Guest editorial: The new South

Some 333,000 blacks also moved out of the South during that period, says the Census Bureau, but that still gives the South a net gain of 347,000, and here is the net gain in other regions of the country: practically zero.

Observers quoted in an Associated Press story explain the phenomenon of this reverse migration -- blacks had once been fleeing the South -- by telling us first off that the racism of today's South is hardly a shadow of what it had been. Another plus is a growing economy. And there's the pull of home, the place where you grew up, maybe, or where your parents or grandparents lived.

The significance of these statistics lies partly in the region's economic vigor, but mostly in its extraordinary progress in race relations. It's a progress in which Americans should take pride. Those who deny it exists are going to have a hard time accounting for the new figures supplied by the Census Bureau.