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Originally Posted by ssiguy
That's a very good point.
One of the reasons why white flight was so dramatic and quick was due to the Great Migration being as well. If blacks moving to northern cities would have happened over a longer span then whites may have not fled just as quickly. The whites saw this "onslaught" of blacks into their cities as nothing short of an invasion as if a plague was descending upon their city so they packed up their bags and fled. For many white urbanites they really did believe they were running for their lives.
This caused once very prosperous and growing cities turn into very poor and shrinking ones in a remarkably short amount of time, Detroit being the poster child. This also resulted in those once powerful dominant cities becoming political impotent and hence not getting the attention of their state and federal politicians and the money they control.
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The mass exodus of whites didn't start happening until the federal government made it possible with everything that went into the creation of American postwar suburbia (racist mortgage lending practices, urban renewal, highway construction, etc.) and when landmark civil rights legislation allowed Blacks to become truly free and full participants in American life in all of its facets (on paper anyway)--a major pull factor followed by a huge push factor.