Rub a little dirt in it, won’t ya?

     White flight is a significant social phenomenon and happened when white people began to move out of cities into the suburbs, leaving behind large populations of minorities. Several factors are thought to have contributed to white flight, including racial tension, poor economic conditions, and rising crime rates in many urban areas.

However, not everyone could move to the suburbs. Minorities and low-income households were often excluded from these developments due to discriminatory practices by real estate agents and lenders. This led to the concentration of poverty in urban areas, which exacerbated social problems and led to the marginalization of minority communities.

One of the surprising things that came from this was the spectacle of domesticity. The well-off people that moved pretended to be picture prefect representations of domesticity and the “American Dream”. When we spoke about it in class it made me think that the upper classes just wanted to drive home that they were so much better off than the minorities and lower-income classes even if it was a farce. It’s just so crazy to me that after the state that they left the poorer families in, they wanted to be sure that they represented that unattainable goal.