Expanding the suburbs: white flight

Lying at the core of the American social and economic dream is the concept of the white nuclear family, traditionally seen as a mark of success within American society. However, as various non-white ethnic groups began to represent larger sections of the populus of major cities, it became clear to the purveyors of white ethnocentrism that their nuclear family ideal couldn’t flourish in urban centers. Instead, they turned to the suburbs. Flocking en masse to these areas, the mid-20th century saw the rise of exclusive communities of explicitly white families and businesses with a common goal—keeping it that way. As the 1968 Kerner report, an investigation into the causes of race riots, stated, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate but unequal.”

The earliest prominence of this phenomenon—dubbed ‘white flight’—in America can be traced to the 20s and 30s, when an influx of black families began taking residence in larger northern cities. Data from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that, in the 1920s, roughly three white families left for each black family that arrived in a northern residential area. However, the American suburb didn’t come to prominence until the post-war 40s, when Roosevelt-era organizations like the WPA designed and built large numbers of suburban areas that were often divided into segregated zones. The segregation of these areas was justified under the statistically untrue claims that neighborhoods with black residents had lower property values. 

White migration from urban areas only increased throughout the next several decades, making life continually harder for residents of what had since become minority neighborhoods. As inner-city residential areas grew more saturated with non-white residents, these neighborhoods were redlined as credit risks, making much needed bank loans and mortgages hard to come by. This led to urban decay in the latter half of the century. All the while, the new white suburbs became hubs of economic stability. 

While the rates at which the White Flight occurred have since decreased, the economic and social structure of America in the last 100 years is greatly dependent on this phenomenon. 

Be it through government policy or more organic means, white exodus from urban areas has had a direct link to perpetuation of the white nuclear family.