White flight
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White flight is a colloquial term for the demographic trend of white people, generally but not always upper and middle class, moving from increasingly and predominantly non-white areas, often from urban cores to nearby suburbs or even to new locales entirely, e.g. from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. In some of the United States' largest cities, the trend reversed itself in the 1990s (see gentrification).
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White flight in the United States
"White flight" has been taking place in many American cities and regions, especially in the Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western sections of the United States, since the 1950s.
The effects of white flight have been significant in the cities affected by this phenomenon, especially in Detroit, Memphis, St. Louis, and New Orleans; all of which lost more than half of their white-skinned populations due to white flight. In New York City many white-skinned people moved from parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn to Staten Island, suburban Long Island, suburban New Jersey, and Westchester County.
Other U.S. cities that have been noticeably affected by "white flight" include Philadelphia, Cleveland, Boston, Hartford, the West and South Sides of Chicago, the Greater Los Angeles Area (in inner suburbs such as Compton and Inglewood in the mid-20th century and in many other places since then - see "White flight in Southern California" below), Baltimore, Newark, New Jersey, and numerous smaller cities.
It is worth noting that whites never abandoned New York City's most densely populated urban core of Manhattan, and that whites are now moving back into newly gentrified portions of Brooklyn in large numbers).
History
In the years after World War II whites began to move away from inner core cities to newer suburban communities. Major cities had experienced tight housing markets during the war years along with an influx of blacks seeking war work. White-skinned people with the means to leave sometimes did so to escape the increasing racial tensions they observed on television news reports of the volatile Civil Rights Movement, which they thought generated crime in inner cities between radical racists and new black residents, but in other cases simply because they were promised by real estate agents that suburban communities, with their new housing stock, roads and schools, were more desirable places to live. Some who couldn't afford to leave moved to transitional housing awaiting affordable prospects in the newer "white" enclaves. Most white-skinned families found in the early years that these suburban outposts were converted farmland, which lacked personality and services and conveniences of the cities they left, but were compelled to stay at the behest of their children, who would later spark the new urbanism of the 1990s. Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, due to racist real-estate covenants, redlining, and other discriminatory practices, non-white peoples were almost never afforded the same opportunities to move away from the cities, even when they may have been economically able to do so. In some cases, however, middle-class blacks immediately organized and sustained former middle-class enclaves abandoned by "whites", and as a result continue quality improvements, such as gated townhouse communities within the neighborhoods, and quality goods and services. Chatham, Avalon Park, the famous Pill Hill, and Jackson Park Heights of Chicago are excellent, and by no means the only, examples.
As wealthier "white" residents abandoned the inner city neighborhoods, they ultimately left behind increasingly poor "non-white" populations whose neighborhoods rapidly deteriorated in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, as in many cases even trash collection was halted. White-skinned people quickly took their tax and investment dollars and services, such as teachers, grocery stores and clothing retail, with them, abandoning the cities to the ill-equipped, poorest Americans, the majority of which were black but some were white. With no local jobs or businesses the neighborhoods disintegrated and ultimately turned into increasingly poverty-stricken and crime-ridden slums with failing and dilapidated public schools.
An important element of this migration of well-to-do "whites" was the availability of federally-subsidized home mortgages (VA, FHA, HOLC) which made it possible for families to buy cheap, new homes in the suburbs—but not to buy apartments in cities. State and federal governments also subsidized "white flight" by paying for highways to carry suburbanites to work in cities where the jobs remained (the National Defense and Interstate Highway Act and its successors) and by changing tax codes to benefit suburban "minimal cities" ("the Lakewood Plan"). This plan further divided and isolated black neighborhoods from goods and services, many times encircling them within industrial corridors.
Another important aspect of this migration was the phenomenon of "block-busting." Real estate agents would facilitate the sale of a house in a white neighborhood to a black family by subterfuge, often buying the house themselves, or using a "white" proxy and reselling, perhaps at a reduced price, to the black family. A panic, fanned by the real estate agents and the media, would then ensue among some "white" homeowners, who irrationally feared that their property values would drop — which of course they did as soon as they began selling in large numbers, often to the real estate agents or their proxies. The real estate agents would then sell at higher prices to the incoming black families, reaping the profits of the price difference as well as the sales commissions. It was not uncommon for a neighborhood to be completely changed in the space of a few years by this process.
It should be noted that several poorer predominantly "white communities" also face conditions similar to those of areas that have experienced "white flight". The cities of Buffalo and Niagara Falls in New York serve as prime examples. The 1960s saw significant "white flight" from the inner city of Columbus, Ohio and smaller Ohio metropolitan areas, such as Dayton and Springfield. In these areas, manufacturing jobs were once dominant but have now largely disappeared, resulting in urban decay.
Schools and busing
White flight has also affected education. The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education ordered the desegregation of schools. American cities affected by white flight also witnessed growing disparities in the quality of education. Thus, to achieve racial balance and equality in schools, the Court subsequently mandated in the 1971 decision of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education the institution of busing of black-people to mainly formerly "all-white" schools in the suburbs, and vice versa. From the mid-1970s, many minority students (especially blacks) were transported miles from poorer core cities to newer affluent suburbs. As Justice William Douglas observed in his dissent in Milliken v. Bradley (1974), "The inner core of Detroit is now rather solidly black; and the blacks, we know, in many instances are likely to be poorer ..."
Busing and desegregation orders in education had also in some cases led to a further, non-geographical "white flight": out of the public school systems, which are subject to desegregation orders, and into private schools, which are not. For instance, in 1970, when a federal court ordered desegregation of the public schools in Pasadena, California, the proportion of white students in those schools reflected the proportion of whites in the community, 54 percent and 53 percent, respectively. After desegregation began, a large number of whites in the upper and middle classes could afford private schooling and so pulled their children from mixed public schools. As a result, by 2004 Pasadena was home to sixty-three private schools, which educated one-third of all school-aged children in the city, and the proportion of white students in the public schools had fallen to 16 percent. The superintendent of Pasadena's public schools characterized them as being to whites "like the bogey-man," and mounted policy changes and a publicity drive to induce affluent whites to put their children back into the public schools.
White flight in recent decades
"White flight" continues in some areas even today, but it has taken on a new aspect as some of the older suburbs have been experiencing urban decay similar to their parent cities—for example, in some of the southern and western suburbs of Chicago adjacent to the city. East St. Louis and many of the neighboring communities on the Illinois side of the St. Louis metropolitan area have also long suffered from urban decay with the decline of the manufacturing industries that had once powered the economies of the region.
Many low-income "whites" in East Coast cities have moved to close-in, working-class suburbs or other, more heavily white neighborhoods within the same city and senior citizens (especially "empty nesters") who have often lived in a particular community for a very long time. Usually, when these seniors die or move to retirement communities, the process of "white flight" is complete.
It should also be noted that affluent and professional whites sometimes remain in specific parts of a city that has otherwise been affected by white flight. For example, well-off whites continue to live in St. Louis neighborhoods around Forest Park and the Central West End even as much of the rest of St. Louis has been utterly transformed by the white flight that has been occurring there since the 1950s. In New Orleans there is a concentrated white population in the Garden District south of St. Charles Avenue and in the Lakeview neighborhood east of City Park and North of Robert E. Lee Boulevard. In general, whites who remain in such locations do not have children or, if they do, their children attend private schools, which is also a common characteristic of New Orleans. It must also be noted that the city's Catholic population is high compared to other large cities in the nation.
Even though the demographic makeup of New York City has been dramatically altered due to white flight from the outer boroughs, parts of Manhattan have actually become more white during the past 20 years due to gentrification (see below). The population decline of some Midwestern, Northeastern, and Western cities has slowed down or has even reversed (such as in parts of Chicago), while other areas remain economically devastated due to seemingly-permanent economic shifts and job losses (such as in Detroit). The future of this trend remains to be seen.
A recent trend has been white flight due to large-scale immigration of Hispanics and sometimes other groups, such as East Asians, South and Southeast Asians, Middle Easterners, and North Africans. This trend has been most pronounced in New York City, northern New Jersey, and southern California, where most of these groups have settled. From Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge, most of the Italians moved to Staten Island, where they retain similar income and living style but are isolated from the more diverse ethnic environment. From Queens, white residents first moved from the northern areas of New York, then from the central and southern areas, largely choosing Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island. While both Brooklyn and Queens are still home to a sizable number of white residents, their overall percentage has dwindled. Neighborhoods in Queens dramatically affected by white flight to the point of total change include Flushing and the surrounding areas, Long Island City, Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Corona. Neighborhoods currently being affected by a more casual white flight in which children move away (largely to Long Island) include Ozone Park, Rosedale, and Briarwood. From working-class areas in Hudson, Passaic, and Essex Counties in New Jersey, Italians have largely moved to the triangle formed by West Essex, eastern Morris County, and western Passaic County. This form of white flight rarely involves a drop in income, but involves more ethnic change, and the community is usually not affected negatively, as this is a slower and more casual process of migration.
In southern California, eastern Los Angeles County, the eastern San Fernando Valley, sections of the San Gabriel Valley, and sections of Orange County and the Inland Empire have been affected by white flight due to Asian and Hispanic immigration.
White flight in Southern California
The forces and groups involved in white flight in Southern California are distinct from those in other areas due to the region's demography and history.
Many whites once lived in urban neighborhoods in Los Angeles before departing the city in large numbers after the 1965 Watts Riots. This trend actually began before the riots but accelerated in their wake. The major 12th Street Riot in Detroit in 1967 and during the following year, after the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., contributed to white flight in that city. Now, the city of Detroit is over 80% black whereas a majority of its neighboring suburbs, such as Livonia, Dearborn, and Warren, are overwhelmingly white.[1]. Similarly, after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, large numbers of white Californians left Southern California or left the state entirely. The phenomenon has affected not only the central city basin, but also the suburban regions of the San Fernando Valley and the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California, where many working-class Hispanics and lower to upper-middle class Asians have moved during much of the 1980s and 1990s.
Some of the people leaving Los Angeles have moved to inland California and other states. Many of these ex-Californians ended up settling in the Rocky Mountain States of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada. As these people have tended to be politically conservative, their departure from the state has helped to transform California into a stronghold of the Democratic Party, while making their new home states even more favorable to the Republicans. [2]
Another form of white flight is also taking place in many parts of Northern California, such as the western suburbs of San Jose, California. White flight, though taking place at a slower place, is also affecting high-income upper-class neighborhoods that are becoming increasingly Chinese American. [3]
White flight elsewhere in the world
The phenomenon of white flight is also to be found in South African cities, most notably Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, which saw a mass influx of African people into the inner cities during the final years of apartheid, and from which white people fled in great numbers to the suburbs (or out of the country altogether).
In some areas of New Zealand, there has been a gradual process of white flight, in response to mass urbanisation of Māori and arrivals of Pacific Islander guest workers between the 1950s and 1970s, though in Auckland the process has largely been in reverse since the 1980s, with white (Pakeha) New Zealanders moving to previously Māori and Pacific Islander neighborhoods such as Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Kingsland. Similar gentrification trends have occurred in Wellington inner city suburbs like Thorndon, Newtown, and Aro Valley.
In the UK especially England, there is evidence of simultaneous ethnic dispersal and concentration: in the 1980s and 1990s minority groups grew rapidly (in percentage terms) in many areas that were formerly overwhelmingly 'white', but they also grew strongly (in numerical terms) in the urban centres where they were already well established. Simultaneously, white populations in many of these inner urban neighbourhoods declined, either as a result of counter-urbanisation or, in some parts of the country, general regional decline.[4]
White flight from the less desirable areas of east, south-east and west London to suburban communities in (respectively) Essex, Kent and Surrey has been tempered in the more central areas by rapid gentrification. However, in outlying industrial areas such as Newham, Woolwich and Hounslow, which aren't as attractive to young professionals as the centre, demographics have been skewed to the extent that white people are in some cases the minority. This is a new phenomenon in urban Britain.
Industrial towns and cities with large south Asian populations such as Oldham, Rochdale, Nelson, Blackburn and Burnley in Lancashire, Bradford, Dewsbury and Keighley in West Yorkshire, and Leicester in the Midlands have also seen rapid white flight, the result of deindustrialisation and the white communities' greater mobility.
However, England's major provincial cities with sizable ethnic populations - Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool and Bristol - have suffered relatively little white flight, mainly due to the dispersed nature of their ethnic communities and gentrification running concurrent to other demographic changes. Liverpool suffered considerable depopulation during the 1980s and 1990s, but this was not along ethnic lines.
In France see 2005 Paris suburb riots.
Gentrification
The opposing social trend of wealthy social groups moving into an inner city area and displacing the existing residents is called gentrification. In Cleveland, as reported on Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS in 2003, wealthy homosexual couples have purchased and restored homes in formerly predominantly black neighborhoods. This study echoed an earlier Ohio documentary titled Flag Wars [5], detailing similar black vs. gay (homophobia vs. racism) themes in the old silk stocking district of Columbus. In other cases, some inner city areas may witness a renaissance as a home for artists, which happens to be the case with the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. In Toronto and Montreal, as with many Canadian cities, many inner city areas have been gentrified by the usual "yuppie" couples but also by "empty nesters," that is, couples in their late forties or fifties whose children have left their home, giving them an incentive to sell their large house in the suburbs and buy a condominium or townhouse in the city, close to better parks, leisure activities, cultural attractions and the convenience of the Montreal metro. It should be noted that in Canada, wealthy groups never totally abandoned inner-city areas, as seen in many U.S. cities (with the most notable exception of North America's most densely populated urban area, the Manhattan borough of New York City).
References
- Kruse, Kevin, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
- Lupton, R. and Power, A. (2004) 'Minority Ethnic Groups in Britain'. CASE-Brookings Census Brief No.2, London: LSE.