4 ms·

Lots of white flight was caused by the massive urban crime wave that lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s. The main reason we term the situation "white" flight i

Lots of white flight was caused by the massive urban crime wave that lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s. The main reason we term the situation "white" flight is that the whites could afford to move out of the city, and most blacks could not. If the majority of blacks had as much money as whites, they would have moved away too. It's telling that when this crime wave ended, whites started to move back to the cities, even though the racial composition of the cities they were moving back to was less white than it was when they left. If they left in the first place because of racial diversity, they would not have moved back -- but they did move back, and are continuing to do so.

tptacek 10y ago
I'm not prepared to dignify the argument that white people left neighborhoods that were beginning to integrate, en masse, to form new all-white enclaves --- and then fled again when those enclaves started to integrate --- as a purely rational reaction to crime. The idea that the arrival of black people in a homogenous white neighborhood is a harbinger of intractable crime problems is itself an example of systemic racism. I don't care if you feel it's justifiable racism. There are places in the US --- St. Louis is probably the best example --- where you can observe white flight creating strata of suburbs like the rings on a tree. Ferguson was one of those suburbs: 99% white in 1970, majority black now, but (until very recently) with institutions controlled by whites. If white people are re-colonizing the inner cities of some of these places, I'm not prepared to see that as a purely hopeful sign (or, worse, a sign that white flight was itself benign or justified). Rather, I'd worry that we're progressing towards an outcome that France has seen in its own cities, with vital city centers ringed by poor, disadvantaged suburbs.
- twblalock 10y ago
  > The idea that the arrival of black people in a homogenous white neighborhood is a harbinger of intractable crime problems is itself an example of systemic racism. I don't care if you feel it's justifiable racism. Actual crime arrived in those neighborhoods. There is no shortage of statistics to prove this.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Of course it did. Wealthier racist white people turned those neighborhoods into ghettos.
    - twblalock 10y ago
      Wealthy people do not turn their own neighborhoods into ghettos.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        By leaving them en masse and ravaging their tax base, yes, they did.
        twblalock 10y ago
        They did not leave before the crime came to their neighborhoods. They left after the crime came. You need to get your cause and effect in order.
        tptacek 10y ago
        No, they did not. This is well studied. Crime rose in neighborhoods that were endogenously majority-black, but suburbanization of white residents did not track crime in previously white, then integrating neighborhoods: it was a reaction to the perception that crime in those integrating neighborhoods would track the rates of crime in endogenously black neighborhoods. People saw high crime in all-black neighborhoods created by the great migration, lost their shit, and moved to escape the black people. In doing so, they fucked up the tax base for their previous cities, and created new ghettos. Predictably, crime followed their exodus, (falsely) confirming the predictions of the fleeing white people, creating a cascade. (High crime in endogenously black neighborhoods is also not hard to explain: well-integrated neighborhoods in the Chicagoland MSA have low crime rates, but crime rates in places like Englewood are sky-high; this is a legacy of disadvantage and lack of opportunity and mobility that traces directly from virulent racism. Simply put: you systemically disfavor a population, and the areas inhabited primarily by the disfavored population have poorer outcomes. Who'd have thunk it?)

tptacek 10y ago

I'm not prepared to dignify the argument that white people left neighborhoods that were beginning to integrate, en masse, to form new all-white enclaves --- and then fled again when those enclaves started to integrate --- as a purely rational reaction to crime. The idea that the arrival of black people in a homogenous white neighborhood is a harbinger of intractable crime problems is itself an example of systemic racism. I don't care if you feel it's justifiable racism. There are places in the US --- St. Louis is probably the best example --- where you can observe white flight creating strata of suburbs like the rings on a tree. Ferguson was one of those suburbs: 99% white in 1970, majority black now, but (until very recently) with institutions controlled by whites. If white people are re-colonizing the inner cities of some of these places, I'm not prepared to see that as a purely hopeful sign (or, worse, a sign that white flight was itself benign or justified). Rather, I'd worry that we're progressing towards an outcome that France has seen in its own cities, with vital city centers ringed by poor, disadvantaged suburbs.

twblalock 10y ago
> The idea that the arrival of black people in a homogenous white neighborhood is a harbinger of intractable crime problems is itself an example of systemic racism. I don't care if you feel it's justifiable racism. Actual crime arrived in those neighborhoods. There is no shortage of statistics to prove this.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Of course it did. Wealthier racist white people turned those neighborhoods into ghettos.
  - twblalock 10y ago
    Wealthy people do not turn their own neighborhoods into ghettos.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      By leaving them en masse and ravaging their tax base, yes, they did.
      - twblalock 10y ago
        They did not leave before the crime came to their neighborhoods. They left after the crime came. You need to get your cause and effect in order.
        tptacek 10y ago
        No, they did not. This is well studied. Crime rose in neighborhoods that were endogenously majority-black, but suburbanization of white residents did not track crime in previously white, then integrating neighborhoods: it was a reaction to the perception that crime in those integrating neighborhoods would track the rates of crime in endogenously black neighborhoods. People saw high crime in all-black neighborhoods created by the great migration, lost their shit, and moved to escape the black people. In doing so, they fucked up the tax base for their previous cities, and created new ghettos. Predictably, crime followed their exodus, (falsely) confirming the predictions of the fleeing white people, creating a cascade. (High crime in endogenously black neighborhoods is also not hard to explain: well-integrated neighborhoods in the Chicagoland MSA have low crime rates, but crime rates in places like Englewood are sky-high; this is a legacy of disadvantage and lack of opportunity and mobility that traces directly from virulent racism. Simply put: you systemically disfavor a population, and the areas inhabited primarily by the disfavored population have poorer outcomes. Who'd have thunk it?)