you can debate about it being racist or not, but the data shows that white people moved from the cities to the suburbs in southern cities. this is called white flight. a lot of the movement coincided with wins from the civil rights movement — this suggests that it has to do with race. imo it's very much race driven.

regardless, your suburb vs city dichotomy ignores the great migration from the south. rural folks in the south moved to urban areas in the north. it's not suburb vs city. it's rural vs urban. my criticism of this study is about that, it used an example of a city where there's been growth and urban sprawl in the metro area as a whole, but ignored that and only focused on the city of jackson itself. jackson has lost a lot of population for various reasons, but seeing that example in this article about the study set off a critical flag in my brain. it seems like a simplistic look at jackson without examining the metro area as a whole. it might do that and i just didn't read the study.