Census Data Shows D.C. Is Still Kind of "Chocolate City"

Hanging on by a thread.

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Washington, D.C., our nation's capital, was once proudly recognized as "Chocolate City" due to its predominantly African-American population. That's changed dramatically over time, as D.C. has become considerably more, um, vanilla. However, new data from the Census Bureau reports that D.C.'s population is still mostly black. 

According to the report, just over 50 percent of D.C.'s 632,323 residents were "black or African-American" as of July 2012. It should be noted that the number has fallen from 50.8 percent in July 2011 and 51.6 percent in July 2010. As a testament to how the times are a changin', D.C. was 71 percent black in 1970.

D.C.'s "Chocolate City" status has been in question, because though the overall population grew between July 2011 and July 2012 thanks to an influx of new residents from other states, the number of black residents seems to decrease annually. This Census Bureau report is using statistics from July 2012, so it's likely that the figure as dropped once again, possibly even below 50 percent. 

However, take into consideration the fact that the report did not classify people of mixed race as black. The number of residents who are black and part-black accounted for 51.58 percent of the population, so there's that.

[via Washington City Paper]

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