White Flight

I wouldn't wax rhapsodic about the half centennial of the Jones Falls Expressway ("City's six-lane Main Street at 50," Dec. 16). It was the evacuation route for white flight at a time when the strictures of Jim Crow were in retreat under the Warren Court. How else to explain that the planned "transit line" down the center of the road was never built? Coupled with the dismantling of commuter rail and streetcars around the same time, the JFX could guarantee in and out privileges to white suburbanites but left urban blacks without cars with no way out. The irony is that the JFX half centennial observations are coming at a time when The Sun gets floridly paranoid letters deriding PlanMaryland as a socialist plot engendered by Saul Alinsky (who has been dead for almost 40 years)

I wouldn't wax rhapsodic about the half centennial of the Jones Falls Expressway ("City's six-lane Main Street at 50," Dec. 16). It was the evacuation route for white flight at a time when the strictures of Jim Crow were in retreat under the Warren Court. How else to explain that the planned "transit line" down the center of the road was never built? Coupled with the dismantling of commuter rail and streetcars around the same time, the JFX could guarantee in and out privileges to white suburbanites but left urban blacks without cars with no way out. The irony is that the JFX half centennial observations are coming at a time when The Sun gets floridly paranoid letters deriding PlanMaryland as a socialist plot engendered by Saul Alinsky (who has been dead for almost 40 years)

"The New White Flight" was the title of an eye-opening article in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal. It was about a high school in Cupertino, Calif., where a growing Asian-American student population is causing academic standards to rise - and causing many white parents to withdraw their children from the school and some to move out of the community. The school has some of the highest test scores in the state. But although everybody is in favor of high academic standards in the abstract, not everyone is in favor of having to struggle to meet those standards.

Barack Obama's election to this country's highest office powerfully shattered a centuries-old racial glass ceiling. But we must not be tricked into thinking that this inspiring milestone means we have dismantled all structures of racial discrimination in America, or that we can take a breather from the tireless fight for racial justice. Fighting against individual acts of intentional discrimination is important, but the real cause of persistent segregation is institutional discrimination.

Kings Contrivance village residents told Columbia Association President Padraic Kennedy last night that they're concerned about a perception of so-called "white flight" from Columbia and crime that is keeping shoppers away from several of the new town's village centers, particularly at night.They also expressed confusion over how to address concerns in community in which several public and private institutions -- village boards, the Columbia Association, the Rouse Co. and county government -- all wield influence.

The building designs in Windsor Hills display everything from Victorian-style housing to modern apartment buildings to Japanese-inspired homes. The architectural variety is just a small part of the neighborhood's identity in West Baltimore. Residents praise Windsor Hills' diversity. Tanya Hicks, a resident of Windsor Hills for 35 years, said her now-grown son enjoyed knowing all kinds of people in his neighborhood. "He had all different kinds of friends: poor friends, rich friends," Hicks said.

MOUND HOUSE, Nev. -- Four years ago, Richard and Sherrie Glover decided they had had enough of life in Upland, a suburb of Los Angeles. They were fed up with the traffic, fed up with the smog, and frightened by what they believed was increased activity by Hispanic gangs."

FOR HALF a century, "white flight" has dominated demographic change in Baltimore. While the city's population was dropping by nearly a third between 1950 and 2000, the number of whites in Baltimore was declining by more than 70 percent. Even in the decade between 1990 and 2000, when the number of African-Americans living in the city fell for the first time, the net loss of white population outstripped that of blacks, 5 to 1. Now, there is new evidence to suggest that the seemingly relentless decline in the city's white population is leveling off. According to recent census estimates, the number of non-Hispanic whites living in Baltimore between the 2000 Census and July 1, 2002, declined by just more than 5,000 - a drop of about 185 a month.

JUST WHAT is happening to Columbia, the planned city that James Rouse created a quarter-century ago to foster a more inclusive suburbia?Recent reports have a citizens group calling on the Columbia Association to take steps to stimulate better relations between affluent and poor residents of the city. Meanwhile, a resident of one village expressed concern at a recent public meeting about "white flight" from some neighborhoods. As if to add to the confusion, a new book just hit the bookstores that celebrates Columbia's legacy of racial and economic harmony.

In 1968, after civil disorders exploded across the nation, the Kerner Commission deplored the fact that the United States really was ''two nations, one black one white -- separate and unequal.'' Last week a unanimous Supreme Court told us that it is probably going to stay that way.The high tribunal said that where segregated, one-race schools are returning because of ''white flight'' or ''voluntary'' housing patterns, the federal courts have no duty or power to prevent ''resegregation.''''Where resegregation is a product not of state action but of private choices, it does not have constitutional implications,'' said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

I recently turned 45, and for the first time in my life, my age came as a bit of a shock. Not because of the number (well, maybe a little bit) but because I've started looking backward at my footprints and realizing there aren't enough. I know it's a bit premature, but I'm searching for a semblance of my place in history and am coming up empty. I don't think that will change, especially as history rushes to fill in the blanks made by moments and eras that seem to be coming at us faster and faster - 9/11, the war in Iraq, climate change.

"The New White Flight" was the title of an eye-opening article in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal. It was about a high school in Cupertino, Calif., where a growing Asian-American student population is causing academic standards to rise - and causing many white parents to withdraw their children from the school and some to move out of the community. The school has some of the highest test scores in the state. But although everybody is in favor of high academic standards in the abstract, not everyone is in favor of having to struggle to meet those standards.

The building designs in Windsor Hills display everything from Victorian-style housing to modern apartment buildings to Japanese-inspired homes. The architectural variety is just a small part of the neighborhood's identity in West Baltimore. Residents praise Windsor Hills' diversity. Tanya Hicks, a resident of Windsor Hills for 35 years, said her now-grown son enjoyed knowing all kinds of people in his neighborhood. "He had all different kinds of friends: poor friends, rich friends," Hicks said.

WASHINGTON - America's public schools, as you may have noticed, remain largely divided by race in spite of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. As the 50th anniversary of that decision approaches on May 17, it is fashionable for some civil rights reformers to declare that Brown has not lived up to its promise. But look at the story behind the numbers and you might notice something more complex and perplexing: Racial segregation persists in public schools not so much in spite of Brown as because of it. Today's segregation is very different from that of the early 1950s.

FOR HALF a century, "white flight" has dominated demographic change in Baltimore. While the city's population was dropping by nearly a third between 1950 and 2000, the number of whites in Baltimore was declining by more than 70 percent. Even in the decade between 1990 and 2000, when the number of African-Americans living in the city fell for the first time, the net loss of white population outstripped that of blacks, 5 to 1. Now, there is new evidence to suggest that the seemingly relentless decline in the city's white population is leveling off. According to recent census estimates, the number of non-Hispanic whites living in Baltimore between the 2000 Census and July 1, 2002, declined by just more than 5,000 - a drop of about 185 a month.

FOR THE first time in decades, we are returning to Edmondson Village, driving past Lyndhurst Elementary School to the old neighborhood and our rowhouse on Mountwood Road. We had left there in the early 1960s. I now have children. The street to our old house is marked "Do Not Enter" on one end and "One Way, Do Not Enter" on the other end. We drive down the service alley behind our old street. My father and brother note how clean and well-kept the yards are. My mother has died. We give up trying to figure out the perplexing traffic pattern and turn.

An 18-year-old Baltimore County law banning real estate agents from soliciting the purchase or sale of residences in person, by telephone or by mass circulars has been struck down. "Since the practice of blockbusting no longer exists in Baltimore County, Sec. 14-26 cannot now directly further the governmental interest by combating blockbusting, 'panic selling' or 'white flight'," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Harvey.Are "panic selling" and "white flight" gone?Perhaps. But Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc. alleges in a pending suit that one Baltimore County real estate firm recently steered a black couple away from largely white Mount Washington toward predominantly black neighborhoods, while white house-hunters were told houses in comparable price ranges in Mount Washington were available.

Even in a chilling rain, the view from Dr. William Richards' back yard demands that you stop a cowardly trot to shelter and instead take in the gloom-proof scenery.Past the colossal oak tree and tadpole pond, a wooded hill plunges toward the Gwynns Falls Valley, the third largest urban forest in the country, a well-known fact among the residents of Windsor Hills, a little-known neighborhood in Baltimore.But the view isn't the only thing idealistic in this community that ranges from Victorians to bungalows to the city's first California rancher.

MOUND HOUSE, Nev. -- Four years ago, Richard and Sherrie Glover decided they had had enough of life in Upland, a suburb of Los Angeles. They were fed up with the traffic, fed up with the smog, and frightened by what they believed was increased activity by Hispanic gangs."