Metro Plates
Black New York: Growth and Movement
In New York City, metros are where the national movement story is actually decided — the gains and losses of a few dozen large communities add up to the country's direction. This plate reads the movement record of Black New York, a metro of about 3.4 million Black residents, against the currents that have reshaped Black geography in the present era.
Growth and Movement
In New York, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. The metropolitan area holds about 3.4 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — more than any other metropolitan area in the country, and the five boroughs of New York City themselves hold about two million, roughly one in four city residents. For New York City, held against the national currents, the state's own rows say how its movement stands.
For New York, the national movement figures are the current; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is where the current lands. In New York City, brooklyn holds the largest Black population of the boroughs — approaching one million Black residents — concentrated in its central and eastern neighborhoods, from Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights through Flatbush and East New York, neighborhoods that also form the center of Caribbean New York. Two sides frame the comparison here: the national midpoint, and the households of New York City.
In New York, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. The second was Caribbean: after immigration law reform in the 1960s, Jamaicans, Haitians, Trinidadians, Guyanese, and Dominicans arrived in the hundreds of thousands, making New York home to the largest Jamaican and Haitian populations outside their home countries. Here, on the plate for New York City, held against the national currents, the state's own rows say how its movement stands.
The Currents Around the Metro
In New York City, the present era's currents run in several directions at once: toward the South and its suburbs, out of the highest-cost coastal metros, and into mid-sized metros whose Black populations are growing fastest in percentage terms. The New York metro's record, in the published counts, is its own negotiation among those currents. In New York City, each decennial census and each survey year revises the picture at the margin; the direction of the lines is the story, and this plate is built to be re-read as the lines extend.
Movement into and out of the New York metro is measured in the federal record as the difference between counts, and its streams — births and deaths inside the metro, arrivals from other American places, arrivals from abroad — are published separately in the estimates program. In New York City, read together with the concentration plate, the movement record explains how the share above came to be, and where it is tending.
In New York, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. In New York City, the figures here are the published ones, rounded as the source agencies round them, and they describe the population as the federal record counts it: residents, in place, on the reference dates of the census and the survey. Read back against the table, the general pattern resolves into New York City's particular numbers.
In New York, that national movement pattern arrives as local gain or loss, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Read this plate together with its companions. Held against the national midpoint, New York City's own rows say how its households stand.
The migration currents read locally in New York, where the state rows below set the population whose movement the national pattern frames. In New York City, what the federal record cannot do is count a place's meaning — only its people. In New York City, read with the table, the general pattern and the local figures correct each other.
Filed in this series as Black New York: Growth and Movement, the plate below states the published record for its subject and reads it closely. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black residents of the New York metro, alone or in combination: 3.4 million; Black share of the New York metro population, alone or in combination: 24%; Black share of the state population, alone: 16%. The sources set the boundary: what they publish, this plate reports; the rest is left alone.
A closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for New York are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. In New York City, a reader who needs the underlying counts will find them in the published tables of the source named below, from which every figure here descends without alteration beyond the rounding the source itself applies.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black residents of the New York metro, alone or in combination | 3.4 million |
| Black share of the New York metro population, alone or in combination | 24% |
| Black share of the state population, alone | 16% |
| Black share of the United States population, alone (population estimates) | 13.5% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census; American Community Survey; Population Estimates Program. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.