When we think of wealth, prosperity and opportunity, black families don’t come to mind. We’ve all consumed a historical narrative that black people, and by extension their communities, are deficits. The manifestation of deficit thinking can be found in notions that small black municipalities need to be annexed or merged with larger less black cities in order to prosper. Developers, business owners, and other stakeholders subsequently don’t invest in cities that would otherwise grow.
Simply put, building upon assets in majority-black cities is an approach that we have yet to significantly try. There are valuable assets in black communities that developers, economists, and urbanists genuinely don’t consider. What I intend to detail here, in my continued series on why majority-black cities matter, is the vital idea that there needs to be a better understanding of assets in majority-black cities that warrant investments.
Diversity, affordability and the presence of a solid middle-class factor in where families and companies consider establishing residences. A thriving black middle-class, a pool of potential workers, and quality educational institutions help form a foundation for population and economic growth.
Economic prosperity and opportunity for growth exist in many small cities that happen to be majority-black. Some of these cities have elements that should draw families considering new places to live and business owners looking to relocate or set up shop. High incomes are proxies for decent job opportunities, good schools, and safe living environments.
A national map of majority-black cities, ranked by median household incomes of black families, shows that 124 communities outpace the national median household income for all races ($53,889), according to data from the 2015 American Community Survey. Black families are especially thriving in various city/suburbs in the state of Maryland, which hosts more than half of the top 124 majority-black cities in a ranking prepared by the Brookings Metro program.
All majority-black places with black median incomes higher than the national average have populations under 100,000 people; the largest being Waldorf, Md. (pop. 71,399) with a median income of $81,592. The smallest place on the list, Highland Beach, Md. (pop. 110) has the highest median black household income at $158,750.
It’s worth noting here that using median income as a proxy for financial status is a very imperfect practice. Measuring the middle of an income distribution – median income – of a particular city often masks the earning and labor disparities of particular groups that are not employed by the dominant industries in a market. That’s especially the case for black families when popular publications put out various lists for the wealthiest places to live. Not everyone benefits from a thriving economy. That’s why colleagues of mine within the Brookings Metro program encourage more robust measures of economic health that include growth, inclusion and prosperity. In addition, there can be large sampling errors – especially among smaller places – when applying median household income. Still, median household income is a convenient and widely used measure that relays associated features of the labor market.
Wealthy black inner- and outer-ring suburbs find themselves alongside their low-income counterparts in the same current that would have large cities becoming larger, subsuming smaller cities that would otherwise die on the vine.
“Merger with the central city is an option more physically contiguous inner-ring suburbs should consider,” writes Aaron Renn, a researcher at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Journalist Eduardo Porter, commenting on small cities’ struggles to adapt to economic shifts, writes, “As technology continues to make inroads into the economy … it bodes ill for the future of such areas.”
Ostensibly, many wealthy black cities with people benefiting from booming economies don’t fit the description of the post-industrial town that hasn’t adapted well to economic change. Instead, they are trying to figure out how to make their small city work like a large one.
Black incomes outpace the national average in 124 majority-black cities: So where’s the investment?
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keep trying to tell folks to come to the DMV and live life.