Tom Toles on Gentrification, 1998

Tom Toles on Gentrification, 1998
Originally uploaded by rllayman

The Wall Street Journal reports on The End of White Flight" although this editorial cartoon is from 1998, when Tom Toles was at the Buffalo News. Funny that early today I was reading a journal article from 1976 on "ecological succession" (I have written before about this phenomenon, referring to it as the "invasion-succession theory") and the process of "economic succession" of businesses. Reflecting the beliefs of the times, it states that:

Once a process of succession is begun it is rarely, if ever, reversed: succession follows a continuous line as the established group recedes and the expanding group replaces it. ... The proportion of minority occupancy rises because the whites who leave are not replaced by other whites rather than because whites begin leaving at a faster rate.

These processes didn't exist in a vacuum, but reflected mores and government policies that promoted segregated housing communities (federally-supported loans weren't underwritten for mixed-race neighborhoods until after the Fair Housing Act in 1968).