SEGREGATION
Why So Many White Americans Engage in Racial Social Distancing
White flight and the effort to maintain a racially separate society
If there’s one thing you learn about oil and water, it’s that the two don’t mix. Thankfully, groups of people are not molecularly opposed to one another. No matter their racial or ethnic identity, humans can develop communities with one another. So, why do so many of America’s neighborhoods remain racially segregated? After the Civil War, southern states mandated racial segregation, and de-facto segregation persisted in northern states. Policies such as racial redlining and the use of racial covenants that barred Black families from buying properties in certain neighborhoods created an unnatural society where Black people typically lived in isolated, resource-deprived areas. However, the end of these policies did not foster racial integration. Indeed, many White people engaged in a type of racial social distancing.
One must reflect upon the purpose of integration to understand the tragedy of racial social distancing in the modern era. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained the issue succinctly. “Many of the people who supported us in Selma and Birmingham were really outraged about the extremist behavior toward Negroes, but they were not at that moment, and…
