3 ms·
> No-one else gets a choice. Only the white folks. That's not really fair. White flight was a result of mandatory school integration policies, which forced mi
by zeveb 11y ago
> No-one else gets a choice. Only the white folks.
That's not really fair. White flight was a result of mandatory school integration policies, which forced middle-class (i.e., by-and-large white) and lower-class (i.e., by-and-large black) children into the same schools; white folks didn't have a choice about that, nor did those who stayed a bit longer have a choice about the continued decline of their cities.
Poor city folks have the same choice now that white city folks had in the 70s: stay & deal, or flee elsewhere. The sticky point is that it's a lot easier for someone middle-class to afford to move to the suburbs & commute to work than it is for a poor person.
- thaw13579 11y agoTo be clear, Brown v Board of Education school integration ended racial segregation, not economic segregation. Things are arguably different now, but back then race was a major component of the perceived "decline."
- marcus_holmes 11y agoReally? White folks were forced to move away because their kids might go to school with black kids? Only in America...
- zeveb 11y ago> White folks were forced to move away because their kids might go to school with black kids? It's really, really unfortunate that race is a proxy for class in America. It's a natural and IMHO good human tendency for folks to want to be around others of their own class; the problem is that in America race and class are so conflated that one gets this horrible self-reinforcing racist spiral, which is unfair to blacks and poisonous to whites. And race isn't even all that good of a proxy for class, but due to the aforementioned self-reinforcing racist hate spiral it has been extraordinarily difficult to eliminate.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago> It's a natural and IMHO good human tendency for folks to want to be around others of their own class; Natural, but not good. Good is when we eliminate class, not enjoy its stratification.