Since I moved to the suburbs and started this blog, I’ve been trying to validate my decision by pointing out all the OTHER people who are ALSO moving to the suburbs. For example, we’ve seen how Amy Winehouse moved to the suburbs, and then the Crips and the Bloods (that was a big day for us), and then immigrants in general. We’ve also discussed the debate about whether people in general are still moving out to the suburbs, or whether they’re starting to go the other way.
But today, we have a report on a big “get” for our side: African-Americans:
Kendall Taylor grew up on this city’s tough South Side and is a pastor at Lodebar Church and Ministries in his old neighborhood. But he lives 35 miles away, in Plainfield, Ill.
“I didn’t want my children to grow up in the same environment I did,” says Taylor, 38, who bought a house in Plainfield with his wife Karen, 38, in 2007. They have one son, Jeremiah, who is 15. Taylor’s mom, sisters, nieces and nephews still live in Chicago. The youngsters, he says, “all want to come and live with me” in the quiet, but fast-growing suburb of about 40,000.
Taylor’s decision to live outside Chicago makes him part of a shift tracked by the 2010 Census that surprised many demographers and urban planners: He is among hundreds of thousands of blacks who moved away from cities with long histories as centers of African-American life, including Chicago, Oakland, Washington, New Orleans and Detroit.
(From USA Today) (emphasis added).
That’s right! The cool people, the ones who set the cultural trends for all the white people to follow. They’re all moving out here, those traditionally lily-white suburbs that everyone in the city makes fun of. Talk about validation!
This is sooo much better than Amy Winehouse.
[…] Winehouse a few years ago, back when she was alive. Then we got reports that more immigrants and African-Americans and lesbians were moving into the […]