"New York is still the classic melting pot, with a whole diverse array of immigrants coming in, but the suburbs are now becoming part of this bigger melting pot," said William H. Frey, the Brookings Institution demographer who conducted the analysis. "The suburbs are now tasting this new diversity."
His analysis found that whites declined to 52.2 percent of the population in 2004 from 54.2 percent in 2000 in the census-defined metropolitan area, which includes the city, Long Island, the northern suburbs, northern New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania, but not Connecticut.
"We went down 2.1 percent from 2000 to 2004," Dr. Frey said. "If we go another 2 percent before the end of the decade, you're there." He added: "The suburbs are now contributing to this. They've all shown a decline in the percent of whites since 1990."
And herein lies the rub. When I was a kid on Long Island in the 1980s, Nassau was VERY segregated (as cyborg and I have discussed at length on other threads), with only a handful of Hispanics, and blacks segregated to Hempstead and Roosevelt. From what I understand, Nassau is increasingly Hispanic (especially on the South Shore) and Asian (Koreans and Chinese on the North Shore, East Indians all over). The descendants of the Italian, Jewish, and Irish immigrants who can't afford to live in the "exclusive" communities are simply voting with their feet.
However, wait until they get to Florida and North Carolina, and they realize that the same phenomenon is happening there as well, albeit in not as large numbers. I mean, is there ANYWHERE (outside of a handful of retirement communities) where the white population is increasing faster than that of Asians and Hispanics?
I know I've said this before, but in my NJ experience the white suburbs didn't experience flight when Asian families started moving in--if anything, it was a sign that the schools were good and going to get even more competitive. Still segregated across other lines, though.
Can run but can't hide from black people. Sorry.
I can't wait to leave LI. The racial steering was blatant as it could get when my mom went to get a house and they were urging her to move to the blackest areas of Nassau County. Forget about moving into places like Levittown and East Meadow. They barely let asians in BUT it's all about hate for black people as it always was.
Not on a state level. Exurbia and latent white ethnic enclaves might be possibilities on a local level.