I did some research on suburbanisation in the US for Kofi Buenor Hadjor's great book Another America: The politics of race and blame (south End Press, 1995). When I first looked at the question of white flight, I, like Doug, thought of the suburbs as an essentially exclusivist development. And so they were: its is undeniable that the HOLC policies favoured the development of an informal apartheid. And, as Kevin Phillips gloated in the Emerging Republican Majority, this was a formation that favoured the right in politics.
But the more I looked at it the more obvious it was to me that there was something else going on in the discussion of the suburbs. The evidence suggests that America's suburbs are predominantly white, but also that they are populated by America's white working class. In a way these are fantasy developments. Whites fled the urban jungle, but they also brought it with them. In the minds of those who were moving out of the cities, the problem with the neighbourhood going downhill might well have been one of 'too many blacks'. But that was a self-delusion. Social impoverishment is not exclusive to blacks. Many of the older suburbs now are solidly working class districts, even run-down. People move out of the older suburbs in the way that they moved out of the cities. Suburban flight leap-frogged its way across the country, because the truth was that the suburbanites were running away from themselves, from their own degraded social conditions.
I became uneasy with the hostile characterisation of the suburbs as inveterately racist and conservative during the 1992 election campaign. Then the Nation wrote this warning against Clinton: 'There is a giddy enthusiasm among those who endorsed the neo-liberal strategy as they watch the white, so-called middle class, culturally conservative voters, previously enamoured of Reagan and Bush, flock to the Democratic fold' (9 November 1992). Now, all the fears about neo-liberalism make good sense, but what's all that about 'culturally conservative voters'? Isn't it the job of radicals to change their minds. All this for me is very redolent of the way that radicals over here became increasingly alienated from the class of so-called C2s (that's upper working class) 'Essex man' who was supposed to have been bought by Margaret Thatcher's 'authoritarian populism'.
My fear then is this: that behind the radical rehtoric about racist suburbanites is just a straight-forward hostility to the masses. Yes their views are not spontaneously radical, but then whose are? Yes they drive about in big cars, but what's so wrong with working class mobility? Yes, the suburbs are overwhelmingly white - but wasn't that as much to do with policy as with personal prejudice?
In message <13648.35869.840908.108219 at localhost>, Les Schaffer
<godzilla at netmeg.net> writes
>Now these folks in Fairfield County are richer by a long shot than
>myself (by a long shot). But they continue to support these piss-poor
>fuel-efficiency engines, even though they are more than willing to
>shell out big bucks for a thing which looks like an armored personnel
>carrier -- and i cant really believe the kids and shopping get handled
>that much more efficiently with them.
>
>And i just __know__ in the evenings they watch the PBS series on the
>environment and green-house gas and el nino et al...
>
>someone explain it to me.
Well, I'm prejudiced, but in my opinion nobody's supposed to take all that impending environmental disaster stuff seriously. It's just a secular version of guilt - its not supposed to be acted upon - just to make you feel humility in the presence of mother nature. -- Jim heartfield