White homeowners performed community solidarity as a defensive strategy against desegregation

Evidence

Because the WSMDC relied on community integrity as its “yardstick,” white residents consciously tried to measure up to the standard. If they could demonstrate their solid sense of community, past and present, they believed their neighborhood might be “saved” from racial transition. If they could not, they knew their area would be “lost.” Therefore, whites in borderline neighborhoods began stressing their common ties, their common rights, and their common goals. They papered over their significant internal differences and tried to present a unified front. To varying degrees, they succeeded. Outside observers largely accepted their claims of “community” without question. But how substantial were such “white communities” in reality? The experiences of several white, working-class neighborhoods in Atlanta demonstrate that “community” was an ideal that was regularly celebrated but rarely experienced. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 190

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the loaded meaning of ‘community integrity’ within desegregation politics: a testable standard whites believed would save or lose a neighborhood.
• XREF: connects to: Housing fears proved the most emotionally charged white grievance for extremists to exploit. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 104; Residential segregation was conceived as territorial defense of white islands against black encroachment — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 115; Columbians framed desegregation as a communist threat to white existence — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 119 (+27 more)

Broader Connections

• Desegregation pressure forced segregationists to reinvent themselves as respectable homeowners #expands (0.90) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 106
• White segregationists rhetorically reframed racial exclusion as protection of community integrity #expands (0.88) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 193
• Failed community defense pushed whites toward an ideology of individuality #expands (0.86) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 240
• Residential transition fractured white communities along proximity-based lines of flight versus fight. #expands (0.82) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 210
• Housing scarcity and residential transition drove working-class whites into organized racism #qualifies (0.78) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 104
• Black segregation rose from white avoidance, not black housing preferences #expands (0.78)
• Racially patterned residential preferences reproduce segregation without overt racism #complicates (0.74) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1783
• Present-day white homebuyer behavior, not past policy alone, sustains housing market racism #expands (0.72) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1280