When America Can No Longer Be Divided By Just Black and White

In Falls Church, west of Washington D.C., where I have been living, the only black family in the neighborhood recently hung up a “for sale” sign in front of their house. Their moving out seems to coincide with the current migration trend of black Americans as a whole.

In the past 20 years, black Americans have been moving around the country in two main directions. One is from the north down to the south. Since the 1990s, the population of black America has been dropping dramatically in northern states, such as Illinois and Michigan, while cities in the south, such as Atlanta, Dallas and Houston, have become popular among the emerging black middle class. The other direction is from big cities to suburban areas. In the past decade, 92 out of 100 cities in America saw a decrease in the population of black Americans.

In the near future, blacks in Washington D.C. will no longer make up the majority of the population. The 2010 census in America showed that compared with 10 years ago, the number of white Americans in Washington D.C. increased by 31 percent, making up 39 percent of the total population of the city, whereas the number of black Americans dropped by 12 percent, making up 51 percent of the total city population. Since World War II, the people in Washington D.C. have been mostly black, and in 1970 their population percentage in the city even reached 70 percent. The mayors of Washington D.C. have been black ever since 1975, but there might be white mayors in the future.

From a wider perspective, we can see that the long-lasting distinctive division between blacks and whites in the population structure in America no longer exists. According to the latest statistics, the number of white Americans has increased in the past decade from 194.6 million to 196.8 million, an increase of only one percent, while its percentage of the total American population dropped from 69 percent to 64 percent. The number of Hispanic Americans rose from 35.3 million in 2000 to 50.5 million in 2010, an increase of 43 percent, taking up 16 percent of the total American population. Black Americans numbered 38.9 million, only 13 percent of the total American population, which means they have lost their place as the second largest ethnic group in the United States.

Ruble, director of the Comparative Urban Studies program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, suggests that these statistics mean that America will have a future where everyone is of a minority ethnic group; being the capital, Washington D.C. has already taken the lead and demonstrated what it will be like.

Some people worry that the drop in the black population in Washington D.C. may add to the tension of the local politics because of the polar distinction between blacks and whites. Black Americans in the city have their own social networks, and if the white people take power, they would only care about building dog parks or bicycle lanes for whites and going to the cafeteria where whites would like to go, and they wouldn’t go to black churches or do volunteering work for schools for black kids. Consequently, many black Americans may feel that their relationship with whites will become tense.

Others think that the key point of the problem is not the drop in the population of a certain ethnic group but rather whether the person in power would insist on the policy of ethnic harmony. Former mayor of Washington D.C. Anthony Williams thinks that it’s unnecessary to worry about the change in Washington D.C.’s future. It’s like that in Boston: There aren’t many Irish people, yet the Irish culture still has a big influence on Boston even today. And when the governor of Massachusetts wanted to renew his term, he had to cotton up to the Irish in order to achieve his goal. By the same token, even if the future mayor of Washington D.C. is white, he has still to take into consideration the interests of the black community.

Now that the population structure in America is no longer distinctively divided by white and black, America is bound to face all sorts of conflicts between ethnic groups regarding economics, political interests and the cultural gap. Therefore, “the ethnic melting pot” in America may have a whole new interpretation under the new circumstance.