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James Wolfinger, White Flight/Black Flight: The Dynamics of Racial Change in an American Neighborhood, Journal of American History, Volume 99, Issue 1, June 2012, Pages 345–346, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas095
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At first glance, the pseudonymously named Parkmont seems like a common American neighborhood. It was built in a northeastern city in the 1940s and had a large Jewish population that strove to make it a tight-knit community in the postwar years. It had a robust shopping district and a good school that made it the envy of surrounding areas. For several decades, residents rebuffed African Americans who sought to live there, but by the 1990s Parkmont had gone through racial change that converted it into a black community, one struggling with the common problems of trying to secure social services, promote fair law enforcement practices, and maintain a small-business community.
Rachael A. Woldoff tells Parkmont’s seemingly common story in an uncommon way. Rather than focusing on racial change, Woldoff explores what comes next, as a few white residents who chose to stay (“stayers”), black pioneers, and African Americans who arrived later (“second wavers”) formed a complex social system. In focusing on “the cultural and social dynamics that occur in the aftermath of white residents leaving,” Woldoff sheds new light on contemporary urban communities and opens new fields of investigation (p. 3).
