4 ms·

it mentions jackson, ms but has no context whatsoever. do they even consider metro areas in the study? looks like it's hyperfocused on cities/towns, surely they

it mentions jackson, ms but has no context whatsoever. do they even consider metro areas in the study? looks like it's hyperfocused on cities/towns, surely they consider movement within a metro area, because that's what happened in jackson (aka white flight).

dingnuts 3y ago
when yt moves to the suburbs or the country it's white flight, and when he moves to the city it's gentrification. is there somewhere yt can move without it being racist?
- noworriesnate 3y ago
  Access to white people is basically a human right at this point, so any attempt by whites to prevent non-whites from exercising their human rights is by definition racist
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  i don't know what you're talking about. white people in jackson, mississippi moved to the suburbs. this is a fact. this has nothing to do with your comment.
nemo44x 3y ago
"White Flight" is a bit of a misnomer as people that could afford to leave cities did leave cities (including non-white people) for a variety of reasons. One reason is that through the 1930's (depression) and 1940's (WW2) very little new housing was built and the housing inside of cities was beginning to age with minimal investment in upkeep. Costs were still very high, like they are today in many cities. But by the 1950's we were able to expand out of cities because of the automobile and new house construction was more affordable due to advances in materials and methods. So people began to leave cities because you got more space, your own yard, and an automobile and the costs were the same or cheaper than living in a cramped apartment in the city. The second reason for people leaving cities was because of a sharp increase in crime, especially violent crime. The political leaning of the 1960's and 1970's were to be very soft on crime and that era is marked by a stark rise in crime. People that can afford it will not live in a high crime area - go figure! They move to an area that is nicer and the politics of those areas tend to be protective in that they don't want the same political policy that allowed crime to soar. This of course starts a chain reaction where there are better living conditions and lower crime outside the city and the city begins to rapidly lose its tax base. The entrenched politicians are more concerned with having power than managing a city and the city rots. So they scapegoat people for being "racist: because they didn't want to live in a crime infested, cramped, hellhole when there were viable alternatives. The market speaks. The main reason people left cities was because of better living conditions in suburbs and the rising tide of high crime in cities. That's it.
- telotortium 3y ago
  That's not to say that racism played no role - of course there were racists at the time, and it probably played a role in influencing the decision to move. But without the rising crime rates in the 1960s and 1970s, I don't that wouldn't have been enough to lead to large-scale abandonment of neighborhoods these racists had lived in for generations.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    Racism in part but even looking at redlining it isn't how it is portrayed. Redline documents would point out not only where clusters of blacks lived but also Jews, Polish, Italians, Irish, poor whites, etc. And those regions were all difficult to get loans to buy because the homes were often older and the banks were pretty sure that the working and lower class people living in them would not be able to afford upkeep. So they didn't want to lend money to buyers of homes that were likely to decrease in value. There was no Federal guarantee in those days. Racism played a part too of course but class is often completely ignored in the USA.
    - Gibbon1 3y ago
      One thing I've learned is redlining also meant that if a black, Mexican, or Asian family moved onto your street no one else on the block could get a home loan. Which meant you couldn't refinance, get a second mortgage. And if you sold it would have to be to a cash buyer. See also block busting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
      - nemo44x 3y ago
        It really had little to do with who moved in - although to be sure people certainly wouldn't sell to certain types of people in certain places. Properties were rated by their quality and their potential of being renovated and kept up - that's what red lining actually was. I've read through red lining documents and they mentioned all types of ethnic groups on the side, but the main consideration was the quality of the properties and if the area would sustain or decline due to the ability of current and future owners to renovate the structures. Many properties in areas that were claimed to be "block busted" by revisionists were of low build quality to begin with were aging out and were unlikely to be revitalized by whoever lived there in the future. As I mentioned, because of the depression and WW2 there were not many new things being built and the existing stock in many of these areas was already low quality to begin with and had gone decades without much investment. Therefore the demand was low for these properties and lower class people were the market for them. So the neighborhood began to change and more crime was brought into these places which only accelerated the plummeting of values. People act like an area of affluent people living in high quality homes all ran for the hills as soon as a black family moved in and the prices plummeted. No, it was places like the south side of Chicago which were always working class and full of small, cramped living places. Building huge housing project towers in these areas didn't help either, nor did the highway systems that cut through these areas. But people got out because the living conditions sucked compared to what was available in the new suburbs being built. Not to mentioned, jobs were moving out of cities because business could expand to new locations that were safer and not cramped. Did race play role? Sure. As did class to a greater extent. But the narrative you hear and accepted as fact just doesn't reflect the total reality.

dingnuts 3y ago

when yt moves to the suburbs or the country it's white flight, and when he moves to the city it's gentrification. is there somewhere yt can move without it being racist?

noworriesnate 3y ago
Access to white people is basically a human right at this point, so any attempt by whites to prevent non-whites from exercising their human rights is by definition racist
greenie_beans 3y ago
i don't know what you're talking about. white people in jackson, mississippi moved to the suburbs. this is a fact. this has nothing to do with your comment.

nemo44x 3y ago

"White Flight" is a bit of a misnomer as people that could afford to leave cities did leave cities (including non-white people) for a variety of reasons. One reason is that through the 1930's (depression) and 1940's (WW2) very little new housing was built and the housing inside of cities was beginning to age with minimal investment in upkeep. Costs were still very high, like they are today in many cities. But by the 1950's we were able to expand out of cities because of the automobile and new house construction was more affordable due to advances in materials and methods. So people began to leave cities because you got more space, your own yard, and an automobile and the costs were the same or cheaper than living in a cramped apartment in the city. The second reason for people leaving cities was because of a sharp increase in crime, especially violent crime. The political leaning of the 1960's and 1970's were to be very soft on crime and that era is marked by a stark rise in crime. People that can afford it will not live in a high crime area - go figure! They move to an area that is nicer and the politics of those areas tend to be protective in that they don't want the same political policy that allowed crime to soar. This of course starts a chain reaction where there are better living conditions and lower crime outside the city and the city begins to rapidly lose its tax base. The entrenched politicians are more concerned with having power than managing a city and the city rots. So they scapegoat people for being "racist: because they didn't want to live in a crime infested, cramped, hellhole when there were viable alternatives. The market speaks. The main reason people left cities was because of better living conditions in suburbs and the rising tide of high crime in cities. That's it.

telotortium 3y ago
That's not to say that racism played no role - of course there were racists at the time, and it probably played a role in influencing the decision to move. But without the rising crime rates in the 1960s and 1970s, I don't that wouldn't have been enough to lead to large-scale abandonment of neighborhoods these racists had lived in for generations.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  Racism in part but even looking at redlining it isn't how it is portrayed. Redline documents would point out not only where clusters of blacks lived but also Jews, Polish, Italians, Irish, poor whites, etc. And those regions were all difficult to get loans to buy because the homes were often older and the banks were pretty sure that the working and lower class people living in them would not be able to afford upkeep. So they didn't want to lend money to buyers of homes that were likely to decrease in value. There was no Federal guarantee in those days. Racism played a part too of course but class is often completely ignored in the USA.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    One thing I've learned is redlining also meant that if a black, Mexican, or Asian family moved onto your street no one else on the block could get a home loan. Which meant you couldn't refinance, get a second mortgage. And if you sold it would have to be to a cash buyer. See also block busting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      It really had little to do with who moved in - although to be sure people certainly wouldn't sell to certain types of people in certain places. Properties were rated by their quality and their potential of being renovated and kept up - that's what red lining actually was. I've read through red lining documents and they mentioned all types of ethnic groups on the side, but the main consideration was the quality of the properties and if the area would sustain or decline due to the ability of current and future owners to renovate the structures. Many properties in areas that were claimed to be "block busted" by revisionists were of low build quality to begin with were aging out and were unlikely to be revitalized by whoever lived there in the future. As I mentioned, because of the depression and WW2 there were not many new things being built and the existing stock in many of these areas was already low quality to begin with and had gone decades without much investment. Therefore the demand was low for these properties and lower class people were the market for them. So the neighborhood began to change and more crime was brought into these places which only accelerated the plummeting of values. People act like an area of affluent people living in high quality homes all ran for the hills as soon as a black family moved in and the prices plummeted. No, it was places like the south side of Chicago which were always working class and full of small, cramped living places. Building huge housing project towers in these areas didn't help either, nor did the highway systems that cut through these areas. But people got out because the living conditions sucked compared to what was available in the new suburbs being built. Not to mentioned, jobs were moving out of cities because business could expand to new locations that were safer and not cramped. Did race play role? Sure. As did class to a greater extent. But the narrative you hear and accepted as fact just doesn't reflect the total reality.