Embedded Files
Level of suburbanization in U.S. metropolitan areas 1970-2010 (Massey and Tannen, 2018).
Ideological Factors
Ideological Factors
Historians account for various causes of white flight. Some note how white flight has solely racial origins. The idea spread that there were “conspiracies” by black communities to “take over” white neighborhoods. This racist ideology resembles the Replacement Theory.
Others note that it had other origins where race was only a secondary factor. Instances are cited where white people left for unrelated reasons, creating low housing prices, or there were high wages or "centrally located manufacturing jobs" (Boustan, 419).
An example of a racially restrictive covenant saying "no persons of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or any lot"
GI Bill and the Federal Housing Authority
GI Bill and the Federal Housing Authority
“Only 3.3 percent of federally subsidized suburban housing units constructed in Southern California’s 1950s housing boom were made available to nonwhites” (Harris, 29). The FHA utilized explicitly discriminatory practices in tandem with more covert segregation. The agency hid their actions under the “verbiage of good intentions and compliance with federal law” while also refusing to insure mortgage loans to non-white groups (Harris, 34).
The GI Bill was an extension of this postwar discrimination. It provided countless funds and opportunities to white families looking to buy homes and move out of the city but “less than 2%” of financed real estate was available to non-white families (Harris, 34). These practices were not solely responsible for suburbanization but combined with community action and implicitly discriminatory home construction to craft predominantly white suburbs.
1960s FHA Loan Newspaper Ad
Franklin Delanor Roosevelt signing the G.I. Bill
“The absence of residential privacy was seen as a key feature of prewar, immigrant, ethnic, and lower-class lifestyles” (Harris, 114).
Basic one-level "private" home floor plan (Harris, 2013).
One level home exterior (Harris, 2013).
Home Construction as a Means for Segregation
Home Construction as a Means for Segregation
Privacy was put at risk by open floor plans When families could witness each other more easily, visually and auditorily, anxieties heightened. In response, suburban developments emphasized more separation. Homes were designed to be single-family spaces, emphasizing privacy within the home and isolation from the outside world. Landscaping achieved the same means, with trees or bushes separating houses from each other and the road. Closed-floor plans with large yards far away from other houses symbolized individualism and isolation from communities deemed inferior.
Cities and municipalities utilized home construction as a means to reinforce racist rhetoric of division. Privacy was a value linked to “a pure self, a pure identity [...], a pure family, unsoiled by the influence of outsiders” (Harris, 118). This notion of purity extended to the concept of race. Community, within the physical house and in the larger neighborhood or city, was to go against this purity. Suburbia offered just that—a symbolic means to achieve racial purity.
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