Julianne Hing

ColorLines Reports: San Francisco’s Black Exodus

You ever walked around San Francisco? It’s touted as a diverse and welcoming city, but there ain’t a lot of Black folks. Take MUNI around town. Plenty of Asians and Latinos, lots of white people. Only a handful of Blacks.

Jamilah King, reporting for ColorLines, shines a little light on the dynamics at play. Turns out, the city knows there’s a problem—though they seem more troubled by the damage knowledge of the dwindling Black population might do to the city’s reputation, than people’s actual welfare.

King writes:

Ironically, since the end of the urban renewal programs in the ’70s, San Francisco city officials have commissioned several studies investigating why Black residents are leaving and how to get them back. Recommendations in the past have included training young Black entrepreneurs and establishing a Black tourist district like Chinatown.

Yet the hemorrhaging has continued.

Since the last report in 1990, San Francisco’s Black population has dropped by 40 percent, faster than any other major city in the country. According to the latest Census data, Black residents make up only 6.9 percent of the city’s current population and are projected to make up as little as 4.6 percent in 2050.

Click here to read the rest of the article, and click after the jump to check out more of Hatty Lee’s photographs.

Posted at 3:08 PM, Aug 12, 2009 in ColorLines Features | Gentrification | Permalink | View Comments