Even without the answer to Sunny Daze’s important question, we can say “catastrophic” with some certainty. About 13% of the US population is Black-only. If we limit the people in the OP’s question to only those who identify as Black-only, we’re still talking about 42 million Americans. The loss of over 42 million people would have an enormous impact on the economy. There would of course, be a severe worker shortage, but there would also be 42 million fewer consumers, which would be a blow to most industries and, of course, Wall Street.
And then there’s the impact on the tax base.
What happens to the real estate owned by the departed Blacks? Do the ex-pats retain ownership from abroad?
If you snapped your fingers and all the blacks in the US went back to Africa?
Africa would get a little better because blacks in the US are better educated and have higher standards for civics than Africans seem to. So you’d probably see more economic growth and political reform in Africa as an influx of American blacks who have high school and college educations and who take civics seriously move there (blacks vote almost as often as whites and vote more than other minority groups for example).
Israel is a democracy with a good economy despite the fact that its neighbors are not democracies and do not have good economies. The reason Israel is different is that it is made up of immigrants who had higher standards, higher levels of education and higher levels of human capital. So just as Israel created a democracy with a good economy amongst neighbors who have none of those things, I think 30 million blacks going to Africa would have the same effect. The economic and political situation in Africa at large would get a bit better.
In the US, politics would move very hard to the right since blacks make up 1/4 of the democratic coalition, and are among the coalitions most reliable voters. So you’d see a mass movement in politics to the right here.
If so, it would be very temporary. Losing 13% of the labor force, and in particular areas especially, would mean we would be desperate for labor. Which means immigration. Which means other minority groups that the Right don’t like much. It’s either let them in or watch your businesses go down the tubes most rapidly.
Now, if all those educated, high-standards former-Americans landed in a concentrated area of Africa, you could see some changes right away. Drop a few million Americans in Nigeria and it will cease being a garbage fire very quickly. Of course, this is assuming that the sudden influx of all these people doesn’t tax the existing systems to the point that they disintegrate. That would be…problematic.
If it were specifically blacks only that left America, I guess some other racial minority group would then by default become the most-discriminated group. Right now it’s arguably blacks that get the worst of it, but if they left, then someone else would be it. So…maybe Hispanics? (Native Americans seem too small a percentage of the populace to be the “it” group)
And I agree with Wesley Clark; if all blacks left America, the Democratic Party would be crippled, at least temporarily. The Republicans would dominate presidential elections and Congress until things eventually reset and sorted themselves back into some 50-50 parity.
Good question, especially when you consider that the average black US citizen is 12-18% white, and about 30% of white US citizens have a black ancestor somewhere.
I think the effect would be quite temporary. The same Democratic ideas that were widely popular with whites became considerably less popular with whites once blacks benefited as well. There’s no reason to think that wouldn’t change right back, once the Deplorables knew their hard-earned tax dollars weren’t subsidizing those lazy black folk in their laziness and irresponsibility. (Note: I’m trying to capture the attitudes that many white people have of black people. The description above emphatically DOESN’T reflect my own views.)
Rather than assuming all African-Americans moved back to Africa, how about we assume they all got Raptured, but nobody else did? That way we can have the distinction be made by deus ex machina.
Having black people disappear suddenly would impact different fields differently (obviously). Here is a breakdown of detailed job categories by race. Blacks tend to be over-represented in low-skilled or semi-skilled occupations like home health aides, bus and taxi drivers, and under-represented in higher-paid or skilled professions like physicians or dentists or engineering. So STEM fields would be affected much less than others.
So Medicaid and SNAP would likely be reduced. Overall, it would be a fairly major hit to the economy - certainly worse than 9/11.
It might work out somewhat like the Black Death in Europe, where those who didn’t die (or in this case, move to Africa/ascend to the Mother Ship/disappear) found they could command greater wages. That’s not to say that the Black Death was a good idea - just that the market would adjust, and so would the US.
I don’t know. I feel there is a strong effort being pushed by Republicans to make their control of the government permanent - as in no longer subject to elections. It’s obviously being resisted by the Democrats. But if the Democrats suddenly lost a substantial portion of their supporters and the Republicans jumped in power, I feel that they would use that power to make changes that would prevent the balance of power from ever being restored.
Let’s not pretend this can’t happen in America; the south was essentially a single-party state for decades. The thing that eventually broke up the Southern Democratic monopoly on power was that it was regional; the rest of the country still had an active Republican party that was eventually able to intervene. But imagine if the same system existed on a national level; there would be no area outside of the dominant party’s control where an opposition party would be able to form and gather strength.
Has such a thing ever happened - that is, a mass emigration of a [persecuted?] minority group? A few Jews/Catholics/what-have-you saw the writing on the wall and got the hell out of Europe prior to the Holocaust, but I doubt the percentage of those who fled was all that high compared to those who remained.
Hmm. The Great Migration of blacks toward the northern cities from the south?
90%+ of blacks in the south to 50% living in the north and west. Essentially chasing better jobs in northern and western factories and also getting the hell out of a south that REALLY didn’t want them there anymore.
It would be utter chaos. Can you imagine what would happen if instantaneously ~ 10% of the property, homes, cars, businesses, etc had no owner? There would be looting and complete chaos. Trillions in debt would have no payers.
Economies do not like large shocks and uncertainty. The stock market would crash, it would be another great depression.
Significant areas of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia experienced population movement during and after the break-up of Yugoslavia to align to the new political map.
Following the Partition of India in 1947 there were 14 million people who were displaced and became refugees in an effort to relocate to their new country [Wikipedia].