The Glade 4.0

white flight n. chiefly U.S. the migration of white people from inner-city areas (esp. those with a large black population) to the suburbs.

1967 New Republic 22 July 19/2 School quality is a far more important factor than racial feeling‥in this white flight from desegregated schools.
1975 Polit. Sci. Q. 110 675 White flight from cities has been a much discussed phenomenon in the last decade.
1978 Sci. News 23 Sept. 216 Previous studies of this so-called ‘white flight’ phenomenon have been criticized for not taking into account the type of desegregation involved and for ignoring other factors that might have induced white families to leave the central city anyway.

Authors:
Alsop, Joseph
Source:
New Republic; 7/22/67, Vol. 157 Issue 4/5, p18-23, 6p
Document Type:
Article
Subject Terms:
*URBAN education
*SEGREGATION in education -- United States
*INNER cities
*RACISM
*SCHOOL districts
*SCHOOL integration -- United States
Geographic Terms:
UNITED States
NAICS/Industry Codes:
611110 Elementary and Secondary Schools
Abstract:
Discusses the problem of segregation in the ghetto schools, said to be the very core of the race problem in the U.S., as of July 1967. Discussion on the decision of Judge James Skelly Wright concerning the school system of the District of Columbia; Proposal of the Civil Rights Commission report, Racial Isolation in the Public Schools, for securing desegregation in schools; Illustration of the socio-economic problems faced by African American high school students and graduates.
ISSN:
00286583
Accession Number:
10362693
Database:
Academic Search Complete

This is only one item of evidence - there is a mass of it, for instance, in the supporting studies behind the Watts report - to show that school quality is a far more important factor than racial feeling, in this white flight from desegregated schools that has made such a mockery of the good intentions of people like Judge Wright. When a middle-class school receives a massive infusion of children of extremely deprived background - whether Puerto Rican, or Mexican-American, or Appalachian white, or Negro — there are only two possible results. Either the added burden of the disadvantaged, educationally retarded children becomes too much for the teaching staff, whereupon school quality promptly and shockingly deteriorates and middle-class emigration quickly begins. Or the local school authorities take all the special measures that are needed to maintain school quality, in which case - thus far an almost unheard-of case - there is an excellent chance that most of the emigration can be averted.