Photo by dharmabumx

It’s official—Chocolate City is becoming Vanilla Village.

Among the many demographic changes that have taken place in D.C. over the last decade, the most jarring might be the shift in the city racial composition. According to the Examiner, Census data released this week showed that between 2010 and 2011 the percentage of African American residents in D.C. fell below half for the first time in decades:

The number of non-Hispanic whites living in the District since data were collected in April 2010 has grown by 4 percent to total more than 218,000 as of July 2011, according to the new Census Bureau data. Meanwhile, the number of blacks stayed relatively flat but fell from just over half of the population to 304,203 people, or 49.2 percent.

The white population now makes up 35.3 percent of the city’s total pie. This marks the highest percentage of whites living in the District since the 1960s, when whites were leaving the city for the region’s more spacious suburbs.

Last year the Post reported that in the decade between 2000 and 2010, the city African American population dropped 11 percent. In 1970, African Americans accounted for 71 percent of the city’s population.

As much as this process of demographic change has provoked concerns and complaints, it can also be seen as a natural cycle that ebbs and flows. Prior to 1960, for example, D.C. was majority-white. Still, the demographic changes are accompanying a growing economic chasm—in March the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute found that the city had one of the highest income inequality levels in the country.