Brooklyn’s not Black anymore. The white population in the New York City borough has risen by 8.4 percent since 2010 while Black residents experienced an 8.7 percent decline, according to a newly released U.S. Census report.

“We can’t see the future of this city rise, and the decrease of hope decline for Black, brown and poor New Yorkers,” Democratic mayoral nominee and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said about the drop in Brooklyn’s Black population at a recent press conference.

It’s not just Brooklyn that saw a decrease in Black residents. 

Gentrification is pushing Black people out all over The Big Apple. While the five boroughs gained 629,057 people between 2010 and 2020, which equates to an impressive 7.7 percent population bump, the Black population across the city decreased by 4.5 percent, The New York Post reported.  

“The largest decrease in populations in this city are Black folks, and I don’t want to see our city built up and displace Black folks who have been here for a long time making this a great city,” Adams said.

Some blame hip-hop mogul Jay-Z for helping speed up the displacement of Black Brooklyn residents when he helped usher in the massive Barclays Center arena project in Downtown Brooklyn that pushed out longtime local business and Black residents who could no longer afford the area’s rising prices. However, the trend has been going on for years. 

Between 2000 and 2010, Brooklyn’s Black population decreased from 849,000 to 799,000. It’s now at 730,000, according to this year’s census. 

Expensive housing is one of the elements driving the trend but there’s more than gentrification going on. Migration to the South by Black Brooklynites is another driver.

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Many Black homeowners who came North in the 1940s through the 1960s are now retired and are selling their Brooklyn homes at a substantial profit and returning South, according to John Mollenkopf, director of the Center of Urban Research at CUNY’s Graduate Center.

Then there is the Black migration to the suburbs.

“There’s been an upward trend in incomes and professional standing and education and they’re suburbanizing just like the white ethnics in the generation before them,” Mollenkopf said.