Colors

White Flight

How It's Used

“Having lost one million residents in a half century, Detroit is expected to see its population drop by 50,000 more in the next five years; 15,168 business have departed since 1972. New loft developments credited with revitalizing downtown are mainly filled with empty-nesters, not the building blocks of a healthy community; white flight has become bright flight, with families and people earning more than $50,000 a year leading the way out of town.”

“When this fight started more than three decades ago, critics said it was racist at heart. Sandy Springs, a white-flight suburb that has since become more diverse, harbored a growing resentment over what its residents saw as a disproportionately small return on the taxes they paid—taxes that helped subsidize police and fire services in south Fulton County.”

“People who know little about Staten Island tend to know this much: It is a historical haven for mobsters (Paul Castellano's former mansion is a short drive from Vito Corleone's 'Godfather' compound); it is home to a 2,200-acre landfill, the city dump from 1948 to 2001; it is home to the city's strongest conservative voting bloc (it's the only borough McCain carried in 2008); and it's home to the largest per-capita Italian-American population in New York state. This last factoid extends back to the 1950s, when 'white flight' began to scatter Brooklyn's Italian-American communities out to suburban Staten Island. This migration was further enabled and encouraged by the 1964 opening of the Verrazano bridge, which connects Brooklyn to Staten Island and which gave the rest of the city a means of entry besides public ferry. (There are three bridges that connect Staten Island to New Jersey.)”

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