White flight

This article is about the social phenomenon. For other uses, see White flight (disambiguation).

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White flight or white exodus[1][2][3] is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse.[4][5] Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They referred to the large-scale migration of people of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. The term has more recently been applied to other migrations by whites, from older, inner suburbs to rural areas, as well as from the American Northeast and Midwest to the milder climate in the Southeast and Southwest.[6][7][8] The term 'white flight' has also been used for large-scale post-colonial emigration of whites from Africa, or parts of that continent,[9][10][11][12][13] driven by levels of violent crime and anti-colonial or anti-white state policies.[14]

Migration of middle-class white populations was observed during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s out of cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City and Oakland, although racial segregation of public schools had ended there long before the Supreme Court of the United States' decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In the 1970s, attempts to achieve effective desegregation (or "integration") by means of busing in some areas led to more families' moving out of former areas.[15][16] More generally, some historians suggest that white flight occurred in response to population pressures, both from the large migration of blacks from the rural Southern United States to urban cities of the Northern United States and the Western United States in the Great Migration and the waves of new immigrants from around the world.[17] Some historians have challenged the phrase "white flight" as a misnomer whose use should be reconsidered. In her study of West Side in Chicago during the post-war era, historian Amanda Seligman argues that the phrase misleadingly suggests that whites immediately departed when blacks moved into the neighborhood, when in fact, many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics.[18] Leah Boustan, Professor of Economics at Princeton, attributes white flight both to racism and economic reasons.[19]

The business practices of redlining, mortgage discrimination, and racially restrictive covenants contributed to the overcrowding and physical deterioration of areas with large minority populations. Such conditions are considered to have contributed to the emigration of other populations. The limited facilities for banking and insurance, due to a perceived lack of profitability, and other social services, and extra fees meant to hedge against perceived profit issues, increased their cost to residents in predominantly non-white suburbs and city neighborhoods.[20][21] According to the environmental geographer Laura Pulido, the historical processes of suburbanization and urban decentralization contribute to contemporary environmental racism.[22]

  1. ^ Barry C. Feld; Donna M. Bishop, eds. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Justice. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199338276. The Kerner Commission report ... concluded that "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white" ... Black urban in-migration and White exodus had developed concentrations of impoverished persons.
  2. ^ Robert W. Kweit (2015). People and Politics in Urban America, Second Edition. Routledge. ISBN 978-1138012028. The U.S. court of Appeals ruled that Norfolk was rightly concerned with the white exodus from public schools and that the decision to end mandatory busing was not based on discriminatory intent, but on the desire to keep enough whites in the school system to prevent resegregation.
  3. ^ Timothy J. Minchin; John A. Salmond (2011). "Chapter 8 'Mixed Outcomes'". After the Dream: Black and White Southerners since 1965 (Civil Rights and Struggle). University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0813129785. Even success in desegregating downtown stores and buses was now undercut by the white exodus. As they fled the cities, many whites lost interest in the civil rights issue.
  4. ^ Josiah Bates (October 30, 2019). "Michelle Obama Opens Up About the Pain of Witnessing 'White Flight' as a Child in Chicago". TIME. "White flight" — a phenomenon in which white people leave areas that are becoming more diverse.
  5. ^ Lateshia Beachum (October 30, 2019). "Michelle Obama on white flight in Chicago: 'Y'all were running from us'". The Washington Post. "White flight" is when white people leave increasingly diverse areas in large numbers.
  6. ^ Schaefer, Richard T., ed. (2008). The Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. SAGE publications.
  7. ^ "white flight". Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
  8. ^ Armor, David J. (1986). Forced Justice: School Desegregation and the Law. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 978-0-1953-58179.
  9. ^ Joshua Hammer (May–June 2010). "(Almost) Out of Africa: The White Tribes". World Affairs Journal. Archived from the original on January 14, 2012.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  10. ^ Johnson, RW (October 19, 2008). "Mosiuoa 'Terror' Lekota threatens to topple the ANC". The Times. London. Archived from the original on April 30, 2011.
  11. ^ Christopher, A.J. (2000). The atlas of changing South Africa (2nd ed.). Routledge. p. 213. ISBN 978-0-2031-85902.
  12. ^ Bradshaw, York W.; Ndegwa, Stephen N., eds. (2001). The uncertain promise of Southern Africa. Indiana Univ. Press. p. 6.
  13. ^ Reinhardt, Steven G.; Reinhartz, Dennis P., eds. (2006). Transatlantic history (1st ed.). Texas A&M University Press. pp. 149–150. ISBN 978-1-5854-44861.
  14. ^ "White flight from South Africa: Between staying and going". The Economist. September 25, 2008.
  15. ^ Clotfelter, Charles T. (2004). After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691119113.
  16. ^ Ravitch, Diane (1983). The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980. New York City: Basic Books. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-4650-87570. School desegregation and White Flight
  17. ^ Boustan, L. P. (2010). "Was Postwar Suburbanization "White Flight"? Evidence from the Black Migration*". Quarterly Journal of Economics. 125: 417–443. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.595.5072. doi:10.1162/qjec.2010.125.1.417. S2CID 2975073.
  18. ^ Seligman, Amanda (2005). Block by block: neighborhoods and public policy on Chicago's West Side. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 213–14. ISBN 978-0-226-74663-0.
  19. ^ Boustan, Leah (May 15, 2017). "The Culprits behind White Flight". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
  20. ^ Kruse, Kevin M. (2007). White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-13386-7. Archived from the original on June 10, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2007.
  21. ^ Thabit, Walter (2003). How East New York Became a Ghetto. New York: New York University Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-8147-8267-5.
  22. ^ Pulido, Laura (March 2000). "Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California" (PDF). Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 90 (1): 12–40. doi:10.1111/0004-5608.00182. hdl:10214/1833. S2CID 38036883.