'White' flight stems from subliminal guilt and a desire to have an unjust advantage

As my second argument addressed the erroneous basis of the idea of 'white' flight being strictly an urban to suburban phenomena ("According to a recent study, white flight proliferates even in the suburbs, as suburbs attract large numbers of middle-class minority residents and white residents flee so-called 'ethnoburbs'." ), I will deal more specifically with the aspect of 'white' guilt. As I stated, the concept of race is arbitrary and fabricated. Yet, many are willing to cling to this false concept. Thus, 'white' flight stems from a feeling of superiority about a false identity. In a summary of the book The Invention of the White Race, Volume 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control by Theodore W. Allen, Lewis Bassett states, "When the first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619, there were no "white" people there. Nor, according to colonial records, would there be for another sixty years. In this seminal two-volume work, The Invention of the White Race, Theodore W. Allen tells the story of how America"s ruling classes created the category of the "white race" as a means of social control. Since that early invention, white privileges have enforced the myth of racial superiority, and that fact has been central to maintaining ruling-class domination over ordinary working people of all colors throughout American history." [1] However, as it is the subject of the debate, I will cite examples of 'white' guilt in the present day to authenticate its existence. In a blog entitled Old Single Mom the author J.A. states, "I have a raging case of white guilt. I don"t know how NOT to feel bad about being a privileged white girl. And by privileged, I don"t mean that my family comes from money. No ma"am, no sir. At best, I"m upper lower-middle class, and I have an Ugly Condo in a modest Chicago neighborhood to prove it. When I say privileged, I simply mean I"ve always been given the benefit of the doubt. I"m saying that being a well-educated, green-eyed white girl is not the most punishing journey one can take in this country. I have come to believe that, over time, racism in America has stolen, hidden, or burned up many of the "boots with straps" available to black people in this country, the same straps the mostly-white-male politicians encourage us to pull up before climbing our way to the American Dream. To me, that"s like stealing someone"s paddles, then mocking them when they lose the canoe race....I don"t know what to do with all the white guilt and shame I sometimes feel when I am around black people." [2] (notice guilt and shame) In his article "Barack Obama Eased My White Guilt For White Flight" the author Marty Beckerman acknowledges: Everyone is a little bit gay and more than a little bit racist. It doesn"t matter if you"re white, black, brown or tangerine; if you are a human being, you hold a few conscious or subconscious prejudices. Sen. Barack Obama"s speech on racial tension seems to have rescued his campaign from the liability of his radical pastor; it has received widespread praise as the most forthright commentary on the subject in decades. And it came at an especially meaningful time for me. Over the past ten months I"ve lived in a mostly black neighborhood in Brooklyn . Although I lived in Washington, D.C. for six years, I spent most of the time in the "affluent" northwest quadrant. (Oh, there are so many fun words amongst real estate professionals that substitute for illegal words: "young professionals," "trendy," "middle-class," "lots of families," "safe.") When I moved to New York, I only had two days to find an apartment. Rents in neighborhoods with numerous "young professionals" are considerably higher than in "up-and-coming" neighborhoods. The only appetizing-looking restaurant around is a McDonald"s, save for a Mexican eatery that gave me a gastrointestinal holocaust the other day. A few people have been murdered on the block, numerous delis have been robbed at gunpoint, drug dealers hang out at the self-service laundry, police sirens and car alarms blare throughout the night. Even the graffiti is graffitied. So I am not renewing my lease. I will soon move to either a "nice" part of Brooklyn or "Manhattan below Harlem." Except here"s the thing: "nice" and "below Harlem" are fancy ways of saying "white," or at least "whiter." I don"t like to admit this (it makes me feel dirty, which is saying something), but you can only control your actions, not your thoughts. And I'm far from the only one in this city of liberals who has such thoughts. [3] A blog entitled "Gentrification Is Not a Solution to White Flight" by Jasdye states, "First, white flight didn"t just happen to Chicago and second "white flight" is a problematic label that doesn"t in the least describe what was and is (still) happening. What happened to neighborhoods like Wicker Park, Ukranian Village, Lincoln Park, Humboldt Park, Logan Square, and South Loop is what happened to Detroit " white people decided their areas were too tainted, too impure, too scary. And rather than invest in them to make room for all, rather than welcoming, rather than giving back to the very people they"ve (we"ve) stolen wages, labor and wealth from, white people en masse thought it more convenient to relocate. More to the point, not only did white people relocate to the suburbs and enclaves, but they took the resources, the investments, the capital, the wealth that was made for them by the bodies, the work and the below poverty-level wages and existence that black (and other POC) made for them. When they found that Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Black youth were enacting on the very violence that had been exacted through economic, political and housing segregation, the White patriarchy decided it important to sever ties with the city and retreat to the suburbs. All the better if they could continue to draw resources out of the city and back into the cul de sacs, of course. [4] I could go on citing sources, yet, as the factors that underlie 'white' flight are subliminal, they are rarely admitted to when raised openly and directly. At most they are understated or marginalized. A fact illustrated by my opponent who suggested there were only "some racial problems" during WW II (circa 1937-1945) when segregation and lynchings were rampant and basically legitimized by Jim Crow laws. As my opponent requested a more reputable source detailing the 'white' flight out of schools where they were being 'outsmarted' by Asians, I will do so. It deals with the same story. It is written by Suein Hwang of the Wall Street Journal. http://www.freedomcrowsnest.org... Some excerpts from the article: The white exodus clearly involves race-based presumptions, not all of which are positive. One example: Asian parents are too competitive. That sounds like racism to many of Cupertino's Asian residents, who resent the fact that their growing numbers and success are causing many white families to boycott the town altogether. "It's a stereotype of Asian parents," says Pei-Pei Yow, a Hewlett-Packard Co. manager and Chinese-American community leader who sent two kids to Monta Vista. It's like other familiar biases, she says: "You can't say everybody from the South is a redneck." While California has seen the most pronounced cases of suburban segregation, some of the developments in Cupertino are also starting to surface in other parts of the U.S. At Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Md., known flippantly to some locals as "Won Ton," roughly 35% of students are of Asian descent. People who don't know the school tend to make assumptions about its academics, says Principal Michael Doran. "Certain stereotypes come to mind -- 'those people are good at math,' " he says. At Cupertino's top schools, administrators, parents and students say white students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups: the underachievers. In one 9th-grade algebra class, Lynbrook's lowest-level math class, the students are an eclectic mix of whites, Asians and other racial and ethnic groups. "Take a good look," whispered Steve Rowley, superintendent of the Fremont Union High School District, which covers the city of Cupertino as well as portions of other neighboring cities. "This doesn't look like the other classes we're going to." On the second floor, in advanced-placement chemistry, only a couple of the 32 students are white and the rest are Asian. Some white parents, and even some students, say they suspect teachers don't take white kids as seriously as Asians. [5] The reader should note that the article mentions 'suburban segregation'. It also describes how the 'white' "students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups". However, as I asserted, they have come to expect a handicap. When the playing field is leveled they seem to run or create new barriers. On the homelessness analogy, the so called 'whites' would not be observers they would be perpetrators. *Side note response revisited: Wikipedia quotes Gregory Jay who states in his book Who invented White People, "Beginning in the 1500s, Europeans began to develop what became known as "scientific racism," the attempt to construct a biological rather than cultural definition of race ... Whiteness, then, emerged as what we now call a "pan-ethnic" category, as a way of merging a variety of European ethnic populations into a single "race" ..." [6] NB: race is a contrivance Interesting debate... Sources: http://www.versobooks.com... [1] http://www.chicagonow.com... [2] http://martybeckerman.com... [3] http://leftcheek.wordpress.com... [4] http://www.freedomcrowsnest.org... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org... [6]