Shifting city demographics present an opportunity to build coalitions, address inequality

Minority-majority cities are driving American growth. New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, for example, combined for an estimated 16% of the nation’s total gross domestic product in 2021—future projections anticipate a continuation of this trend, and an opportunity to create coalitions to address injustices.

Between 2015 and 2020, 22% of U.S. cities were majority-minority, according to a new report from the Brookings Institute, “Recognizing Black and Latino-majority cities is the first step to finding a real world Wakanda,” The report’s title refers to Marvel’s fictional city, Wakanda, which appears in the Black Panther comic series. Researchers analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

“These places included 364 midsized cities, 1,950 small cities, and close to 3,000 very small places. Majority-minority cities tend to be larger, with 17 large cities with over 500,000 residents and 10 very large cities with over 1 million residents,” the report says.

It’s a trend that’s expected to continue, and with it comes an opportunity for community leaders to encourage “racial coalitions that can shift the balance of power around critical quality of life areas such as housing, employment, education, and political representation,” the report continues. “Black and Latino or Hispanic cities reflect America’s rapidly shifting demographics, which demand a more strategic recognition of the value of racial diversity in our cities and towns.”

The Census Bureau projects the nation will become “minority white” in 2045. Digging further into the demographics of American cities, the report documents cities with majority Black and Latino populations via an interactive map.

“Black-majority places tend to be clustered in the Southeast while Latino-majority places are in the Southwest,” the report says. The nation’s largest majority-minority cities are New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, and San Jose. Detroit is the nation’s largest Black-majority city, followed by Memphis, Baltimore, and Atlanta.

Mapping minority-majority cities is the first step that’s required to build coalitions, which “contribute to building more livable and just communities,” the report notes.