Re:Why don't black and white Americans live together?
by SwellJoe on Thursday September 22, 2016 @03:37PM
(#12559649)
Class plays a big role in why white migration is not considered a net good.
White migration does happen, and we call it gentrification, because it usually means wealthy young (mostly white) folks moving into poor neighborhoods on the edges of "cool" cities, causing rents to rise dramatically over a short period of time, and pushing out longtime residents who are too poor to afford to continue to live in the hip new neighborhood with fancy bistros and cat cafes (yes, there's really a cat cafe...it's in East Austin on the site of a business once owned by a Hispanic family whose business was bulldozed).
Integration almost has to go the other way, or it is more of a disruptive force, and a force for further damaging communities of color. Race and class are so closely correlated in the US that you can't talk about one without the other on most issues. In this case, it means that white people moving into a black or brown neighborhood are often displacing black or brown people who can no longer afford to live there, because wealthier whites have driven up rents (and home ownership among black and brown people is much lower than ownership among white people in the US, so that doesn't provide a very good buffer to protect those black and brown neighborhoods from being "flipped" into white neighborhoods).
In short: Integration is a good goal. But, without some care, moving white folks into black and brown neighborhoods can be harmful.
White migration does happen, and we call it gentrification, because it usually means wealthy young (mostly white) folks moving into poor neighborhoods on the edges of "cool" cities, causing rents to rise dramatically over a short period of time, and pushing out longtime residents who are too poor to afford to continue to live in the hip new neighborhood with fancy bistros and cat cafes (yes, there's really a cat cafe...it's in East Austin on the site of a business once owned by a Hispanic family whose business was bulldozed).
Integration almost has to go the other way, or it is more of a disruptive force, and a force for further damaging communities of color. Race and class are so closely correlated in the US that you can't talk about one without the other on most issues. In this case, it means that white people moving into a black or brown neighborhood are often displacing black or brown people who can no longer afford to live there, because wealthier whites have driven up rents (and home ownership among black and brown people is much lower than ownership among white people in the US, so that doesn't provide a very good buffer to protect those black and brown neighborhoods from being "flipped" into white neighborhoods).
In short: Integration is a good goal. But, without some care, moving white folks into black and brown neighborhoods can be harmful.