East Flatbush’s ethnic composition shifted from Jewish to Caribbean in the mid-1980s

Evidence

The store was still called Mike’s Food Center from two owners earlier, and back when the original Mike ran it, East Flatbush was mostly Jewish. But the casts are never stable in New York’s ethnic drama, and in the mid-1980s, Caribbean immigrants began moving into the neighborhood in large numbers, and the Jewish population moved out and up. (A very few old-timers—but really no more—still live in the neighborhood.) The two brothers watched the transformation from the stoop of their store. They began stocking plantain chips and ginseng potions and selling single bottles of Guinness. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 478

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the theme of immigrant stores adapting to neighborhood demographics, echoing the additive/resident customer-demographic logic in Complaints About Immodesty or broader migration literature.