Excluded whites reframed their segregationism as a defense of beleaguered rights

Evidence

In time, however, these whites would challenge the rule of the Hartsfield coalition. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, during the peak of the moderate coalition’s apparent power and prestige, Atlanta’s segregationists slowly gathered steam. As city leaders pressed ahead with the politics of progress, these disaffected working-class and middle-class whites gathered together in a politics of retrenchment. As Hartsfield and his allies bragged about the “city too busy to hate,” these whites began to speak a new language of their own, one centered on their beleaguered rights. In the end, their revolt would not only create a separate movement of white resistance in Atlanta but would also irreparably fragment the coalition against which they railed. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 102

Categorization

• XREF: This is the ideological reinvention — segregationism recast as rights-defense — that prefigures the color-blind suburban conservatism central to the reader’s project. — connects to: White suburban parents reframed segregated schooling as earned rewards of individual merit — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 42; A middle-class antibusing movement forced segregationist ideology into a ‘color-blind’ populist frame. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 51; Residential segregation was conceived as territorial defense of white islands against black encroachment — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 115 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Segregationists understood resistance as defending their own rights and freedoms #corroborates (0.95) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 31
• Respectable segregationists framed exclusion of blacks as a symmetry of individual choice #expands (0.82) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 372
• White homeowners performed community solidarity as a defensive strategy against desegregation #expands (0.80) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 190
• Neoliberalism functioned as a defense against perceived erosion of white privilege #qualifies (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1764