The Black Informant

S.F. moves to stem African American exodus

Critics say effort to reverse longtime trend may be too late

Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, April 9, 2007

Joseph Blue has lived in San Francisco for 20 years and toughed out the drastic decline in its black population, a phenomenon that persists despite being recognized for decades as a problem.

Neighborhoods that once thrived with African American culture and black-owned businesses have all but disappeared.

“San Francisco no longer has a viable black community,” said Blue, an African American who lives in the Western Addition. “The middle class is gone, and what we have left is underprivileged, uneducated, poor black folks.”

San Francisco officials are now calling the thousands of black people who have moved away “the African American diaspora,” and the mayor’s office is putting together a task force to figure out what can be done to preserve the remaining black population and cultivate new residents.

San Francisco’s black population has dropped from 96,000 — or 13.4 percent of the city — in 1970 to an estimated 47,000 in 2005, about 6.5 percent of city residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. African Americans make up about 12.1 percent of the nation’s population overall.

“The decline is phenomenal,” said Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California.

San Francisco is not alone. From 1995 to 2000, Oakland and neighborhoods of Los Angeles lost tens of thousands of black residents. Not one West Coast city made a list of the nation’s top cities for African Americans compiled last year by Black Enterprise magazine based on income potential, the cost of living, proximity to employers and housing costs. Most are in the South and most — coincidentally or not — have black mayors. (more…)

As the article suggests, this is a trend that has been going on for quite sometime. Unfortunately it is a trend where not too many Black Democrats will hold their party responsible.

The three major contributors to this trend are the constant insertion of new taxes by our Democratically controlled state legislature (the elected Republican lawmakers are just as guilty), real estate costs that seemingly have no end in sight on how high they can go and the flood of illegals in our state who are given state funded entitlements that should go only to LEGAL residents.

What really pisses me off about this situation is that while the Katrina story is still being billed as a “deliberate” attempt to flush Black folks out of a region, this situation gets very little play amongst many of our Black commentators out there simply because they know themselves the risk they run reputation-wise for blasting “the party of the people”. My guess is once more White mainstream media begins to make it into a big deal, many of them will follow suit. Unfortunately, that is usually how it goes.

The real truth here is that for a very long time, Blacks in both the San Francisco and Los Angeles area have been voicing their complaints about this trend for a very long time. As more of us are able to pull ourselves out of poverty, like so many others in the middle class we are finding that the FAR suburbs of these cities (and even just a full exit from the state altogether) is becoming the better option. What many of us are leaving behind are cities that becoming full of non-English speaking people who are being catered to hand and foot by the same politicians who claim they need the “black” vote while the ultra rich in these cities just sit back and preach to the world how selfish America is when it comes to our treatment of the poor. I challenge you to drive through their part of town to witness first hand how THEY treat the poor in their own backyard.

While many Black Californians pay their hard earned money into our educational system, we get very little in return as more of our tax money is being allocated for programs to assist the children of illegals in our state. Black kids that want to excel have to deal with the fact that oftentimes teachers have to divert some of their attention to kids who are just learning the English language.

Perhaps cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco need a hurricane. That way Bush the RepubliKKKan can get the blame for it and Blacks around the rest of the country will see the economic injustice that has been happening to our people in this part of the country under Democratic leadership for years.

Related: “Read and WEEP!”