Income gap widens within the black community

[Alexkid]

Income gap widens within the black community
JESSE WASHINGTON
(The Associated Press)

09:44:23PM (ET) Thursday,December 8,2011.

What happens within the black community when the gap widens between the poor and the affluent? That's one question raised by new census data showing well-off African-Americans leaving cities for the suburbs and the South while the ranks of the black poor grow larger.

Over the past decade, the share of black households ranking among the poorest poor — those earning less than $15,000 — climbed from 20 percent to 26 percent, according to census figures released Thursday. Other racial and ethnic groups posted smaller increases. During the same period, the percentage of African-Americans making $200,000 or more a year was unchanged at 1.1 percent, even after the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, in a reversal of the Great Migration that once pushed blacks to flee Southern racism for economic opportunity in northern cities, many affluent blacks are returning to the South. Incomes and black populations have grown in the last decade in cities such as Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.

...African-Americans have overwhelmingly supported liberal policies since Democratic President Lyndon Johnson pushed through civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. He is reachable at jwashington(at)ap.org or Twitter.

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Associated Press Writer Hope Yen in Washington contributed to this report.

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Concerned economic concerns.