White fear of black invasion rested on false images of the newcomers as lower-class

Evidence

During that time, the whites of Mozley Park had assumed that the “invading” blacks were of a lower class and cruder background. In truth, blacks in the first wave of residents were very much like their white counterparts, at least in terms of occupation, while the second wave came from a higher class. … In a 1957 study, Carson Lee of Atlanta University’s sociology department compared the new residents of Mozley Park with the whites they had replaced. In general, he found the new black homeowners generally had higher levels of education, income, property ownership, political activity, and civic involvement. The new population, Lee concluded, was “characteristically stable, mature, upwardly mobile, with a design for respectability.” — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 174

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the pattern in other desegregation studies where whites’ stated fears about crime/property values were contradicted by the actual class profile of incoming black residents. — connects to: Colonial officials feared pauper whites as racial impostors blurring colonizer-colonized lines. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 668
• SEED: This documented mismatch between segregationist rhetoric (black invaders as degraded) and the empirical reality (incoming blacks as more educated and affluent than displaced whites) is a strong concrete exhibit for an essay on how racial panics survive disconfirming evidence.

Broader Connections

• Colonial officials feared pauper whites as racial impostors blurring colonizer-colonized lines. #expands (0.80) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 668