What an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal - ironic really, because I would expect to read such an article in more liberal papers like the New York Times or my favorite paper (The Washington Post). Though not a popular term in the mainstream media, 'White Flight' & similar terms were often heard from conspiracy theorists and White Supremacists throughout the 1990's. In fact, members of the Ku Klux Klan & National Alliance were often heard referring to a white homeland to be created in states like Idaho, the Dakotas, and even eastern portion of Washington state. The term is also quite commonplace in another almost-all-white enclave: the state of Vermont. If I gave you $1 for each African American you could point out in that state, by the end of the day, you'd be scrounging around for change to have enough money to buy a value meal at McDonald's.
Apparently White America sees promise in the inner-city...so now, the move-back has begun and the urban-poor (largely African American, Hispanic-Latino, Asian, & White Blue Collar) will surely be met with "redevelopment". Demolish the old, lagging, and unpleasant. Build larger houses, plan for parks with swings and slides and sandboxes for the children and lit tennis courts for the adults, maybe even racketball; pave the roads, invest in city & municipal bonds for sidewalks and new lampposts, covered busstops, too! Only catch..."when it's all said & done, the rent will be so jacked up, that most of the old residents will have to leave and make room for the rich.
You didn't think all this good would be done for the residents, did you? You don't believe me? Go to the Bronx, NYC or go to the largely Black/Working class 9th Ward in New Orleans. The French Quarter was back & running in a couple of weeks, but the poor neighborhoods STILL REMAIN UNDER WATER! and those that are "clear," have owners living in hotels around the area, waiting for their insurance checks.
Whether we're talking about Katrina victims in the 9th Ward, or senior citizens living in the last of the Rent-Control apartments in NYC (receiving daily buyout offers from greedy building owners to sell out the corporate mobsters and/or waiting for these to 'finally die,' or we're talking about children that go to sleep at night hungry or are so poor they can't afford shoes to go to school, the poor in America are always the last on the politicians' mind.
Glenn Beck sits in an air-conditioned television studio, donning fine tailored garments, he leans back in the comfortable chair, looking around the clearinghouse of technology in a temple of corporate idolatry, with exhibits ranging from the well groomed robots that will spend a lifetime as slaves to the grind, as feeds come from all over the world, people dying in typhoons, Nazi hunters in Argentina, maimed Iraqi children crying in hospital beds, and all he can do is rant about Che Guevara, with so much death and so much suffering and so much ruin and so much hunger and so much disparity in our country....he sits back, takes in a deep breath of elitist filtered air and spouts off nonsense.
One day a revolution will come about. Where the poor and forgotten will take control of the means of production and will punish the oppressors with unrelenting viciousness for ages of senseless exploitation. A day will come, when Robespierre himself will turn in his grave; "the end of white flight" -- great.
Where Will The Poor Go?!!
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