UNDERCOVERED: On Philly's black flight

In case you missed it: Metropolis on the erosion of the city's black middle class.

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UNDERCOVERED: On Philly's black flight

POSTED: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 9:00 AM

A series on under-the-radar stories worth reading.

Philadelphia's black middle class is slipping away — but they're not going far — according to the latest Census data, Tom Ferrick Jr. reported in Metropolis. Only 20 percent of black households in the city havd incomes of $60,000 or more from 2005 to 2009, down from the 26 percent reported in 1999 and 1989. Ferrick defines the phenomenon as "black suburbanization," rather than a simple decline in income levels, given that the city's total black population also declined.

"The numbers reveal the outline of a clear trend, one that began in the 1990's," he writes. "The number of African Americans living in the four Pennsylvania suburban counties that surround Philadelphia rose 32 percent in the last decade, rising from 194,000 to 256,000."

We're not the only city seeing a population shift among black residents. The New York Times reported this summer that many blacks from large northeastern cities are moving to the South, reversing the Great Migration northward.

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