Black Flight - Other Uses

Other Uses

The term "black flight" has also been used to describe African-American parents in some cities moving their children from public schools to charter schools or suburban schools featuring open enrollment. This has taken place in a variety of places, including the Twin Cities and the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Other issues in the city proper of Dallas include an increase in immigration of Hispanics. In the 1980s and 1990s, the school district had a majority of black students. Today it has a preponderance of Hispanic students, in a kind of ethnic succession that reflects residential changes in the city. Hispanics constitute 68 percent of students, while blacks are 26 percent, and whites are 5 percent. In addition, 87 percent of the Hispanic students qualify as "economically disadvantaged," and many are just learning English. Middle-class blacks are moving to suburbs in a repetition of earlier migration of middle-class whites. The issues of schools and residential patterns are strongly related to economic class, as well as parents' preferring that their children go to schools with native speakers of English.