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Forum nameGeneral Discussion
Topic subjectMinorities and the 'Slumburbs' *swipe*
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12704041&mesg_id=12704041
12704041, Minorities and the 'Slumburbs' *swipe*
Posted by Mongo, Wed Jan-21-15 11:00 AM
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/01/minorities-and-the-slumburbs/384680/

The history goes something like this: White families left inner cities in droves during the white-flight era of the 1950s and 60s. Now they are returning to—have returned to—the metro centers that their grandparents once called home. Families of color called these inner cities home during decades of depopulation. Now they, in turn, are leaving for—have already left for—the suburbs. Drawn by the promise of safer schools, larger homes, and better lives, or alternatively, pushed out by rising property taxes, it doesn't matter: What minorities found in the suburbs was the subprime mortgage crisis, followed by the collapse of the global economy.

That's the theory behind "slumburbia," the notion that the dark conditions that once characterized the Inner City are following minorities as they pursue the American Dream to the suburbs. Gawker's Hamilton Nolan used the label to explain rising suburban poverty. The New York Times's Timothy Egan applied the term to the Inland Empire.

There's a flaw to this theory of a growing "slumburban" America, and to the notion that the suburbs are contributing to ever-downward social and economic mobility for minorities relative to whites. A new study finds that, in fact, minority households are faring better in some suburbs, specifically those suburbs that have "matured" after the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Most of the gains in these places—what the study describes as "post-civil rights suburbs"—are accruing to low-income and African-American households.