The demographic impact of "white flight"?

[eschaton]

As I said before, I believe that fundamentally, white flight encompassed two different eras.

During the first era, from about 1945 to 1960 or so, white people were leaving the city. However, they were not leaving the city due to black people really. They were leaving for a host of reasons, but mostly because due to the near cessation of residential construction between 1929 and 1944 cities were horribly overcrowded and expensive for what you could get. Not to mention polluted. The suburbs opened up, and home ownership was relatively affordable for the first time in U.S. history. Due to the incredibly racist nature of U.S. housing policy at the time, black people were essentially excluded from these new suburbs, but otherwise, to the extent they could have afforded them, they would have "fled" into these suburbs in just the same way that white people did.

It's only really after around 1960 that you see white people fleeing the city because "the city is bad" rather than "the suburbs are good." That's when the urban riots phase of U.S. history kicks into high gear, and you see a lot of busing in urban school districts which leads to a lot of white families leave cities entirely rather than have their children attend integrated schools.