figures compare to 61 percent black and 34 percent white in 2000, which translates to 27,000 African-American residents moving out and 40,000 whites moving in over the course of 2000 to 2008. Some estimates predict that pace could mean D.C. would cease being a majority African-American city by 2020, if not sooner.

About the author

DCentric was created to examine the ways race and class interact in Washington, D.C., a city with a vibrant mix of cultures and neighborhoods. Your guides to the changing district are reporters Anna John and Elahe Izadi. View all posts by Anna →

  • Steven Swann

    In many ways, the demographic shift in DC has been telegraphed by social and economic realities extant for decades. However, what I find far more intriguing is the often polarized regard in which people hold this information. Lauded privately as a “cleaning” phenomenon wherein neighborhoods are upgraded to “better” custodians? Mourned as the displacement of the disenfranchised? Or even apathetically dismissed as merely inevitable? These data seem destined for a pedestal in the pantheon of a discourse that seems unable to get past the tribalism and fingerpointing that forbids an understanding of gentrification’s deep and vast systemic roots.

  • Singularity2030

    Is this neccessarily a bad thing? Sometimes it seems people celebrate the dwindling of “whitey” and the making of the United States into a United Colors of Benetton.

    Why?

    I don’t have a stake in what “color” the US is – I don’t care, but I’m just wondering why one is considering more p.c. than the other.