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  #21  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2020, 5:47 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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I'm not sure I totally buy this. There was 1945-1960-era white flight, but usually within the city proper. In fact there was earlier white flight.

For example, the Detroit Jewish community was centered around 12th Street before WW2, and then vacated to Dexter Davison area by the 1940's, as the black community grew. They were out of Dexter Davison by the late 1950's, again replaced by the black community. The community was then in NW Detroit, around the Bagley neighborhood, until about 1970. The community was then centered in suburban Oak Park/Southfield, until about 1990. Now in West Bloomfield. In every move, the black community follows a few years later. West Bloomfield will probably be plurality black within a few years; the schools are already there.

Of course the push-pull factors are complex. It wasn't like Jews were fleeing in terror or something; they were replaced by upper middle class blacks in all these phases, and many of the legacy Jewish neighborhoods are among the more desirable in Detroit proper. But the suburban trends of the last 40 years aren't that different than the earlier city-proper trends; just a bit more gradual.

And I do think there was a degree of racial anxiety. The Jewish community is extremely education-oriented, and the best high schools in Detroit follow the community's migration path. It was Northern High in the 1940's, Central High in the 1950's, Mumford High in the 1960's, and then suburban high schools. Each was tied to a particular era of outstanding Jewish scholarship, followed by a period of anxiety following middle class black growth, and then mass flight.
The thing is, if you're talking about within-city neighborhood population changes, lots of core neighborhoods in urban areas had a 90% drop in population density between 1900 and 1950. This change had nothing to do with white flight in most cities, it was more because those core areas were switching over to being less residential, and the electric streetcar opened up new neighborhoods elsewhere within city limits.

There are particular, unique dynamics nationwide which led Jewish neighborhoods to become black neighborhoods. Possibly because both Jews and Blacks were typically excluded from housing sales due to racial covenants in the early 20th century, Jewish people didn't have issue selling their homes to black people, which meant the easiest places for middle-class blacks to move were into Jewish neighborhoods. The "white ethnic" neighborhoods were much tougher nuts to crack due to much more severe racism, and thus in many cases never changed over at all.

FWIW, all of my grandparents lived - at various points, in Levittown, PA. My father's father was actually a plumber who helped set up Levittown, NY, and then Levittown, PA, getting a free house out of the process. None of the working-class white neighborhoods my grandparents came from are black neighborhoods today.
     
     
  #22  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2020, 5:52 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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FWIW, all of my grandparents lived - at various points, in Levittown, PA. My father's father was actually a plumber who helped set up Levittown, NY, and then Levittown, PA, getting a free house out of the process. None of the working-class white neighborhoods my grandparents came from are black neighborhoods today.
Levittown, NY, even today, is really, really white. And it's in a diverse part of LI, but not Levittown. Well-paid white ethnic cops and plumbers, and not Jewish or highly educated.

I do think the earlier Jewish flight can be considered white flight, because it happened en masse, and fast. Like in 5-10 years max, the community would entirely relocate all people and institutions. Detroit's Mumford High went from almost entirely Jewish to almost entirely black in about five years.
     
     
  #23  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2020, 6:01 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Levittown, NY, even today, is really, really white. And it's in a diverse part of LI, but not Levittown. Well-paid white ethnic cops
and plumbers, and not Jewish or highly educated.
Yeah, I realize that's true for Levittown NY. Levittown PA had a fair amount of Jews apparently though. My mom went to public school with a lot of Jewish kids.

My main point was there was not a single part of my family where there was racial turnover in the urban neighborhoods they were from. Like, on my mom's side, her dad was mostly Irish and from East Falls in Philly, which is still white (and getting more yuppie) today. And my Mom's mom was from Port Richmond, which is still pretty white (albeit it's getting a little bit Latino further away from the river now - and also starting to gentrify).

My dad's side of the family was from various areas in North Brooklyn/Queens originally. They were mostly horribly racist people (the ones who now live in Long Island are all extremely conservative) but the areas they came from didn't have any substantive black migration during the period in question.
     
     
  #24  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2020, 6:20 PM
Docere Docere is offline
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From Beyond the Melting Pot, a sociological classic about NYC ethnic groups in the 1960s:
So of the 1930s Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx - all became minority areas with the exception of those of southern Brooklyn. Brighton Beach attracted Holocaust survivors and then Russian-speaking Jews in the 1970s, Borough Park became a Hasidic enclave and Italian immigrants replaced Jews in Bensonhurst.
     
     
  #25  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2020, 6:27 PM
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Most of those neighborhoods consisted of big apartment building blocks and NYCHA housing. The upwardly mobile Eastern European Jews were mostly done with living in tired, aging apartment blocks, Robert Moses was busy destroying their neighborhoods, and European immigration was a trickle, so naturally they were replaced by blacks and Puerto Ricans, who were the big incoming groups.
     
     
  #26  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2020, 8:04 PM
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Chicago 1950:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...n_1950_Map.jpg

Black population on inner South Side and moving into the West Side too. Jewish population still on West Side (Lawndale) but now moving in a northerly direction and newer concentrations on the North Side emerging. Italian population seems to be mostly on the West Side. The Polish near NW (still extant today due to immigration) is evident. The rest of the city looks pretty mixed up in terms of European nationalities.

Last edited by Docere; Mar 31, 2020 at 9:17 PM.
     
     
  #27  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2020, 8:31 PM
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Fascinating map. I think Jews were still on Chicago's West Side, near Oak Park, till about 1970.

And Chicago had defined Austrian, French and Japanese enclaves? In 1950? Not sure I buy that.
     
     
  #28  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2020, 8:40 PM
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I think they're just trying to make it "interesting" and show where the concentrations were.

Chicago's European population was mostly German, Polish, Irish, Jewish and Italian then I think, with Czechs and Swedes probably in the next tier. That's probably 90% of the white population.
     
     
  #29  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2020, 8:12 PM
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The Jewish exodus from the West Side happened very quickly. Lawndale was majority Jewish in the 1940s but 91% Black in 1960.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohisto...pages/901.html

It looks like there was some movement of better off Jews to the North Side in the 1930s, and after WWII the mass of the Jewish population began moving in a northward direction. Chicago's western suburbs have few Jews; the "Jewish" suburbs are Skokie and the North Shore suburbs.

Last edited by Docere; Apr 1, 2020 at 8:39 PM.
     
     
  #30  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2020, 8:46 PM
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Yeah, I guess the West Side emptied earlier. Rogers Park was very Jewish in the postwar era, and there's still a small Orthodox community in the city limits, in West Rogers Park.

Most Chicagoland Jews these days are downtown or in northern suburbs like Buffalo Grove, Highland Park, Skokie and Northbrook.
     
     
  #31  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2020, 10:21 PM
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
As I said before, I believe that fundamentally, white flight encompassed two different eras.

During the first era, from about 1945 to 1960 or so, white people were leaving the city. However, they were not leaving the city due to black people really. They were leaving for a host of reasons, but mostly because due to the near cessation of residential construction between 1929 and 1944 cities were horribly overcrowded and expensive for what you could get. Not to mention polluted. The suburbs opened up, and home ownership was relatively affordable for the first time in U.S. history. Due to the incredibly racist nature of U.S. housing policy at the time, black people were essentially excluded from these new suburbs, but otherwise, to the extent they could have afforded them, they would have "fled" into these suburbs in just the same way that white people did.

It's only really after around 1960 that you see white people fleeing the city because "the city is bad" rather than "the suburbs are good." That's when the urban riots phase of U.S. history kicks into high gear, and you see a lot of busing in urban school districts which leads to a lot of white families leave cities entirely rather than have their children attend integrated schools.
Where do you place the end date for the "white flight" era?
     
     
  #32  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2020, 12:49 AM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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So I mixed up North Lawndale with adjacent Austin.

North Lawndale was Chicago's Jewish hub, but almost entirely AA by 1960. Austin, just to the north, was 99.8% white in 1960. By the 1970's, there was severe white flight.

Nowadays, the neighborhoods are almost indistinguishable, but North Lawndale went through white ethnic flight 10-15 years earlier.
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohisto.../pages/93.html

There was also a significant Jewish community on the South Side, in the South Shore neighborhood. I think it had dispersed by 1970 or so.
     
     
  #33  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2020, 1:52 AM
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Chicago's changing racial demographics over the 20th century:

http://www.gif-explode.com/?explode=...om/xZoKnTa.gif
     
     
  #34  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2020, 1:22 AM
aquablue aquablue is offline
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Sad decline of American towns due to white flight was appalling. Awful choices were made and cities ruined forever. Sad but true. You just have to shake your head at that shortsighted, dumb generation of cowards and racists.

Last edited by aquablue; Apr 3, 2020 at 2:29 AM.
     
     
  #35  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2020, 2:31 AM
jd3189 jd3189 is offline
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^^^ Can’t argue with that. I remember hearing that all the investment that was places into the suburbs could have been placed into the cities. Had that happened, who honestly knows where we would be now. The NE corridor would be even more of a megalopolis and the Midwestern giants would be far past their peak now. The Sunbelt might have actually turned out better urbanwise than in our timeline.
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  #36  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2020, 4:38 AM
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I think another impact of US white flight was how it effected the educational attainment and hence socio-economic demographics of blacks.

When the whites fled they not only took themselves but also their tax base and political power with them. This left inner cities with a declining population and one that was MUCH poorer. It also meant that their community needs were ignored by state & federal politicians leaving inner city schools run down, crime ridden, understaffed, and with little or no assistance for non-educational community needs like alcohol/drug or anti-crime/gang programs because most school funding was being directed towards the suburban schools due to white's income and political influence.

The white flight that caused this educational stratification between the wealthy white suburbs and poor black inner cities is still having ramifications today and in many ways, still continues.
     
     
  #37  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2020, 2:32 PM
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There are examples of neighborhoods which following the initial period of integration did not see a generalized white flight and corresponding influx of poor black residents. I'm thinking about Mt. Airy in Philadelphia, or Shaker Heights right outside of Cleveland. Over time they have demographically drifted to being blacker and blacker, but they have remained safe, intact middle-class neighborhoods. I think it's important to remember that such communities exist - even if they are rare overall - because it shows it was not the initial influx of black residents into white neighborhoods which caused their decline, but the panicked flight of thousands of white residents, collapse of property values, and transformation into low-income slums which actually did many of the neighborhoods in.
     
     
  #38  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2020, 2:58 PM
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There are examples of neighborhoods which following the initial period of integration did not see a generalized white flight and corresponding influx of poor black residents. I'm thinking about Mt. Airy in Philadelphia, or Shaker Heights right outside of Cleveland. Over time they have demographically drifted to being blacker and blacker, but they have remained safe, intact middle-class neighborhoods. I think it's important to remember that such communities exist - even if they are rare overall - because it shows it was not the initial influx of black residents into white neighborhoods which caused their decline, but the panicked flight of thousands of white residents, collapse of property values, and transformation into low-income slums which actually did many of the neighborhoods in.
That's a really good point.

I find that even those sources (media, academic, political) who are advocates of the African-American cause tend to predominantly lean (unwittingly?) to the narrative that inner city neighbourhoods became hopeless cases when the white people left.

It shows just how ingrained the mindset is.
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  #39  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2020, 5:04 PM
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I find that even those sources (media, academic, political) who are advocates of the African-American cause tend to predominantly lean (unwittingly?) to the narrative that inner city neighbourhoods became hopeless cases when the white people left.
I would argue that white flight was so damaging in large part because of how quickly it happened.

A neighborhood which slowly switches from white to black over say a 50-year span (particularly with little overall change in socio-economic status) will probably be fine. Local schools probably won't be as good on standardized tests, and crime might be a bit elevated, but the neighborhood will be physically intact, homes will be occupied, and businesses will remain located there.

A neighborhood on the other hand where 80% of the white residents fled in less than 20 years is going to be an awful ghetto. If people are selling that quickly, no one is buying but slumlords.
     
     
  #40  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2020, 5:21 PM
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I would argue that white flight was so damaging in large part because of how quickly it happened.

A neighborhood which slowly switches from white to black over say a 50-year span (particularly with little overall change in socio-economic status) will probably be fine. Local schools probably won't be as good on standardized tests, and crime might be a bit elevated, but the neighborhood will be physically intact, homes will be occupied, and businesses will remain located there.

A neighborhood on the other hand where 80% of the white residents fled in less than 20 years is going to be an awful ghetto. If people are selling that quickly, no one is buying but slumlords.
On a wider level, Prince George's County in Maryland is probably a good example of the former.
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