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Comment by howlgarnish | Hacker News Reader

> "White flight", a largely racist reaction to the civil rights movement involving increased protests and riots in cities

I think you have cause and effect reversed here. The original "pull" trigger was the automobile becoming affordable to the middle classes, making suburban living possible and leading to many leaving cities. The racist bit here is that many of these suburbs had covenants prohibiting non-whites.

The "push" factor came when poorer (non-white) people started moving into these vacated, now cheaper inner city properties. This in turn led more whites to leave, but here too the push wasn't just racism, but also concerns about falling property values, rising crime, etc.

Also, FWIW, as a non-American I found the SF of 2019 positively scary. Homeless camps in the Tenderloin, mentally ill people raving about murder on Market St, etc -- you don't see this kind of thing in equivalently wealthy European or Asian cities.

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>but here too the push wasn't just racism, but also concerns about falling property values, rising crime, etc.

As a non-American you shouldn't be so quick to relativise the importance of racism because, outside of the US, where cars also exist, there never was a white flight. In fact in Europe the affluent pretty much always move into cities, not out of them, even though those cities also have a lot of the issues surrounding urbanisation. Melting pots and culture clashes, immigration, crime, it's universal to most cities. Pretty much the same in most Asian countries as well, the affluent and poor coinhabit cities. White flight and the giant suburb sprawl is pretty uniquely American.

Even in a place like England, which is traditionally very classist, you don't see the kind of segregation in schooling or housing you have in the US, and London is not super-safe either. This reminded me of a NYT article from a few years ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/opinion/sunday/stop-prete...

I had a hard time understanding the American conception of unsafe city until I ran the numbers and found that in the 80s Belfast (with troops shooting people in the street and bombs going off) was still less lethal than Detroit. (Population adjusted)

It still baffles me how little was done about this in the US and how it was regarded as a local only problem.

> 80s Belfast (with troops shooting people in the street and bombs going off) was still less lethal than Detroit

Well yeah, even during the worst of the troubles it wasn't like there was a drug war going on.

I agree that inner city collapse on the sheer scale of a Detroit is a US-only phenomenon, but it's not too hard to find equivalents elsewhere. Most European cities have distinctly sketchy inner city districts, the wealthy have long since fled the old towns of both Manila and Jakarta for both suburbs and various new developments (BGC, Kuningan) etc.

> outside of the US, where cars also exist, there never was a white flight.

Outside of the US economic circumstances in the 1950s and 1960 were very different and living in the suburbs and commuting to your job was not a possible option for economic reasons. Also, "slav flight" or whatever your European equivalent is just doesn't have that ring to it. There's plenty of segregation outside the US. It's just mostly between groups of similar skin tones.

You did mention racism but I would also say racism was a driving force since before white flight. The government precursors to Fannie mae and Freddie mac wouldn't back mortgages that banks created in redlined areas. And the precursor to HUD created segregated public housing, including in the west. The Federal government was pushing redlining and segregation in housing since at least the Great Depression. A lot of this is covered in "The Color of Law" by Richard Rothstein.

There were plenty of people liberal enough or cheap enough to live in a black neighborhood. Many tried. But they wound up 100% black/0% white anyway.

Redlining means that everyone living in or near black neighborhood cant get those mortgages or investments or whatever. It also means services are lower for everyone - including white liberals who have limited options just due to living there.

What that also mean is that if one black family moves into white street, every white on that street is at risk to loose exact same things. They become redlined too.

Redlining means that white people have financial incentive to segregate themselves and to push away incoming blacks. Liberal might not mind living with blacks, but will mind being unable to take mortgage he would be able to get otherwise.

> There were plenty of people liberal enough or cheap enough to live in a black neighborhood. Many tried. But they wound up 100% black/0% white anyway.

No, I think when put to the test most liberal people would not do this. If they "tried", why did those neighborhoods wind up 100% black?

Where I grew up, for instance, the second best school in the city (by test scores, at least) was 99% black (mostly the children of alums of a nearby HBCU). White parents would send their kids to worse performing schools with more white kids over sending their kids to that school.

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