White Flight/Black Flight

Life of a working-class neighborhood in the aftermath of white flight.

Rachael A. Woldoff is Associate Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University. She is coauthor of High Stakes: Big Time Sports and Urban Redevelopment.

Sociologist Rachael A. Woldoff has crafted a clever topic in her study of the impact of racial change in Parkmont, an unidentitfied U.S. Northeast neighborhood.White Flight/ Black Flight: The Dynamics of Racial Change in an American Neighborhoodasks what happens to a residential area after moderately prosperous African Americans, the pioneers, move into a majority white area seeking a better community life and integrated living, and are later followed by lower-class African Americans, the second wavers.. Woldoff's extensive use of the secondary literature should help expand our understanding of 'gentrification' beyond the simple black-white dichotomy.

James Wolfinger:

Rachael A. Woldoff tells Parkmont's seemingly common story in an uncommon way. Rather than focusing on racial change, Woldoff explores what comes next, as a few white residents who chose to stay ('stayers'), black pioneers, and African Americans who arrived later ('second wavers') formed a complex social system. In focusing on 'the cultural and social dynamics that occur in the aftermath of white residents leaving,' Woldoff sheds new light on contemporary urban communities and opens new fields of investigation.... Woldoff's close attention to interracial and intraracial relationships after Parkmont became a black community is White Flight/Black Flight's greatest strength.... It is a fine study that opens new questions for scholarly investigation.

Much has been written about neighborhood change and the process of white flight from urban and suburban neighborhoods. However, the white flight literature only documents a small part of a much wider process of neighborhood change. In White Flight/Black Flight the author makes attempts to redress the balance through an ethnographic exploration of longer-term change in one neighborhood. Woldoff demonstrates how initial neighborhood change as a result of a changing ethnic structure is only a small part of the story and that neighborhood transition is as much an outcome of class, income, and values as it is about race or ethnicity. Ultimately, what this book reminds us is that neighborhoods, far from being static entities that only change in response to large dramatic shocks, are actually entities in constant flux responding constantly to a barrage of small changes.... What this book demonstrates is that, while the study of neighborhood change in the United States has focused on white flight, the ethnographic study in Parkmont shows that class divisions and class flight are just as important. A broader approach such as Woldoff's is needed to reach a better understanding of how a neighborhood changes and how residents cope with that change.

William A. V. Clark:

White Flight/Black Flight is a book worth reading—Rachael A. Woldoff puts the flesh on what are often our dry demographic discussions of population change in American urban neighborhoods. The book is considered, thoughtful, and provides a nuanced ethnographic interpretation of the decision about whether to stay or move when a neighborhood changes.... The strength of the book is in the stories of people who observed the transitions in their neighborhood as it changed its ethnic composition. Their stories are the stories of people dealing with the day-to-day interactions of living in changing neighborhoods.