From the founding of Jamestown in 1607, and despite the arrival twelve years later of the first Africans who came not as fellow immigrants but as enslaved property, White Americans established the pattern of living in largely all-White communities for the next 260 years. After the Civil War, when Black Americans were legally free to live wherever they chose, White residents initially prevented them from living in their communities. As the government gradually enforced Black Americans’ right to live anywhere, White residents left the cities they had inhabited for three centuries and moved to the new suburbs.

Although some young White people are moving into gentrified downtown neighborhoods, census data show that the White population is declining in broader urban areas as they move farther out to exurbs, often in neighboring counties. Those who don’t relocate to whiter public school districts often enroll their children in private schools, which are usually whiter than the cities in which they are located. School district gerrymandering has also become a form of White flight without physical relocation. Recent studies by EdBuild and the American Educational Research Association show that school secession is significantly increasing school segregation under the seemingly nonracial banner of “local control.”

White society places a higher value on property than on Black people, and the fear of losing property value has been the impetus for White flight. White people have treated Black people as a problem to be solved rather than as people to be known. Today, the US has more than twice as many majority-Black cities as it did in 1970. White flight caused this major shift in urban demographics and the subsequent disinvestment and home devaluation totaling trillions of dollars. As White residents left American cities, property values fell. This reduced property tax revenue, producing underfunded public services, which contributed to rising crime and poverty. Once cities had sufficiently declined, “urban renewal” was used to justify the construction of highways, factories, waste disposal sites, and other hazardous industries in majority-Black neighborhoods. Decades later, these cities still face costly social, infrastructure, and modernization challenges, yet they have less revenue per capita than in 1970.

Recommended reading: *White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism* by Kevin M. Kruse

[White Flight Kept America Segregated](https://lestercraven.substack.com/p/white-flight-kept-america-segregated)