In a major demographic shift for a neighborhood that has long been "synonymous with black urban America," the majority of Harlem residents are no longer black, according to the Times. In a decade when Harlem's population grew more than it has since the 1940s, the number of black residents has fallen to its lowest point since the 1920s.
In 1970, black people made up 64 percent of the residents living between East 96th Street, West 106th Street, and West 155th Street. As of 2008, blacks constitute just 41 percent of the population. The paper notes that "[c]hange has been even more pronounced" in Central Harlem — an area north of 110th Street bound by Fifth and St. Nicholas avenues — where the Latino population has surged by 27 percent while the white population has more than doubled since 2000.
While gentrification is certainly one way to characterize the neighborhood's changing demographics, some say it's not an entirely accurate way to describe the community's transition. They argue that newcomers haven't needed to dislodge longtime residents because the Harlem was in such bad shape that many denizens moved out on their own accord before gentrifiers arrived. "This place was vacated," said Howard Dodson, director of Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, who himself recently moved to Newark. "Gentrification is about displacement."
