December 17, 2002
SPEAKING OF WHICH:
Study finds whites still fear integration: 40% say they'd leave if more blacks move to neighborhoods (Oralandar Brand-Williams, 11/22/02, The Detroit NewsNearly 40 percent of whites interviewed in Detroit, Boston, and Atlanta said they would move if their neighborhoods became more racially integrated, according to a study released Thursday.Fear of declining property values and a jump in crime were the main reasons whites gave for wanting to move out of increasingly integrated neighborhoods, according to the study, which is in the November issue of the journal Demographics.
"Overt expressions of racial prejudice were not uncommon," said Maria Krysan, the University of Illinois at Chicago sociologist who co-authored the study.
"But most often, whites painted a negative picture of integrated neighborhoods, pointing to crime, graffiti, drug use and declining property values to explain their desire to leave.
If 40% will cop to it the real number has to be at least a majority. The Brothers grew up in East Orange, NJ, a racially mixed city. The population seemed to have stabilized in the mid-60s, in no small part because there was a residency requirement for municipal employees. But the removal of that rule and the Newark riots led to an exodus of whites and by the mid-70s our school was over 90% black. Hence our skepticism about how eager America is to embrace integration. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2002 8:57 PM
Quite frankly, Blacks have only themselves to blame for this. You wouldn't see these numbers if it were Asians moving in, and they would be far lower even with Hispanics. This isn't a case of white delusions of a priori supremacism; it's based on bad experiences.
I'll cite my own experience as an example. I lived in a mixed area in Houston, and the all the crime that we had to watch out for was committed in overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers by blacks: Carjacking, Burglary, Assault, etc. Any attempt to address the problem seriously instantly led to charges of "racial profiling," and our gutless Mayor Brown--a former cop!--went right along with it.
As long as blacks, and not just their "leadership," refuse to deal with this problem, whites are going to do the only sensible and legal thing they can do: leave. It's what I did. Quite frankly, when it comes to my family's safety, I don't care about the "other" guy's hurt feelings. Is it unfair? Probably, but no more so than the idea of reparations, which a sizeable number of blacks think is just hunky-dory.
Derek is correct. Not until some brave leader makes this an issue will this problem be resolved.
Posted by: R.C. at December 18, 2002 12:01 PMMore an instance of a small fraction of -- I don't know, what's the opposite of an elite? -- controlling, in too many ways, an inert majority.
Posted by: Harry at December 18, 2002 1:47 PMHarry;
Similar to modern day Islam? You have to attach some
blame to the inert majority for acquiesing. It tends to mean that the inert majority doesn't strongly disagree with the active minority.
And of course, those who insist on a group identity have to take the bad with the good.
I live in Manassas, VA, which has a large Hispanic population with a good sprinkling of Asians - large enough, in fact, for a full-scale, full-size supermarket recently to have been opened purveying Latino and Asian foods to the locals (I get much better ramen there than I can get at the other local supermarkets) - and I can testify that I haven't noticed any especial tendency to white flight.
The local Hispanics work hard - in fact, they do a lot of the job Anglos won't do - and the local Asians bring in a lot of money from their professional jobs. And neither group is particularly given to crime.
I do attribute some blame to the inert majority.
Many years ago, I lived in Virginia Beach, a redneck city that ran hippies out at gunpoint and kept its darkies
in their place.
About 10 years after I moved away, I was hugely amused to read an AP story saying that Virginia Beach had become the Daytona Beach for black college students on spring break, and that 100,000 of them had rioted in the streets.
But why aren't those kids (who are by now in their 30s) regarded as the African-American street?
I dunno.