Blacks Feel Erased by Santa Barbara’s Changing Demographics; — Latinos Express Similar Fears 

By Ethnic Media Services Staff | California Black MediaSANTA BARBARA, Calif. – In Santa Barbara, a coastal city of about 89,000 residents, the Black population has dwindled from a peak of 3.27% in 1970 to about 1.37% in 2024.In 2022, Healing Justice Santa Barbara, a nonprofit, and Page Turnbull, an architecture firm, produced “Santa Barbara African American and Black Historic Context Statement,” a survey of how and where Black people have lived in Santa Barbara from the Spanish colonies to recent times. The report, commissioned by the city, is meant to aid in preserving Santa Barbara’s Black history.According to the report, “the slow progress toward greater racial equality and continuing lack of job and housing opportunities led many young Black people to leave Santa Barbara in the late 1960s and 1970s.“While Santa Barbara’s overall population increased in the 1970s, the city’s African American and Black population decreased by 20% from 2,294 in 1970 to 1,833 in 1980, the first time the community’s numbers had dropped since the 1890s,” the report continues.In several interviews, longtime Santa Barbarans bemoaned the impacts of gentrification and the gradual “erasure” of a Black presence in the city.Wendy Sims-Moten’s father-in-law was born in Santa Barbara in...