White flight

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White flight is a term for the demographic trend where working- and middle-class white people move away from increasingly racial-minority inner-city neighborhoods to white suburbs and exurbs.^[1][2] The phenomenon was first named in the United States, but has occurred in other countries as well. Some scholars have noted the impact of redlining, mortgage discrimination, and racially restrictive covenants on white flight: these factors denied or increased the cost of services, such as banking and insurance, to residents in minority inner-city neighborhoods.^[3][4] Some social scientists suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism.^[5] In some of the largest cities in the United States, the trend started to reverse itself in the 1990s through a process sometimes called gentrification.

[edit] White flight in the United States

White flight has taken place in nearly every major American city,^[6] especially since the end of World-War II and the ensuing economic and baby booms. A variety of factors during this period allowed for the explosive growth of suburbs and demographic change in cities, including the creation of high-speed highways and suburban parkways, which greatly reduced the travel time between suburbs and downtowns and bypassed some city neighborhoods.^[7]

The effects of the phenomenon have been significant, particularly in the cities of Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Memphis, Houston, Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Newark and New Orleans, all of which lost more than half of their white populations; but it has affected every metropolitan area in the United States.^{[citation needed]} The residential and social segregation of whites from blacks in the United States creates a socialization process that limits whites' chances for developing meaningful relationships with blacks and other minorities. The segregation experienced by whites from blacks fosters segregated lifestyles and leads them to develop positive views about themselves and negative views about blacks.^[8]

Today, many whites are willing, and are able, to pay a premium to live in all white neighborhoods, therefore housing in white areas commands a higher rent.^[9] By bidding up the price of housing, all white effectively shut out blacks, because blacks are unwilling, or unable, to pay the premium to buy entry into these neighborhoods. Through the 1990s, residential segregation remained at its extreme and has been called "hypersegregation" by some sociologists or "American Apartheid."^[10]

[edit] History

In the years after World War II, many white Americans began to move away from inner 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. Racism, economic and social pressure as well as the popularity of the automobile all contributed to white flight. Whites also left the city because they thought that suburban communities, with their new housing stock and open spaces, were more desirable places to live, and due to economic conditions or racial discrimination, blacks were frequently unable to follow.^[7] White flight was made easier by state and federal governments paying for highways to carry suburbanites to work in cities where the jobs remained (the National Defense and Interstate Highway Act and its successors).^[11] The creation of these highways in some cases divided and isolated black neighborhoods from goods and services, many times within industrial corridors. For example Birmingham’s interstate highway system attempted to maintain the racial boundaries that had been established by the city’s 1926 racial zoning law. The construction of interstate highways through black neighborhoods in the city led to significant population loss in those neighborhoods and is associated with an increase in neighborhood racial segregation.^[12]

[edit] Blockbusting

Main article: Blockbusting

Another important aspect of this migration was the phenomenon of "blockbusting." 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 feared that their property values would drop — which of course they did as soon as they began selling in large numbers, generating large commissions for the agents. 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 the racial makeup of a neighborhood to be completely changed in the space of a few years by this process.^[13]

[edit] Urban decay

Main article: Urban decay

Urban decay is a process by which a city, or a part of a city, falls into a state of disrepair. It may be accelerated by white flight. It is characterized by depopulation, property abandonment, high unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and desolate and unfriendly urban landscapes. Urban decay was associated with Western cities, especially North America and parts of Europe during the 1970s and 1980s. During this time period major changes in global economies, transportation, and government policies created conditions that fostered urban decay^[14]. Many North American cities have experienced an outflux of population to city suburbs or exurbs, as in the case of white flight.^[7].

[edit] Governmental aspects of white flight

Due to the nature of American local governmental structure, white flight enabled people who moved into the suburbs to create new municipalities outside the jurisdiction of the original city, without any legacy costs of maintaining existing infrastructure. However, this was balanced by the need to enhance the suburban infrastructure to support the larger population. For instance, new schools, roads, water and sewer lines, and firehouses had to be built.

The federal government contributed to the early decay of inner city neighborhoods and white flight by withholding mortgage capital and making it difficult for these neighborhoods to attract and retain families able to purchase homes. By manipulating market incentives, the federal government drew middle-class whites to the suburbs.^[15]

By the enactment of restrictive zoning, these new entities could ensure that few poor (or in some cases middle-class) emigrants could afford to move into their enclaves. Such municipalities were incorporated by the hundreds on the peripheries of cities. The details varied according to state statutes and local politics. Milwaukee, for example, was able to annex parts of surrounding towns, including the former Town of Granville and thus expand to a greater extent than many landlocked cities (then-Mayor Frank P. Zeidler inveighed against the destructive effect of the "Iron Ring" of new municipalities incorporated in the post-World War II decade.^[16]); at the same time, many semi-rural areas such as Oak Creek, South Milwaukee and Franklin incorporated to escape annexation during this era, after state laws were changed to allow such incorporation by non-urban regions near Milwaukee which did not fit the traditional minimum standards for incorporation.^[17][18]

[edit] Schools and busing

Main article: Desegregation busing

White flight has also had an impact on education. The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education ordered the desegregation of schools. American cities witnessed growing disparities in the quality of education. The Supreme Court subsequently mandated in the 1971 decision of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education the institution of busing of black students to mainly formerly all-white schools in the suburbs, and vice versa. Starting in the mid-1970s, some 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…" A similar 1977 Federal decision, Penick v The Columbus Board of Education, accelerated white flight from Columbus, Ohio to its suburbs. According to sociologist Cardell K. Jacobson, opposition to integration was strongest among people who did not themselves have children in public schools, and in particular among those who already had children in parochial schools.^[19][20]

Busing and desegregation orders in education had also led to a further, non-geographical white flight: out of the public school systems subject to desegregation orders, and into private schools. For instance, in 1970, when a federal court ordered desegregation of the public schools of the Pasadena Unified School District (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 USD characterized them as being to whites "like the bogey-man" ^[21] and mounted policy changes and a publicity drive to induce affluent whites to put their children back into the public schools.

[edit] White flight in recent decades

Some parts of the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas with emerging Latin American and Asian populations are experiencing a new phenomenon where "white flight" neighborhoods that became mostly black in population are now experiencing a black flight by blacks as new immigrants move in.^[22][23]

In Florida and Texas, as in California, the immigrant influx is creating a Democratic future. Since most of the White Americans leaving California have tended to be politically conservative^[24] and the Democratic Party has historically been considered to be in a far stronger position among Latin American and Asian immigrants, the large-scale immigration and white flight have helped to transform California into a stronghold of the Democratic Party.^[25][26]

[edit] 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 it 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 predominantly white.^[27].

In addition, during the 1990s and 2000s, many blacks (black flight) have continued to move out of the historically African American communities such as Inglewood and Compton to inland communities such as Fontana, Rialto, Palmdale, Orange County, and Ventura County.^[28]

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 pace, is also affecting high-income upper-class neighborhoods that are becoming increasingly Asian American.^[29] In this case, however, the white flight does not result in socio-economic problems for the affected communities. The influx of non-whites whose socio-economic status is at least as high, if not higher, than that of previous white residents compensates for the loss in white population. Furthermore this trend tends to affect upscale enclaves such as Cupertino, Saratoga or, in Southern California San Marino. These cities are expected to have income grow significantly and become more upper-class than they are today.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] White flight outside the United States

[edit] South Africa

The phenomenon is also found in South African cities, most notably Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, which saw a mass influx of Black 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).^{[citation needed]}

[edit] New Zealand

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 European New Zealanders moving to previously Māori and Pacific Islander neighbourhoods such as Ponsonby, Grey Lynn and Kingsland. Similar gentrification trends have occurred in Wellington inner city suburbs like Thorndon, Newtown, and Aro Valley. White flight has also significantly affected many areas of Rotorua, with the phenomenon being blamed for the cities' slide into proverbial "Third World" conditions.^[30]

[edit] United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, particularly England, there is evidence of simultaneous ethnic minority dispersal and segregation: in the 1980s and 1990s, minority groups grew rapidly (in percentage terms) in many suburban neighbourhoods and smaller towns that were formerly almost devoid of non-whites, but minorities also grew strongly (in numerical terms) in the inner urban districts of first immigrant settlement.^[31] Simultaneously, white populations in many of these urban centers declined, either because of counter urbanisation or, in some parts of the country, general regional decline.^[32]

While many skilled working class/ lower middle class whites have moved out of the less desirable areas of east, southeast and west London to suburban communities in (respectively) Essex, Kent and Surrey, this has been tempered in central London by rapid gentrification. However, in outlying industrial areas such as Newham, Woolwich and Hounslow, which are not seen as attractive to young professionals, demographics have been skewed to the extent that white people are in some cases a minority. This is a new phenomenon in urban Britain.^{[citation needed]}

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, Slough in the South East, and Leicester in the Midlands also show evidence of white flight. Ethnic minorities in these areas have experienced strong demographic growth (a result of young age structure, the high fertility of some minority groups, and continued immigration),^[33] gradually expanding to new districts adjacent to their areas of first settlement. Meanwhile, white communities have been moving away from these older, less attractive urban centres to suburbs and small towns. However, whether segregation is increasing has been open to debate, with some arguing that as well as white families moving out of predominantly Asian areas, Asians themselves have started to move away as they become more established and affluent themselves.^[34]

[edit] Australia

In Australia, comparable trends have taken place around the areas of Australia's greatest immigration inflows, particularly Sydney and Melbourne. In Sydney, Anglo-Celtic Australians have left the south-western suburbs in response to growing concentrations of Asian immigrants, and have relocated to outer suburban areas, notably Penrith and the northern coastal area of Gosford-Wyong. These growth areas have remained predominantly Anglo-Celtic.^[35]

[edit] Gentrification

Main article: 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,^[36] detailing similar black vs. gay (homophobia vs. racism) themes in the old silk stocking district of Columbus. In Milwaukee, restoration in houses of a neglected neighborhood, pioneered by middle-income couples but followed by wealthier cohorts as property values and prices soar, has made the Brewers Hill district a byword for gentrification.^[37][38] 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 and (to a lesser extent) the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee and the bohemian sections of the 9th Ward of New Orleans.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Gamm, Gerald (1999). Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed Harvard University Press.
• Kruse, Kevin M. (2005), White Flight: The Strategies, Ideology, and Legacy of Segregationists in Atlanta Southern Spaces.
• Kruse, Kevin M. (2005), White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Lupton, R. and Power, A. (2004) 'Minority Ethnic Groups in Britain'. CASE-Brookings Census Brief No.2, London: LSE.
• Seligman, Amanda I. (2005), Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago's West Side Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Wiese, Andrew. (2006) "African American Suburban Development in Atlanta" Southern Spaces.

[edit] See also

• Black flight
• Urban decay
• Xenophobia
• Mortgage discrimination
• Planned shrinkage
• Redliningja:ホワイト・フライト