White Flight.
Those two words have been used for decades in the United States to cover up one of the more covert and ugly practices of white urban homeowners. Namely, at the first sighting of a black family on the block, move away as fast as you can.
A combination of Barack Obama and the subprime mortgage crisis are bringing this disgusting practice to an end.
Suffice it to say that this has been an interesting year with regard to race relations in the United States. With the ascension of Barack Obama to his current political heights comes a renewed focus on what it means to be an African-American in the 21st Century. It also gives the white population in America time for much-overdue reflection as well.
I grew up in a Republican household so bigoted and misguided that the dreaded "N Word" flew around the house more commonly than the word "hello". Not knowing any better, in my youth, I emulated what I heard in the house, with horrible results. When I broke free of the intellectual shackles of my immediate family, I felt myself to be recovering, but still reminded in my travels of the destructive attitudes towards the black portion of the population emanating from the white portion.
The final nail in my proverbial Coffin of Ignorance came in 1994. I had made the acquaintance of a fellow musician who was African-American, and he invited me back to his home for the evening. His mother greeted us and we ended up spending the entire night around the kitchen table, conversing, eating and laughing. I had been taught as a child that I was superior to black people, and that whites and blacks had nothing in common. Yet here I was, doing the same damned thing I'd be doing if I happened to be in my Italian grandmother's kitchen. Maybe I was oversimplifying, but the question that kept coming into my mind was "you mean all it takes is food?". I came away in equal parts awakened and pissed off at my family. I don't speak to my family anymore.
Fast forward to 2008. The gated communities that have sprung up in ever-increasing radii are now seen as a bad investment. Thanks to overstated value and crippling mortgage terms, McMansions can now be seen not as dreams houses, but instruments of suburban blight. It offers all of us as a nation a chance to assess what any of us saw in these 4,000-square foot dumps in the first place.
Developers around this nation have gotten rich off the hidden white desire to avoid having black neighbors. No suburban community in their right mind would let a developer come into their town and build ridiculously bloated housing if they didn't think there was a white person looking to buy into it to add to the tax base of the community.
It's an offensive way to do business, and based on the losses being racked up by some of these towns, it's safe to say the party's over.
Among the many lessons taught to us as a society, the biggest lesson of the subprime mortgage meltdown is that the days of White Flight are coming to an end. Nothing is gained by running away from a neighborhood because the neighbors don't happen to share your skin tone. A neighborhood does not become a neighborhood because everyone looks the same. A neighborhood becomes a neighborhood when everybody in a shared area happens to give a damned about everyone else in the vicinity.
On my side of the street in Milwaukee, I have whites, blacks and Hispanics. I bought this house, it's mine, and I'm not going anywhere. If I shovel my neighbor's sidewalk, it's because I don't want to see anyone slip and fall. When I look down my back alley for suspicious activity, it's with the understanding that my neighbors are doing the same thing. I love it here, and as an extension, I love every person in my area.
And being half-Italian, I have food to share with anyone who wants it from my kitchen.