In the article “After Generations in Spotlight, Harlem Slips as Center of Black Politics,” Nicholas Confessore explores the decline in political power of the one time “lodestar of black politics” for the city and the country.

In the discussion of various causes, Confessore cites Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge regarding population shifts.

Some point to demographics, noting that black political power has simply migrated to where the votes have. According to census data provided by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, almost a quarter of New York City’s black population lived in Manhattan in 1970, when the Harlem Clubhouse began its rise. Now that proportion is 12 percent. Today, Mr. Rangel himself has more white constituents than black ones, and when he leaves Congress, some Manhattan Democrats say, his successor may not necessarily be African-American.

Previously, Beveridge wrote about the demographic changes in Harlem for GothamGazette.com in the article “An Affluent, White Harlem?”