Staten Island Elects Its First Black Council Member - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com: Staten Island has long been unique in this racially diverse city: a borough where whites constitute the vast majority. But over the last few decades and particularly in recent years, people of other races have been increasingly calling the island home.
From 1990 to 2000, the percentage of residents who identified themselves as black increased to 8.9 percent from 7.4 percent, according to census data [pdf], and in the most recent survey from 2008, the figure increased to 10.1 percent.
Now, for the first time, Staten Island will have a black City Council member. Deborah L. Rose, a Democrat who also ran with the backing of the Working Families Party, easily won the race on Tuesday with 57.3 percent of the vote, with the rest split by candidates on the Republican and Conservative lines.
A lifelong Staten Island resident who was a longtime member of Community Board 1 and runs a program at the College of Staten Island that discourages local students from dropping out of high school, Ms. Rose was making her third bid for City Council.
