race

i just finished reading white flight: atlanta and the making of modern conservatism (kevin kruse, 2005), an amazing analysis of post-war atlanta, the civil rights movement, and resulting white flight----put a context to a lot of my childhood memories but it is not just a rehashing of the past----he makes a very strong case for how much from atlanta's segregationist and racist past still resonates today and puts words to much that i have always felt about all of that----

At the start of the twenty-first century, the politics created by white
flight are not simply still present; they are predominant. . . . Much of the
modern suburban conservative agenda---the secessionist stance toward the cities,
the individualistic outlook, the fervent faith in free enterprise, and the
hostility to the federal government---was, in fact, first articulated and
advanced in the resistance of southern whites to desegregation. No matter how
sincere conservatives may be in insisting that their politics are
"color-blind"---and, to be sure, a great number of them are sincere---a closer
reading of the historical record shows that the politics of race and racism did
inspire policies that no seem to have little to do with race. Recognizing the
legacies of white flight would be a first step in reducing the steady tensions
between the cities and suburbs and help bring together a nation that with every
year seems ever more polarized by race, regioin, and class. Before that can
happen, however, white Americans must stop running away from their past.