@sylvan8798 Then what are you trying to do…? Cause you keep asking me what these “other people” would want white people to do, when I have literally no way of knowing. 
@TheAtlantic says
"White Flight as I’ve heard it used, has always referred to the deliberate act of moving away from minorities. "
People move for many many reasons. Jobs, safety, economics, bigger home to accommodate a growing family, downsizing etc. who is to say there is a “deliberate act of moving away from minorities”. Then you choose to call this racism.
As for history, of course we need to learn history. Real racism is a real and horrible thing. And we need to learn from that history. It doesn’t mean we erase all the good things many white men from history did. History lessons should include all of the above. The good and the bad.
@bhs1978 That’s my point. I don’t think all moves are done with a malicious intent. People often do move for economic reasons. I’ve only heard of “white flight” as a term to describe movements with a specific racial intent. Which is why I said I could be wrong about how the term is deployed in other avenues.
Again, I haven’t seen any provide any examples of the “good things” being erased from history.
Based on some of the responses in this thread, it is no surprise the rise of hate incidences & hate groups. This is nothing more than White nationalism and a fear of how diverse our country is becoming. It is a backlash from the last 8 years. If people do not understand historical racism, white privilege, and white flight by this point in their adult lives…taking the time to explain these concepts on a board is futile. There will be a segment of our population who longs for the good 'ol days of the 50’s where people of color knew their place.
What about statues being defaced and/or removed because a white historian owned a slave or names of schools or streets being changed. While the historical racism is horrible it was done at a time that was considered the norm no matter how wrong that was at the time. So now we are erasing the good these historians did and trying to erase that history. I don’t think that’s good for anyone.
I saw an interesting episode of a TV show that really resonated with me. They were discussing removing a statue for the very reasons stated above. The young social justice warriors were all for the removal. The hold out was an older black activist (I.e. Similar to a Martin Luther King). He was adamantly against the removal of the statue in question. He gave a speech regarding the fact that he was old enough to remember what the statue stood for both the good and the bad. He then went on to say that his generation will soon be gone and those memories go with them. The statues are reminders of our history and how we can learn from it. To remove it is to erase that history.
“White flight” is the specific term of White people moving from a mixed population area or an area that’s been desegregated/un-redlined. It applies mostly to 60s and 70s neighborhoods in that specific sense.
The definition of who was acceptably “white” could change. For instance, in the very first suburbs by Lewitt (who was Jewish), Jews could not buy because they were not seen as “white” despite being of European origin. Later Lewittown admitted Jews freely but not Asians or African Americans (there was a very big civil rights fight).
While “White flight” would start from wanting an ethnically homogenous neighborhood, economics could spur the trend on.
In short, people move en masse for all kinds of reasons - one of them was fear of racially mixed neighborhoods (economics was a big push,too). Another issue was that, when factories closed, those who could move did - and if you couldn’t rent or buy in an area due to redlining then you were stuck.
Sundown towns exercised this separation differently but no less than the original planned communities.
Acknowledging that parts of our history arent glorious doesn’t decrease the positive aspects of our nation. We ought to learn the good and the bad, especially if we ought to teach values to our children (such as: racism is wrong, excluding people because of their color, or their gender, or their religion is wrong - “sure, we did that, but now we’re trying to be better.” )
The arrogance and condescension in the above statement are truly startling. The rise of identity politics,and the intended and unintended complications thereof, are a reasonable subject for public debate. Insulting others in unworthy of educated debate and was not used as a tool by our most respected civil rights leaders.
@myjanda great video a wonderful tangible explanation of the different education starting points for students.
I often wonder why we describe ‘new curriculum’ as 21st century learning but forget to clearly teach and reinforce the rules and expectations of every successful community. Go to school every day, follow the law, respect your teacher, read to your children and younger siblings, help out in your community even if it is just helping your immediate neighbors. We are raising the next generation and need to clearly reinforce ways to be successful as a citizen and parent.
Everyone is moving towards standardized testing while children are suffering from more and more single parent households. Learning to cook with nutritious ingredients, fix your own car, manage your finances and repair your home are the basics of financial survival and resilience even with an education and a job.
Re #20
The study controlled for SES of the neighborhoods depicted in the videos, and the white and black people shown were actors placed to depict white, mixed, and black neighborhoods.
So are you saying that white people equate a larger presence of black people with more crime?
“…While “White flight” would start from wanting an ethnically homogenous neighborhood, economics could spur the trend on…”
This was not our experience. Economics started it. We already stuck to our own neighborhoods. Our city was gutted by White Flight and left with a concentration of poverty. The factories went overseas. Business owners moved their businesses to more prosperous suburbs. The doctors and lawyers moved to suburbs with a country club, & fancier houses. People wanted to be “minutes from the highway”.
Malls killed our downtown. National chains killed the local paint store. Tire shop. Butchers shop. Business after business moved or closed.
The new suburbs are not exactly building affordable housing and opening their arms to the working poor, who, in this area, are black and Hispanic. This furthers the concentration of poverty, decreasing the amount of dollars in the immediate area to support local business.
I’m not denying racism, red lining, etc. I just cannot imagine our city wrecked if the high paying jobs were still there.
I really wasn’t trying to say that at all. Nor would I know if that is true or not. My point was that your example used strictly race as the modifier to be ranked. I was trying to suggest use a different modifier such as safety because in my personal experience people move for many other reasons with safety being a top priority and race not usually being a top priority. In my city we have some terribly unsafe white neighborhoods and I would never move my family there. We also have some terribly unsafe black neighborhoods and I would never move my family there. We also have some terribly unsafe mixed neighborhoods and I would never move my family there. We also have very many safe neighborhoods in all of the above scenarios and I would consider moving my family to those areas. there are a lot of other factors in a decision to move.
Your conclusion was " So it should not be surprising that “white flight” and housing discrimination against black people still occurs."
I was curious if a different ranking system were used would it come to the same conclusion or can we not conclude anything at all because race was not a factor in the ranking.
@bhs1978
The statue debate is alive and debated on other threads. Suffice to say it is worth noting that the majority of these Confederate statues were put up in the 1920’s and late 1950’s and were intended to send a very clear message to local African American communities of intimidation. If you know your history you would understand how problematic these statues are. 1920’s were a period of horrific mass lynchings of blacks in this country…1950’s saw turbulent white backlash to attempts at the most basic of civil rights on the part of African Americans.
It’s not as simple as these folks were “of their time” and therefore are above reproach. It’s more complex than that…
Re #51
You may want to read the study.
No one here is defending those fringe racists or calling them very fine people.
Re #21
Saying that a judge is automatically unfair because of his ethnicity?
Saying that very fine people marched with Nazis?
Support for Arpaio and his racial profiling?
Yeah, no. That would imply that our history exists only via statues in our public parks and squares. Can’t we write it down?
We can even write down that the statues were erected and then taken down … because all that is history, too.
Fine with me if you put it in the AP history textbooks. Students could write essays about this history.
@ucbalumnus you were right in that I had not read the study linked. I related personal opinion based on the conclusion stated. My bad!!
I have now read the study and while I find it a good study it is not a great study and is in my opinion flawed in the aspects reaching the conclusion.
The video aspect of the study was great and appears well controlled. The order of the videos randomized and the same videos shown equally to both groups whites and blacks.
In my opinion it becomes flawed in the survey process to determine how race matters.
“testing the degree to which racial stereotypes (for whites), experiences with discrimination (for blacks), and in-group identity (for both whites and blacks) influence the effects of neighborhood racial composition on evaluations of the neighborhood’s desirability.”
The control should have been the same for both groups. To start with degree of racial stereotypes for whites (only) and experiences with discrimination for blacks (only) started with an inherent bias. By not asking blacks about racial stereotypes it is insinuating that blacks don’t stereotype any group (blacks or whites). By not asking whites about experiences with discrimination the assumption is that whites can not be discriminated against. To determine how race mattered both groups should have been exposed to the same questions and variables.
This is nonsensical. If there ever was a time when being white exempted you from DUI charges, it disappeared at least 2 decades ago, before most of today’s incoming freshmen were born.
But if you don’t know, how am I supposed to know? And what am I supposed to do with statements like that?
Personally, I loathe the term “white privilege” and can’t wait until it (hopefully) fades from our discourse. It seems as racist to say that all whites are X as it does to say that all blacks are Y. And as useless.