White flight
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 areas of some of the largest cities in the
United States, however, the trend reversed itself in the
1990s to a limited extent (see
gentrification). It is often humorously noted that the opposite of "white flight" is "black attack."
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
1930s.
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 populations due to white flight. In
New York City many white people moved from parts of
the Bronx and
Brooklyn to
Staten Island, suburban
Long Island, suburban
New Jersey, and
Westchester and
Rockland Counties.
Other U.S. cities that have been noticeably affected by white flight include
Philadelphia,
Atlanta,
Miami,
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),
Washington, D.C.,
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 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 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 neighbourhoods, and quality goods and services.
Chatham,
Avalon Park, the famous
Pill Hill, and
Jackson Park of Chicago are excellent, and by no means the only, examples.
As wealthier white residents abandoned the
inner city neighbourhoods, they ultimately left behind increasingly poor non-white populations whose neighbourhoods rapidly deteriorated in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, as in many cases even trash collection was halted. White 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 whom were black. The 1967 Detroit
12th Street Riot is probably the worst case reaction to these events in US history. With no local jobs or businesses the neighbourhoods 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 suburbsā"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 Defence 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 neighbourhoods from goods and services, many times encircling them within industrial corridors.
Another important aspect of this migration was the phenomenon of "
blockbusting." Real estate agents would facilitate the sale of a house in a white neighbourhood 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 ā" 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 neighbourhood to be completely changed in the space of a few years by this process.
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 students 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 ..." A similar 1977 Federal decision,
Penick v The Columbus Board of Education, accelerated white flight from
Columbus, Ohio to its suburbs.
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 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" 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 today, but it has taken on a new aspect as some of the older suburbs have been experiencing urban decay similar to their parent citiesā"for example, in some of the "inner-ring" southern and western suburbs of Chicago, such as
Harvey and
Maywood.
East St. Louis and many of the neighbouring 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. This often leaves
senior citizens (especially "
empty nesters") who have often lived in a particular community for a very long time as the only white residents in neighborhoods that have otherwise seen complete "white flight". Usually, when these seniors die or move to retirement communities, the process 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 neighbourhoods 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 neighbourhood 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. The aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina will further complicate this situation as more whites have returned to the city than blacks.
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). Some southern sections of
Harlem that border the
Upper East Side and
Upper West Side of Manhattan now have as high as a 20% white population, whereas as recently as the early 1990s these enclaves had non-white population percentages in the high 90s. 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, Cleveland, and Buffalo).
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
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. 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. Some parts of the
New York metropolitan area with emerging Hispanic populations are actually experiencing a new phenomenon where "white flight" neighborhoods that became mostly black in population are now experiencing a "white flight" by blacks as Hispanics move in. A few noted parts of the
New York City area experiencing this are much of
the Bronx and some sections of the 3 cities on its northern border (
Yonkers,
Mt. Vernon, and
New Rochelle), urban areas in
Union County, New Jersey such as
Elizabeth, and (though only on the periphery of the area), parts of
Norwalk and
Bridgeport in
Connecticut. Central New Jersey has recently become a perfect example of the newer white flight. Towns such as,
West Windsor,
Plainsboro,
Edison,
East Brunswick,
South Brunswick,
North Brunswick,
Highland Park and
Woodbridge's, mostly
Middlesex County towns, populations have shifted between 15-47 percent less white due to a modern wave of Asian immigrants in just one decade. In these cases, the economic status of the region has not become "economically disadvantaged", but has stayed the same and in many of these cases has become "economically better off". All of these towns are former suburban pride of New Jersey, and while their home values have generally increased seven-fold over the past decade, the majority of white and black families avoid buying in these areas. Exemplifications of this white flight, and in this case now black and hispanic flight can be seen in the public schools of these areas where in a matter of 2-5 years can see a drop of over 10% in the white population.
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 pace, is also affecting high-income upper-class neighborhoods that are becoming increasingly
Chinese American. [
3]
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 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).
In some areas of
New Zealand, there has been a gradual process of white flight, in response to mass urbanisation of
MÄori 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 MÄori 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.[
4]
In the
UK especially
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 that were formerly overwhelmingly white, but they also grew strongly (in numerical terms) in the inner city districts of first immigrant settlement. Simultaneously, white populations in many of these urban centres declined, either because of
counter-urbanisation or, in some parts of the country, general regional decline.[
5]
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 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 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), 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.
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 [
6], 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 neighbourhood 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.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).
There are many factors why people choose to change residence. While some areas might experience an influx of people from a certain ethnic group, it cannot be readily assumed that this represents a desire of their inhabitants to live with, or live separately from, any particular group.
For example,
immigrants tend to be youthful and thus require reasonably sized houses when they start expanding their families. They will naturally gravitate towards suburbs that contain the most affordable housing stock to meet their needs. Conversely, amongst the native born population may be a large portion of single adults or retiree couples who will leave the suburbs for other areas which match their lifestyles.
People may choose to leave towns due to the negative effects of a rising population (such as increased
traffic, noise and
crime), and not specifically due to the ethnicity of the new inhabitants.
Urban segregration is the compound effect of many people making small decisions about where to live. This concept is explored in the book
Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams by
Mitchel Resnick.
* 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.
*
Xenophobia,
Afrophobia,
Negrophobia*
Sundown town*
Urban Decay
