Residential desegregation fractured white working-class solidarity into defensive individualism

Evidence

As these studies demonstrate, the concept of a “white community” was anything but a simple matter in struggles over race and residence. The working-class whites who lived in transition areas assumed that they and their neighbors shared not only the common traits of race and class but also common interests in preserving segregation in their neighborhood and the status quo in local politics. During the course of residential desegregation, however, they discovered that their supposed common ground on these issues and identities was ultimately less important for them and their neighbors than each one’s self-interest. As long as individual home-owners felt that their individual needs—protecting property values and maintaining a stable home—could be met by working with their neighbors, they did so. Invariably, though, when some whites decided that their needs and the neighborhood’s diverged, they resolved to act on their own and in their own self-interest, regardless of the repercussions. The reality of individuality, these whites quickly realized, would always trump the rhetoric of community. And so, during the course of residential desegregation, as more and more working-class white Atlantans made this discovery, they thought of themselves less and less as participants in a larger society, with the attendant rights and responsibilities. For them, connections to other whites, on the same street, in the same neighborhood, or in the city at large, had been proved pointless. Instead of thinking in terms of their supposed community, these working-class whites now started to think of themselves as individuals, set apart from and, indeed, set against the rest of Atlanta. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 191

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the color-blind suburban individualism thesis and to Loïc Wacquant on territorial stigmatization and defensive localism in later urban scholarship. — connects to: Professors’ residential segregation from students breeds self-declared liberalism masking classroom conservatism — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 261; Housing fears proved the most emotionally charged white grievance for extremists to exploit. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 104; Segregationist hate groups recruited in transitional neighborhoods threatened by racial housing change — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 113 (+17 more)

Broader Connections

• Failed community defense pushed whites toward an ideology of individuality #expands (0.90) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 240
• Housing scarcity and residential transition drove working-class whites into organized racism #expands (0.88) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 104
• White homeowners performed community solidarity as a defensive strategy against desegregation #qualifies (0.85) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 190
• Residential transition fractured white communities along proximity-based lines of flight versus fight. #corroborates (0.83) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 210
• Desegregation of public spaces drove working-class whites to reject civic community and city progress #corroborates (0.82) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 252
• Desegregation taught working-class whites that self-interest trumps community loyalty #expands (0.82) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 191
• Desegregation pressure forced segregationists to reinvent themselves as respectable homeowners #exemplifies (0.82) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 106
• Combat and housing desegregation reshaped racist attitudes across class and region #expands (0.78) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1662
• De jure segregation served to unite white populations facing internal conflict #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1751
• Racially patterned residential preferences reproduce segregation without overt racism #qualifies (0.74) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1783