Students at the University of Iowa recently launched a Tumblr campaign (inspired by "I Too Am Harvard"), in which young students of color held up written messages on whiteboard that addressed the discrimination they experienced on campus, like this one: "I am NOT here because of affirmative action! I Earned it!" Another whiteboard held up by a young man read: "Not here to cause trouble, just a young Black Male trying to accomplish my goals."

Yet another read: "I am NOT from Chicago!! I was born and raised in Iowa!!"

The state of Iowa is changing: as of 2013, the state's black population doubled from what it was in 1980. And Iowa City’s black population has grown to nearly 6% of the population. This changing demographic is part of a larger pattern across America's heartland: black Americans are moving out of urban cores and settling in places with a "small-town" feel, neighborhood schools and safe streets. As someone who studies these patterns and the messaging around them for a living, I call it the "pipeline to Pleasantville" – except Pleasantville isn't exactly pleasant for its black population.

The Chicago migration to Iowa has matured in the last decade as the city’s "vertical ghettos" were razed and cheap transport and affordable housing gave residents more mobility and options. Chicagoans can now move deeper into the Midwest, into cities in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Iowa. A recent Chicago Tribune report attributed this migration to Iowa City as a move by "urban dwellers" away from drugs, welfare and gang violence. But it ignored an important part of the story – that 90,000 African Americans continue to face these very threats in their Iowa homes.

Consider the following statistics:



According to a recent community report, black youths are 6 times more likely to be arrested than whites in Johnson County, Iowa (of which Iowa City is the county seat).

In the 2010-11 school year, black students, who make up 17% of the district's enrolment, also made up 29% of those enrolled in special education. So black enrolment is growing, but a large proportion of black students aren't excelling at school, in part due to a lack of institutional support from teachers, school administrators and parents.



White households in Iowa City earn roughly $45,000 a year, while black households earned barely half as much – about $25,000. The average black household in Iowa City is therefore poorer and more likely to be working in a low-income jobs, which in turn fuel negative stereotypes about African Americans in Iowa.

Stories about black Chicagoans in Iowa often involve police brutality, surveillance and profiling, schools that feel like prisons, and entrenched racism that informs both public policy and cultural expectations of what it means to live in Iowa.

It's difficult to know exactly how many of Iowa City's residents are actually from Chicago and to know who is moving where, when, and for how long – even the new Census population estimates out this week, confirming the reverse of the suburban exodus, can't tell us. But Iowa Citians have traditionally turned to local affordable housing data to measure how many Chicagoans have moved to Iowa City. As the Tribune reported, in 2007, 14% of those using the program in Iowa City were from Illinois, "most from Chicago".

Here, however, lies a symptom of the larger problem: relying on this particular measurement reinforces the preconception that everyone who moves from Chicago to Iowa City is poor and black. In a racialized context like that of Iowa, a mere glance at the numbers can easily reaffirm stereotypes of black Welfare Queens, hustlers and thugs. And such stereotyping actually ends up fueling the racism experienced by people of color who move to the city.

We need to look at the lives behind the numbers.

There's a broader context of institutionalized racial and economic inequality that got us here, and we need to acknowledge that to truly understand the complex factors that shape black migration to places like Iowa City. As I write in my forthcoming book about the black migration to Iowa City, the issues in this city are representative of a national epidemic of ghettoization.

The "first ghetto" emerged after the Great Migrations of black folk from the South to industrialized slums in urban centers of the North in the early 1900s. Between the 1930s and 1960s, a "second ghetto" emerged, this one one built around dense urban housing, constructed and funded through federal housing policies in America's big cities. Today, the migration of black Americans, from places like inner-city Chicago to more rural areas in the Midwest, has created what scholars like Andrew Greenlee have aptly dubbed the "third ghetto".

Certainly, Iowa City – particularly its Southeast Side, where many black Chicagoans first settle when they arrive – has experienced violence, including the 2009 murder of a white landlord by a black youth, drug-running, and minor street crime. But since then, the neighborhood has also become the site of disproportionate police activity, surveillance and stigma that has spread to others with dark skin who live outside the Southeast Side.

Ironically, Iowa City's downtown – on the doorstep of the University of Iowa – continues to be more violent than the Southeast Side. Every weekend, white college students vandalize buildings, vomit on sidewalks, and assault each other, though it’s the Southeast Side – and its presumed Chicago migrants – who bear the brunt of the responsibility for the city's crime.

More recently, Iowa City's neighbors – Coralville and North Liberty – gained their own pockets of "urban" residents measured only by the browning of the cities' population. But for some, this migration will be temporary. New arrivals will move again after arriving in their new home, pushed either to another city or back to Chicago, simply because they aren't welcome in their adopted communities.

In Iowa City – as in other American cities where such inequalities exist – the dynamic of racial hatred or fear of "the other" is downplayed or simply ignored. One community leader, for example, recently said: "People have kind of settled into the notion that Iowa City is going to be diverse, both economically and racially." But as the statistics and the Tumblr campaign make only too evident, that simply isn't true. To understand the social forces that shape black migration, we can't ignore the depth – and reach – of racism today.