Blacks Doomed in a Zombie Apocalypse? [Percentage of blacks who live in urban areas]

[Jrubas]

I’m currently in the embryonic stages of writing a nonfiction article (basically gathering information), and was wondering if anyone can help me.

In a nutshell: There’s been a lot of talk about the lack of black characters on AMC’s The Walking Dead (and the ones who do show up tend to die pretty quickly, but that’s a topic for another day). My theory is that since blacks make up roughly 15% of the U.S.‘s population (as opposed whites’ 75), there are bound to be fewer black survivors (since there are fewer total).

Then it occurred to me: Many blacks live in urban areas. In most zombie fiction, urban areas turn into death traps fairly quickly, meaning a lot of blacks are doomed from the start.

My question: Just what percentage of the black population actually lives in urban areas (the cutoff for “urban” being a city, say, the size of Cincinnati), Also…does my theory make any practical sense?

[Colibri]

I edited the thread title to better reflect the actual question.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Jrubas]

Thanks. In retrospect I see how the title might be considered offensive. Apologies.

[Colibri]

@Jrubas

My question: Just what percentage of the black population actually lives in urban areas (the cutoff for “urban” being a city, say, the size of Cincinnati), Also…does my theory make any practical sense?

From here:

Across the nation, four out of five whites live outside of the cities and 86 percent of whites live in neighborhoods where minorities make up less than 1 percent of the population. In contrast, 70 percent of Blacks and Latinos live in the cities or inner-ring suburbs.

So yes, the black population is more concentrated in urban areas than the white population.

However, I’m pretty sure survival rates of blacks in a zombie apocalypse have a lot more to do with other factors than reality.

[Colibri]

@Jrubas

Thanks. In retrospect I see how the title might be considered offensive. Apologies.

I didn’t think it was so much offensive as misleading about the General Question that’s being posed.

[Jrubas]

@Colibri

From here:

So yes, the black population is more concentrated in urban areas than the white population.

However, I’m pretty sure survival rates of blacks in a zombie apocalypse have a lot more to do with other factors than reality.

Perhaps. It just seems that if so many blacks live in cities, their numbers would take a real beating. Ditto Latinos.

[magnusblitz]

It can be a bit difficult to ascertain since a lot of census data uses “metropolitan area” which is basically useless, since there’s a difference between living in the central downtown of a major metropolis and living out in the suburbs. Some googling turned up this article from 2006 which claims that 51% of blacks live in “central-city neighborhoods” as opposed to only 21% of whites. On the other hand, just five years later it seemed a lot of those blacks were shifting to the suburbs - Atlanta, for example, lost a sizable amount of blacks in the city itself but grew 40% in the metropolitan area, which seems to show that they were living the city for the suburbs.

[Colibri]

@Jrubas

Perhaps. It just seems that if so many blacks live in cities, their numbers would take a real beating. Ditto Latinos.

Yes, but that’s not the reason there are relatively few in zombie fiction. TV shows are more concerned with the characteristics of the characters they feature than in reflecting demographic realities. But why that might result in disproportionately few black characters is better discussed in Cafe Society, or perhaps Great Debates.