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White flight is a colloquial term for the demographic trend of whites moving away from areas with large non-white populations. It has been taking place in many American cities and even regions, especially in the Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western sections of the United States since the 1950s. Due to the economic boom and growth of suburbia in the years after World War II, whites (a term used broadly to describe people of European heritage) - many of whom were the children and grandchildren of immigrants - began to move away from inner core cities and to newer suburban communities in order to escape the increasing crime and racial tension that plagued inner cities throughout the country. Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, due to racist real-estate covenants and other discriminatory practices, non-white people were often not afforded the same opportunities to move away from the cities, even when they may have been economically able to do so. In addition to the United States, many cities in the United Kingdom, including parts of London, have also been affected by white flight, especially after South Asian, West Indian, and African immigrants first began arriving in that country in significant numbers in the 1950s and 1960s. The phenomenon is also to be found in South African cities, most notably JohannesburgJohannesburg is the most populous city in South Africa, and the second most populous in Sub-Saharan Africa behind Lagos. Local residents refer to the city as "Jo'burg," or "Jozi. The Zulu name for the city is "Egoli," which means "place of gold" as forty and DurbanDurban is a vibrant cosmopolitian city in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. It is also known by Zulu-speakers as eThekwini the meaning of which is unclear (guesses range from 'lagoon' to 'the one-testicled one'. Durban is being marketed as "South Afri, which saw a mass influx of African people into the inner cities during the final years of Apartheid, and the fleeing of white people to the suburbs.
The effects of white flight have been devastating for the cities that have been hit by this phenomenon, especially Detroit, MichiganAlternate meanings: Detroit (disambiguation). skyline Detroit is a city located in Wayne County in the state of Michigan, in the Midwest region of the United States. Established in 1701 by French traders, today it is best known as the world's automotive c, St. Louis, MissouriGateway Arch, shown here behind the Old Courthouse, is the most recognizable part of the St. Louis skyline. Apotheosis of Saint Louis a bronze statue of the city's namesake on horseback, was widely used as a symbol of the city before construction of the A, Chicago, IllinoisThis article is about the city, for other uses of the term see Chicago (disambiguation : Hog butcher for the world,Tool maker, stacker of wheat,Player with railroads and the nation's freight handler;Stormy, husky, brawling,City of the big shoulders. Carl, New York City (especially parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn, from which many whites have moved, not to the suburbs, but to Staten Island), Cleveland, Ohio, Los Angeles, California, and numerous smaller cities such as Newark, New Jersey. Detroit and St. Louis have lost more than half of their 1950 peak populations due largely to white flight.
As wealthier white residents abandoned the inner city neighborhoods, they ultimately left behind increasingly poor ethnic populations whose neighborhoods rapidly deteriorated, beginning in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s. Jobs and businesses disintegrated along with the neighborhoods and ultimately turned the increasingly poverty-stricken areas into crime-ridden slums with failing and dilapidated public schools. In the United States, these areas are often populated by Africans and Hispanics. Much of Detroit, the Greater Los Angeles Area ( Compton, Inglewood, etc.), large areas of the West and South Sides of Chicago and St. Louis are prime examples of this phenomenon.
Many whites once lived in urban neighborhoods in Los Angeles before departing the city in large numbers after the 1965 Watts Riots (a trend that actually began before the riots but accelerated after them). Major riots 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 and Warren, are predominantly white.[1] Similarly, after the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, large numbers of white Californians left Southern California or left the state entirely due to a number of factors, including a fear of crime and violence, and concerns about the growing immigrant population in California, the state that attracts more new immigrants (mainly Latinos, Asians, and Middle Easterners) than any other U.S. state. Many of these ex-Californians ended up settling in the Rocky Mountain States, where their presence has greatly altered the local political landscape in favor of the United States Republican Party (see red states).
White flight continues in some areas to the present day but has taken on a new trend as some of the older suburbs have been experiencing urban decay similar to their parent cities, such as 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. Other examples include 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 Asian Americans have moved during the past quarter century. The exodus of white Americans from these particular regions occurred during much of the 1980s and 1990s. In addition, many of the white residents in upper-middle-class suburban communities in Orange County and the Inland Empire in California are currently moving to other regions such as the mountain states of Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming in a form of white flight.[2]
In general, the only whites who tend to remain in cities and suburbs affected by white flight are low-income whites (though 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.
However, the population decline of some Midwestern, Northeastern, and Western cities has either slowed down or even reversed, while other areas remain economically devastated due to seemingly-permanent economic shifts and job losses. The future of this trend remains to be seen.
White flight has also affected education. The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision of 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 controversial school busing to mainly all-white schools in the suburbs. Begininning from the mid 1970s, many minority students - especially Africans - were transported across long distances from the poorer core cities to the 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 ..."
In turn, busing and desegregation orders in education have in some cases led to a further, non-geographical white flight, one out of the public school systems which are subject to desegregation orders and into private schooling. 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. Although staying in place geographically, after the desegregation process began large numbers of whites in the upper and middle classes who could afford it pulled their children from the public schools and placed them into private schools instead. 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.
It should be noted that several predominantly poorer 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. In these areas, manufacturing jobs were once dominant but have now largely disappeared, resulting in urban decay.
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 the Jim Lehrer NewsHour on PBS in 2003, several wealthy gay and lesbian couples have purchased and restored homes in the predominantly African neighborhoods. 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 section of Los Angeles. In Montreal 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 condo or townhouse in the inner city, close to the better parks, the leisure activities, the cultural attractions and the convenience of the Montreal metro.
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