There is little question that the end of World War II changed American society. Not only did the war usher in the age of the atomic bomb and the cold war, but also introduced the American Dream of owning a house in the suburb. Even though the concept of suburbanization was not wholly new, its manifestation in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s was indicative of the new urban form and new American reality.
That reality included the new social status of minorities, particularly blacks, in the wake of the violent decline of Jim Crow racism. As rhythm and blues artist George Clinton proclaimed in the 1970s, American cities adopted a new form where the inner cities were decidedly black while whites dominated suburban communities. In effect producing what Clinton proclaimed was “chocolate cities and its vanilla suburbs.”
However, the process of suburbanization, or white flight, was not merely a result of the American Dream. The abandonment of the inner cities involved racism further facilitated by the federal government in the form of low-cost veteran home loans and increased urban mobility.
White Flight and Jim Crow Racism
After WWII, middle-class white America began the mass exodus from the inner cities. The initial justification centered in the new pristine housing that rapidly sprung to life in the suburbs. However, a more sinister rationale was discussed behind closed doors: the escape from newly desegregated neighborhoods and schools following the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Desiring to maintain traditional Jim Crow racism, middle-class white America fled in the hopes of maintaining homogeneous neighborhoods and schools.
However, by the 1990s the new black middle-class followed their white predecessors to the suburbs, but at a significantly slower rate. For blacks, unlike whites, race was not the underlying factor influencing the abandonment of the inner city. Instead it was economic and class motivated.
The Process of Suburbanization
Racial segregation through urban flight and suburbanization occurred primarily because of two phenomena: the “pull” of new suburbs, or the “push” from the inner cities. The “pull” hypothesis states that after WWII a combination of federal housing programs, mass produced housing, and new highways made suburbanization possible.
This hypothesis is the one typically discussed in the suburbanization literature, and focuses on racial segregation as a function of the extent to which blacks and other nonwhites could not buy suburban homes through discrimination by government programs and “redlining” by lending institutions and Realtors.
However, it is the “push” hypothesis that perhaps played a larger role in the suburbanization process. Demographic studies illustrate how the increased presence of “undesirable” minorities, especially blacks, led to whites fleeing the inner cities.
Automobiles and White Flight
By the 1950s the automobile changed American society by significantly improving urban mobility. It also facilitated white flight. In Automobile Age Atlanta (1979) Howard Preston illustrated how the automobile became a social symbol of wealth and combined with federal subsidies led to the development of Atlanta’s new suburbs. He concluded that the immediate results were class differences and racially segregated neighborhoods.
Mark Rose’s Interstate: Express Highway Politics (1979) showed how increased urban mobility due to the automobile (automobility) changed American culture forever. Rose believed the interstate highways were the greatest public works program in American history. Even though Interstate: Express Highway Politics exposes the unsavory activities of the highway lobby, Rose only addressed a limited range of political and urban planning questions.
Lastly, James Flink, perhaps America’s most recognized automobility expert, wrote America Adopts the Automobile (1970), The Car Culture (1975) and The Automobile Age (1988). These works generally supported the automobile as the answer to the urban problems of mobility, freedom, and health/environmental hazards. However, the beneficiary of improved mobility was the white middle-class.
There were several factors that influenced white flight, including racism and improved urban mobility. The white middle-class eagerly embraced the American Dream, a dream the excluded most minorities of the inner city. The result was a new urban form with predominately white suburbs and minority inner cities.
References
Bickford, Eric. 1997. “White Flight: The Effect of Minority Presence on Post World War II Suburbanization.” University of California-Berkeley, www.eh.net/Clio/Publications/flight.shtml
Flink, James. 1970. America Adopts the Automobile. Cambridge: MIT Press.
___. 1975. The Car Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.
___. 1988. The Automobile Age. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Frey, William, 1996. Immigration, Domestic Migration, and Demographic Balkanization in America: New Evidence for the 1990s. Population and Development Review 22: 741-763.
Long, Larry and Diana DeAre. 1981. “The Suburbanization of Blacks.” American Demographics 3: 16-21.
Preston, Howard L. 1979. Automobile Age Atlanta: The Making of a Southern Metropolis. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Rose, Mark. 1979. Interstate: Express Highway Politics. Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas.
