Whites embraced pluralism partly to legitimize abandoning troubled city spaces

Evidence

Prompted by a mix of fear, restricting potential competition, and cementing power, whites could enthusiastically embrace the ideological shift at the middle of the last century from assimilation to pluralism. Pluralism is experienced as the commitment not only to different histories, cultural values and practices but also to the ideological cliché of “live and let live.” This made conceivable and legitimated contrasting urban conditions, and by the same token the abandonment of certain city spaces. The libertarian license to “live and let live” is stressed so long as one doesn’t get in the way of institutionalized americanization, at home or abroad. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 389

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to urban disinvestment white flight literature, e.g., Ta-Nehisi Coates on the mechanisms of segregation. — connects to: 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; Whites’ own abandonment of public spaces caused the tax burden they then resented — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 300; Whites abandoned prized public spaces rather than see them integrated — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 433 (+2 more)