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.
"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."—William A. V. Clark, American Journal of Sociology
"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."—James Wolfinger, Journal of American History
"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."—Urban Studies
"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."—Keith A. Dye,The Journal of African American History(Winter 2013)
"White Flight/Black Flight tells the important and compelling story of a two-stage process of neighborhood change. Rachael A. Woldoff uses wonderful qualitative data to tell and contextualize a nuanced story. The interview data are powerful, and Woldoff's descriptions of the scene are captivating. Woldoff presents an analysis that examines the experiences of three groups as racial change occurs. This book is a valuable contribution to the literature on racial change and racial integration, the position of the black middle class, and aging and neighborhoods."—Michael T. Maly, Roosevelt University
"White Flight/Black Flight is not a book about the 1960s, or about the suburbs, or about the post–World War II housing policies that pushed, pulled, and trapped people into transforming the racial geography of American metropolises. Instead, this book tells a story of contemporary neighborhood change with rich portraits of groups we almost never see in the literature—whites who stay and blacks who flee other African Americans who move in after them. Rachael A. Woldoff foregrounds residents' voices and in so doing offers significant correctives to our understanding of black/white relations in cities in the twenty-first century."—Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Northwestern University
