Reply to The Culprits Behind White Flight

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[quote=Anonymous]Baltimore is a case study of the impact of racism on residential patterns and white flight on so many levels.

Beginning in the 1950s real estate agents started to target white neighborhoods through a practice called blockbusting, by buying a house, reselling it to a black family then going around the neighborhood and warning the residents that a black invasion was about to happen and they needed to sell now before property prices plunged. In panic, most white homeowners did sell  houses below market value before it was "too late" and the realtor firms resold the houses to black buyers at high markups.

The neighborhoods targeted were primarily working to lower middle class white neighborhoods and often inhabited by descendants of Irish, German, Italian, Polish immigrants, as well as Jewish areas. The realtors who drove the blockbusting mania were primary Jewish, unfortunately. I only say this to show that racial flight was not a war driven by the Waspocracy but racism was something that "white" America, regardless of ethnicity, was responsible for. Ironically given the Times article, in Baltimore it was the most waspy "old money" areas that held their ground even as adjoining areas became majority African American and even slipped into ghetto status. The first black homeowners moved into Guilford, Baltimore's premier neighborhood, in the 1970s and it didn't lead to a white flight. By contrast, the traditional Jewish areas in Northwest Baltimore quickly succumbed to racial flight.

By the way, I am NOT implying or suggesting a Jewish conspiracy or blaming Jews and Jews certainly suffered their own version of housing discrimination too. Only pointing out that all whites were equally complicit in this ugly period of American history.

Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City is a great book for anyone interested in studying this subject. 
https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-Neighborhood-Bigotry-American/dp/1566638437
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