Quote:
Originally Posted by goat314
You will find this to be the case in pretty much every metropolitan area with a significant Afro-American presence. It's the real reason America abandoned it's cities, but people like to create other narratives.
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It's ONE of the reasons that the white middle class left for the suburbs. Car ownership, the Interstate Highway system and consequent freeway networks, and the availability of new, inexpensive, and spacious housing with easily obtained financing also played a huge role. Most people rented housing prior to 1950 or so. Mortgages were hard to find for the working man. There were many more multi-generational households, and demand for new housing after the depression of the 1930s and WW2 was enormous. School desegregation and mandatory busing to achieve racially balanced schools tended to add impetus to an already existing phenomenon. By the time this happened in the 1960s, most cities were ringed with independent suburbs with separate municipal governments. Not surprisingly, these are often the same suburbs that black middle class families have moved to in recent years as their own circumstances improved. The black middle class also abandoned the central city to a certain extent and for many of the same reasons.