[Snargorf]

Wait wait. So:

1. White people commit racism and violence against blacks

causes

2. White people flee to the suburbs

causes

3. Urban centers to deteriorate.

Let's examine:

1->2 So white people were fleeing... their own violence against blacks?

2->3 So when those violent people left, this cause the areas to get... worse?

Apparently you believe white people being present is a problem, and white people leaving is a problem. Their presence hurts blacks, and when they leave it hurts blacks too. So literally everything is the fault of white people, whether they're coming or going, here or there.

Even more surreal - these blacks voluntarily moved towards the whites. Then the whites moved to escape the blacks. And the bad guys here are... the whites! The ones who blacks want to live around, and who are trying to flee them.

It really is remarkable the rationalizations a mind is capable of.

[dang]

You've been using HN exclusively to fight political battles. That's an abuse of this site. We asked you repeatedly to stop, but you've continued doing exactly the same thing, so I'm banning your account.

This community has a single guiding value: intellectual curiosity. That is profoundly incompatible with single-purpose ideological participation. If HN is to survive in its intended form, we need to get clearer about differentiating these two. I'm sure there are other internet communities where people can fight their wars-by-other-means.

> It really is remarkable the rationalizations a mind is capable of.

This kind of incivility is particularly unwelcome here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12134673 and marked it off-topic.

[lkrubner]

You might want to read up on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

Excerpt:

However, some historians have challenged the phrase "white flight" as a misnomer whose use should be reconsidered. In her study of Chicago's West Side during the post-war era, historian Amanda Seligman argues that the phrase misleadingly suggests that whites immediately departed when blacks moved into the neighborhood, when in fact, many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics. The business practices of redlining, mortgage discrimination, and racially restrictive covenants contributed to the overcrowding and physical deterioration of areas where minorities chose to congregate. Such conditions are considered to have contributed to the emigration of other populations. The limited facilities for banking and insurance, due to a perceived lack of profitability, and other social services, and extra fees meant to hedge against perceived profit issues increased their cost to residents in predominantly non-white suburbs and city neighborhoods. According to the environmental geographer Laura Pulido, the historical processes of suburbanization and urban decentralization contribute to contemporary environmental racism.

[thebooktocome]

A quick thing that can be easily dispelled: minority groups didn't voluntarily move anywhere from '34 to '68 [1], because the FHA policy of redlining prevented them from getting a mortgage in predominately white neighborhoods. Shockingly or not, the higher quality property was reserved for whites.

'68 was the end of formal, legal requirements to disapprove of mortgages in heterogeneous communities (for lack of a better term). There's plenty of evidence that the practice continues even to this day, informally. [2]

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-raci...

[2] http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/fai...

[Kinnard]

Do you think any of this has to do with the fact that it was illegal to teach Blacks to read and write.

Do you think any of this has to do with the mental trauma of enslavement.

Do you think the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment make all the bad things go away.

Ubiquitous discrimination grinds on the soul. Do you blame the oppressed for being ground down?

[douche]

We're at least two or three generations away from any of this. Hell, slavery's been abolished for five generations. Five generations ago, my family was poor-as-a-churchmouse country bumpkins (still are, by and large). They didn't have any education, and they got drafted to fight in a war they didn't give a tinker's damn about to fight and die on Little Round Top and a dozen other places in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and many of them died.

[Kinnard]

My Grandmother's Grandmother was a slave and my Grandparents fled the segregated South where lynchings were common.

Ever see any of that horrifying Civil Rights Movement footage? A lot of those people are still alive. The victims and the perpetrators. All those people protesting the integration of schools, throwing things at harmless black children? Still alive.

[DanBC]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

Started 1934, continued to at least the 1970s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching

> Nearly 3,500 African Americans and 1,300 whites were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968, mostly from 1882 to 1920.

(Someone born in 1968 is 46 / 47.)

[lwhalen]

I think your post and mine must have waved to each other when they passed in The Tubes :-)

[peterwwillis]

It is not my responsibility to teach you basic American history. But here's some things to get you started.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/white-fl...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Migration_(Africa...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_African-Americ...

Read them or don't, I don't really care, but if you want to be less ignorant of how this developed these are useful starting points.

[lwhalen]

So what should white people have done/what should they do, to not be guilty of these terrible social sins that appear to be their fault no matter what actions they take?

[peterwwillis]

In a sentence? They need to do something to help.

In a larger sense: they should recognize that the entire American society was splintered a long time ago by racism and it never un-splintered. A metric fuck-ton of work needs to be done to rehabilitate the communities and whole socioeconomic strata that have been affected by this. It will probably take 20-50 years to undo, just because so many people have this "It's not my fault, so fuck it, I don't need to do anything" attitude.

Societies do not self-heal.

[lwhalen]

I don't know about you, but I am responsible for my own actions. I don't need a hug from Whitey or anyone else to know the difference between right and wrong, or hard work versus sloth. If you do, I feel bad for you son. I choose the action, I choose the consequence, same as pretty much anything else on this planet.

[Kinnard]

When you chose to leave Michigan, were you faced with endemic discrimination while looking for a place to live? While buying a home? While shopping? While walking around town doing nothing wrong? While driving while black?

It's not that Black people's choices are bad, it's the racist responses to those choices that are the problem.

[lwhalen]

Endemic discrimination while renting an apartment? Nope.

Owning a house? Haven't achieved that yet, but I haven't exactly been trying.

While shopping? Nope.

Walking around town? Nope.

Driving? If I'm speeding and/or driving like an idiot, I get attention from the cops. My driving record isn't exactly squeaky clean, but each infraction is because I was making the choice to not follow the rules of the road.

Sorry if my experience doesn't fit a different narrative, but in my experience if I'm looking/acting like an idiot I get treated as such. Nothing that is outside of my control though.