Tuesday, March 22, 2011

USA TODAY:Black populations fall in major cities

 USA Today...

 


The black population is declining in a growing number of major cities — more evidence that the settlement pattern of African Americans is changing as they disperse to suburbia and warmer parts of the nation.

2010 Census data released so far this year show that 20 of the 25 cities that have at least 250,000 people and a 20% black population either lost more blacks or gained fewer in the past decade than during the 1990s. The declines happened in some traditional black strongholds: Chicago, Oakland, Atlanta, Cleveland and St. Louis.
The loss is fueled by three distinct trends:
•Blacks — many in the middle or upper-middle class — leaving cities for the suburbs.
•Blacks leaving Northern cities for thriving centers in the South.

Shrinking numbers

The black population is declining in many major cities:

Source: Analysis of 2010 Census data by William Frey, Brookings Institution
•The aging of the African-American population, whose growth rate has dropped from more than 16% in the 1990s to about 10% since 2000.
"In the Northern cities, a lot of young blacks who might have grown up in cities are leaving maybe the entire region," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the data. "They're going to the Sun Belt and particularly the South. The ones who stay in the area want to move to the suburbs."
Atlanta's loss of blacks tripled since 2000 to almost 30,000. The percentage of blacks in the city shrank to 53% from 61%. But in Atlanta's vast metropolitan area, the black population soared 40% to 1.7 million, a clear indication that many spread out to suburban counties. The Atlanta region has the second-largest black population after New York.
  • The trend is playing out differently in Chicago. The city lost more than 200,000 residents, and more than 180,000 of them were African-American. In the metropolitan area, the black population fell 3.5% to 1.6 million, pushing it 66,000 below metro Atlanta's. "Sadly for Chicago, I think in large part it's the weather," says Chinwe Onyeagoro, CEO of O-H Community Partners, a Chicago-based economic development consulting firm.
Sunny skies and warm temperatures are luring not only retirees but also young professionals who may have friends or relatives in the Sun Belt — Atlanta and Houston in particular, she says.
Suburbs anywhere are a huge draw.
"Typically, middle-class African-American families make the same kind of choices that white families have made for some time," Onyeagoro says. "As soon as kids are school-age, they move to the suburbs." Suburbs are also luring lower-income blacks who are leaving neighborhoods that don't have supermarkets and other retail, she says.
Recent Census surveys show that the District of Columbia's black population declined since 2000. Census data will be released this week for Washington and other major cities, including New York.
The drop also can be partially attributed to a declining black fertility rate and the aging of the black population, says John Logan, director of US 2010 Project at Brown University, which studies trends in American society. "We're starting to see the graying not only of the white population but of the black population," he says.


I can't believe that this kind of thinking exists in this country today. They make blacks sound like migrating birds or some other animal. The stereo typing of this article is sickening to me. Are blacks any different then whites for wanting to move to warmer weather or suburban living? How is the color of their skin or the color of my skin make any difference in their "migration"? Why are they focusing on the color of skin?

It's as if the media is trying to divide us by color. I reject this kind of thinking. I reject the thinking that we are many races. We are one race, different like snowflakes but still snow. The color of my skin doesn't say anything about me, unless I let it. 

Maybe we need to look at ideology instead of color of skin. Could it be that blacks are leaving the cities for the same reason that whites did? The cities that have had a Democratic Party monopoly for decades are failing. Look at the schools, look at culture and crime. Look at city government and what ideology has been running these cities into the ground. There is a reason why the left-wing keeps pointing at the color of skin. It diverts us from looking at the real problem that is causing people from leaving the cities. The media needs to stop treating blacks like they are some lower form of animal on the Darwinian chart. We are all related to Adam and Eve. We are equal to each other, but not equal to animals. All people are above the animals, we are not animals and neither are our black brothers and sisters.
Am I Not a Man and a Brother?

TIME Mag: Obama Exaggerating Atrocities in Libya to Justify War

AP File
President Barack Obama says he's intervening to prevent atrocities in Libya. But details of behind-the-scenes debates at the White House show he's going to war in part to rehabilitate an idea...the president and some of his advisers are so eager to rehabilitate the idea of preventive intervention that they're exaggerating the violence they say they are intervening to prevent in Libya. "The effort to shoe-horn this into an imminent genocide model is strained," says one senior administration official. That's dangerous. Americans deserve an honest explanation when their leaders take them to war.
Obama and his aides know they are taking a big risk. "It's a huge gamble," says the senior administration official. The administration knows, for example, that al Qaeda, which has active cells in Libya, will try to exploit the power vacuum that will come with a weak or ousted Gaddafi.
"On the military side there was a lot of skepticism in the initial days that a no-fly zone by itself was going to achieve what we wanted militarily," says a senior administration official. Another senior administration official is blunter: "[Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates tried to stop it."
Read the full story at TIME.com

Can you believe Time is saying this? "Obama lied and people died!" Did you know that Bush had more coalition support for Iraq then Obama has for this war in Libya? People are even saying that Obama is taking Al Quida's side in Libya. Congress is asking why Obama went to war illegally without Congress? Obama has been too busy giving away our oil in the Gulf to Brazil and partying in Rio. Can anyone be this inept? Are we even a leader in the world anymore? It's time the media ask this President what he is doing and why he is doing it.

Unions Getting Out Of Control

Service Employees International Union chanted  and became quite vociferous in the lobby of ESSA Bank's headquarters, demanding to meet with the bank's president and CEO, Gary Olson, who is also chairman of the hospital's board of directors. I think people are getting sick and tired of the union bullies. People can see that unions don't create anything. The do however destroy a lot when they don't get their way. It's time to show these idiots who is the boss and fire them.