An understanding of white flight from Asian ethnoburbs with high-quality schools sheds light on the hard truth of all forms of racial segregation, a truth that people of color have always known: race, not education, is the fuel for white flight. Some whites will simply avoid living near people of color, as has been the case since the early 20th century. Parents would prefer a cut in education programs to having their children sit alongside children of color.
Why else would whites flee the high-performing schools of Johns Creek for other high-performing schools in similar suburbs, except to get away from the Asians?
Whites continue to flee Johns Creek at a relatively constant rate until the summer before high school, when panic leads to the sort of widespread evacuation that recalls the white flight from black neighborhoods in the 1960s and ’70s.
The white parents in Johns Creek, who in the same breath decry the police killings of unarmed African Americans, do not hesitate to tell me they do not want their children measured against Asians during the critical four years of grades that will make up the bulk of college application materials. This white fragility informs their decisions to insulate themselves from the “racial stress” of living next to Asians by moving to a different suburb.
Somehow white parents’ liberal politics and progressivism do not inform them that the decision to relocate to avoid Asians is racism. They’ve defined the term so narrowly, their own individual acts of prejudice don’t meet it.
Ghosts of White People Past: Witnessing White Flight From an Asian Ethnoburb
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