White racial egalitarianism rose while residential segregation simultaneously hardened

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 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Residential segregation by race persisted independent of class and education through 1970 — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 3348; Desegregation of public spaces drove working-class whites to reject civic community and city progress — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 252; Colorblind conservatism rebranded white residential privilege as neutral meritocracy. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 8 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Excluded whites reframed their segregationism as a defense of beleaguered rights #complicates (0.74) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 102