I am human. I, too, doubt and worry. I don’t know if I’m an apostle of Black power or a Don Quixote of it. And yet, I remain convinced of the theory I have proposed.
Even without me advocating a reverse migration, it would be happening. In a report released this week by the Brookings Institution, demographer William H. Frey wrote:
The reversal of the Great Migration began as a trickle in the 1970s, increased in the 1990s, and turned into a virtual evacuation from many northern areas in subsequent decades. The movement is largely driven by younger, college-educated Black Americans, from both northern and western places of origin. They have contributed to the growth of the “New South,” especially in Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as metropolitan regions such as Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. And although these areas are simultaneously in the midst of new immigrant growth and white in-migration, the continuing “New Great Migration” has served to give Black Americans a large — and in many cases, dominant — presence in most parts of America’s South.
For the last few months, I’ve been filming a documentary based on my book, and that filming has brought me into intimate contact with Black people who support the idea of a new Great Migration or are dismissive of it. I have talked with people who are part of the Reverse Migration and those who can’t fathom the idea of relocating to the South.
I have talked to more people than I can remember.
And in the process, I’ve learned quite a bit about the Black people who are part of this reverse migration, some of it reassuring, other parts depressing.
I have learned that the assumption or accrual of political power is almost never a primary consideration for people who migrate. Power is always an undercurrent, but almost never an articulated rationale. The ability to feel safe, to have opportunities, to feel culturally celebrated, are in fact expressions of power and require the maintenance of power, but people don’t necessarily link them.