Comment by cherrycherry98 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cherrycherry98 | Hacker News Reader

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To blame this all on racism is to miss the true motivation which is safety of person and property. It is something I never truly understood until last year's protests/riots, which I think are also at least a factor in people moving out of urban areas again (though few will admit it). When there's unrest which results in arson, looting, and vandalism, those with means will seek safer locales and erect physical and institutional barriers to keep out potential threats. Venice is a historical example of this, built on the water for protection from barbarians.

There are knock on effects such as dimmer prospects for those left than in the more integrated communities that proceeded as investment flees. People rightfully don't want to invest in areas deemed unsafe, where those investments would be at risk.

To be clear, where such barriers manifest in ways where people are judged or treated differently based on immutable characteristics or group identity instead of their individual character, this is wrong.

This is a pretty good take on the ramifications of race riots: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/racism-riots-economics-...

You portray this as a one-way relationship, but it's a cycle. Yes, perceptions of safety are part of the reason why people flee to the suburbs, but that flight is itself part of the reason so many inner cities are destitute and unsafe. Why put all of the blame on the people most negatively affected by this dynamic and least able to change it?

> People rightfully don't want to invest in areas deemed unsafe, where those investments would be at risk.

That's exactly the rationale behind redlining, food deserts, infrastructure funding (especially schools) and other kinds of systemic racism. I suggest you read up on what that term means. It does not mean that everyone participating in the system is racist. It means that our institutions and economy themselves perpetuate racial injustice even without further racist intent. Framing this entirely in terms of "rational" choices by those who flee, as if those who stay don't exist or don't matter, is perpetuating a false narrative. So, again, why?

I agree that there's absolutely a cycle and don't intend to diminish that or imply that those left behind don't matter or are to blame for their situation. There's clearly reasons why people decide to riot or protest, even if it doesn't necessarily bring about the desired outcomes.

White flight and red lining tend to get thrown around without any attempt to tackle reasons why these things happened beyond some surface level talk of not liking people that are different.

The proper name for "perpetuate injustice without racist intent" is "classism". It can happen in homogeneous countries just as well.. in fact, I grew up in Russia surrounded 99% by other white slavs, and I'm super culture-classist based on that experience. I've also heard from other Eastern European immigrants how it's awesome that in America (compared to at home) it's easy to live not being surrounded by gopniks (chavs in Britain), bydlo (lit. cattle - kinda like urban white trash), and alcoholics, and how they wish Moscow/Warsaw/whatever had more class segregation accessible to an average person, instead of just the very rich. It's a bummer that in America class is so tied to race.

> To blame this all on racism is to miss the true motivation which is safety of person and property.

I think this sentence is much closer to the mark if you say: "the true motivation which is perceived safety of person and property."

I think you are right that people seek out less density and more personal space when they feel insecure or under threat. But in the modern journalistic landscape that sensation can be quite decoupled from the reality of their actual risk of harm.

safety of person and property.. from what? because if the answer boils down to racial/socioeconomic unrest, blaming racism seems justified, no?

Sure, racism could be an/the underlying cause. But this perspective is very different from the normal perspective (which foxyv seemed to be promoting).

The usual perspective is that white people fleeing during white flight are racist themselves.

What you are saying is that racism causes violence, and rich white people who are victims of violence flee that violence. So they're not racist themselves but rather second-order victims of racism.

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