Black Migration Case Study

In some cases, when predominantly white neighborhoods start to receive an influx of minorities, many white citizens decide to move away from these areas. This is also known as white flight. White flight started to occur in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. As black families began to move to more suburban areas such as Baltimore, Maryland or Pasadena, California, white families began to leave. This caused many social and economic problems. The social issues that white flight causes are not isolated to just these areas. They help promote stereotypes, as well as keep up the division of races. When white people flee these areas because of the minorities that are coming in and in reality they end up leaving …show more content…
Some of these factors include government aid and desegregation of schools. After the second world war, black families entered the middle class and moved into white cities, but racism kept them apart. (McMahon, 2016). White departure from cities were, somewhat, a reaction to African Americans coming in. White flight has been linked to urban decay. Urban decay is when house prices decline because an area is found undesirable. Black migration leads to an increase in vacancy rate and decline in housing prices. If white households have an aversion for diversity, black migration will be linked to more than one white departure for every black arrival, a declining urban population, and falling house prices. Some ways of keeping the segregation alive were redlining and restrictive covenant. Redlining denies goods and services to people in certain neighborhoods. An example of redlining is mortgage discrimination; this basically drives minorities to buy homes in certain areas only. Covenants are legally enforceable agreements obligated in the deed upon the buyer of the home. Racially restrictive covenants are contracts that forbid the buying of property by a specific group of people, usually African Americans. (1920s–1948: Racially Restrictive Covenants). Residential segregation and ongoing racial discrimination in housing allowed for the escalation of negative economic …show more content…
The past affects the present. Inertia is not merely a property of physical universe; it also relates to the political, socioeconomic, and cultural universe. We have to deal with the past because the past comes into the present whether we like it or not, and whether or not we wish to speak of it.” (page 5) The actions regarding white flight that white people had made several decades ago were for individual reasons. But due to how they could leave with such ease, and how blacks could not, it is damaging to this day. It put African Americans at a disadvantage. It fed into stereotypes and societal racism. And by fleeing they took the middle class with them, and left numerous cities to