White Flight
· Def: The departure of whites from places (such as urban neighborhoods or schools) increasingly or predominantly populated by minorities
· White flight primarily took place in the postwar years, roughly from the 1940s through the 1970s.
o Great Migration: 6 million Black people from the South
moved northward to flee persecution, leaving their rural homes behind for urban
opportunities from 1916 to 1970.
· Many whites moved after desegregation to ensure that their children would not have to go to school with African Americans. And many whites felt that moving to all-white
suburbs would help them to achieve higher social status among their peers who
might look down on them for staying in the city.
·
Catalysts:
o Legal exclusion
§ Blacks were barred from buying homes, even when they were able to afford it
§ Federal Housing Administration- instructing banks not to write mortgages in redlined neighborhoods, or areas with Black residents that were deemed undesirable. Also subsidized the construction of entire suburbs preventing developers from selling to Black homebuyers.
o Roads
§ Interstate Highway System- made it possible for white people to begin leaving industrial cities for new housing in suburbs. Local governments used highway road constructions to deliberately divide and isolate black neighborhoods from goods and services.
o Blockbusting- a white person will sell their home to a black person into previously all white neighborhoods in order to spark rapid white flight and housing price decline. This was a profit driven motive for real estate agents.
o Urban decay- White flight contributed to the draining of cities' tax bases when middle-class people left. through majority-black neighborhoods eventually reduced the populations to the poorest proportion of people fina
ncially unable to leave their destroyed community. These communities were known as the “ghettos.”
o Systemic racism
§ Wealth inequality- only whites were really able to afford such a move to the suburb
o Government- aided white flight- withheld maintenance capital mortgages, making it difficult for the communities to either retain or attract middle-class residents.
o Desegregation of Schools- allowed parents to prevent their children from being enrolled in racially mixed schools
Segregation Academies:
· In the context of education, white flight refers to decreasing white enrollment in poor-performing, inner-city public schools.
· Private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools.
· They were founded between 1954, when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional (Brown v. Board) and 1976, when the court rules similar y about private schools (Runyon v McCrary).
· As a result, segregation academies changed their admission policies, ceased operations, or merged with other private schools.
· Usually be identified by the word "Christian", "church", or “Country Day” in the school's name
· Many segregation academies claimed they were established to provide a "Christian education", simply a "guise" for the schools' actual objective of allowing parents to avoid enrolling their children in racially integrated public schools.
· Reasons people used:
· Whites: quality fueled their exodus
· Blacks: white parents refused to allow their
children to be schooled alongside blacks
· While many of these schools still exist – most with low percentages of minority students even today – they may not legally discriminate against students or prospective students based on any considerations of religion, race or ethnicity that serve to exclude non-white students.
Sources:
· https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/a34319800/what-is-white-flight/
· https://www.datacenterresearch.org/pre-katrina/tertiary/white.html
· https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/white-flight-2-36805862
· https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/blockbusting/
· https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0527/052708.html
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