White Flight and Black Followers

For the first time in its history, Hattiesburg,Mississippi is experiencing the phenomenon of white flight. In its past, Hattiesburg was a small college city which could boast of producing an NFL quarterback. It is home to the University of Southern Mississippi and Brett Favre. Since Hurricane Katrina, it is also one of the fastest growing cities in America. African Americans as well as whites have been moving into Hattiesburg in rapid numbers, swelling the small city at its seams.

As with any influx of new people, some of the old guard of Hattiesburg have decided to move to the outskirts of the city. They are running to a smaller suburb called Oak Grove, Mississippi. These mostly white people move, taking their children and their tax dollars out of the city and its school system.

Normally, in these situations, Black middle class members tend to follow their white counterparts. If the white people move to the suburbs, we also move there, automatically thinking that the what's contained in the suburbs is somehow magically better than what we already have in our own neighborhoods. Their schools somehow educated better. Their neighborhoods are somehow cleaner. Their houses somehow house better. Their stores magically have better clothes. Their grocery stores somehow have better food. So, we take our much-needed dollars and revenue outside of our neighborhoods, too for better, better, better. Everywhere is better than our own neighborhoods.

This is why we follow white people into the suburbs. This leads to ghettoization and impoverishment of Black neighborhoods. We cease to care about our own schools and making them better with the assumption that if we can just get to the suburbs, everything will be all right. We allow people to throw garbage on our grounds while keeping the suburbs pristine. We allow all types of criminal elements into our neighborhoods without so much as picking up the phone to call the police. And the worst part is, the children become miseducated because no one has any educational standards that they care about; thus, a cycle of poverty begins that is almost impossible to break.

But, and this is a big but, I am so proud of the people of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Instead of abandoning their own neighborhoods to follow the white folk out to Oak Grove and Petal, they have decided to stay in the city proper. Instead of abandoning their own school system, they are steadily investing in it. They are steadily recruiting the best teachers they can find from the surrounding universities. And even though it is now a majority-Black district, it remains one of the best educational districts in the United States.

I think Hattiesburg, Mississippi can be a model in resisting the ghettoization that follows white flight. Instead of following white populations, thinking that what they have is somehow inherently better than what we have in our own neighborhoods, we should focus on improving our neighborhoods and our own schools.