![]() ![]() For the same reasons my grandparents left Lebanon and Italy for America: for a better life for my family.īlack Americans have been heading south in big numbers for the same reasons-and for over 20 years. Everywhere, you see real affection between Blacks and whites. Moreover, Black and white people in town know one another and have deep, long-and yes painful-histories together. (Oxford's mix is 52 percent white, 32 percent Black, 5 percent Hispanic and 4 percent Asian.) And our public schools are more integrated than any I ever attended in New Jersey. White and Black people live, work and go to school together in our town. It was on the race front that I was most surprised. That so many people around us care about our faith doesn't make our town a perfect place, but it makes it more decent. The same goes for all the churches in our neighborhoods. All the "sirs," "ma'ams" and "appreciate you's"-all of which add to the general quality of life. Sometimes for the worse, mostly for the better. People have time for each other and actually know each other. The hellscape my friends envisioned I was moving to was in their own minds, but their prejudices had little in common with the life I encountered when I moved to Mississippi. The South has become the country's fastest-growing region. Think Hee-Haw meets Mississippi Burning meets A Time to Kill meets The Help and you get the picture.Ī neighborhood in Reserve, Louisiana, is seen on August 12, 2021. ![]() Most of what they know about the place comes from TV and movies. One big question lurked: "What's it like living with a bunch of slow-talking, gun-toting, Bible-thumping racists?" My friends didn't use those precise words, but it's what they were thinking. ![]() The fact is, like millions of other Americans, I left because I could: What I do for a living involves lots of travel, so where I live has little bearing on how much money I earn but a lot to do with how much I keep. They're not alone: New Jersey has led the nation in net outflow migration for the past five years running, and 59 percent of the state's residents told a pollster last year they planned to leave. When I told them I had no desire to inherit the pension liabilities that New Jersey's public unions and politicians were irresponsibly saddling on the state's kids and grandkids (it's $40,000 of unfunded pension liability for every man, woman and child in the state and rising), they confessed that they too were thinking of leaving. When I showed them pictures of my house and shared with them the cost of building it-and the low property taxes-they were shocked. I then described the quality of life in Oxford, a college town with a population of 30,000. And a nearby airport, Memphis, with planes that got me anywhere I needed to go for work. We even had doctors and dentists, I joked. And internet, cellphone service and cable TV. I explained that there was electricity and running water in Mississippi. I might as well have told them I was moving to Mogadishu. When I told friends in New Jersey 17 years ago that I was packing my bags and heading to Mississippi, they were shocked. Nine of the 15 fastest-growing cities in America were in the South, according to a report last month by the U.S. Even more interesting is where they're fleeing to: the South.īlack Americans are not alone. They're fleeing-fleeing high crime rates, high housing costs and poorly performing schools. ![]() It turns out that Black people aren't just moving from those cities and cities like it. "Black Americans are leaving cities in the North and West," a recent headline in The Wall Street Journal read, followed by a story chronicling the large-scale Black migration from cities like Detroit, Chicago and Oakland, California. ![]()
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