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white flight
noun
: the departure of whites from places (such as urban neighborhoods or schools) increasingly or predominantly populated by minorities
Examples of white flight in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Amid the crack epidemic and white flight from the city, the department was desperate for recruits.
—Longreads, 2 May 2024
Kansas City border politics Like many cities, Kansas City has a long history of segregation, white flight and racial redlining, said Kathleen Pointer, senior policy strategist for Kansas City Public Schools.
—Christine Wen, The Conversation, 15 Feb. 2024
But as disinvestment and white flight took hold in Philadelphia's working class-neighborhoods, many Jewish people moved out of the city and into suburban towns.
—Phaedra Trethan, USA TODAY, 5 Feb. 2024
Rankin County’s majority-white suburbs have been a destination for white flight out of the capital, Jackson, which is home to one of the highest percentages of Black residents of any major U.S. city.
—Michael Goldberg, Chicago Tribune, 14 Aug. 2023
Late 20th-century white flight turned this 19th-century suburban getaway into a predominantly West Indian lower-middle-class neighborhood.
—Lotoya Francis, Rolling Stone, 19 Feb. 2024
That began to change when white flight reached the capital city of Jackson in the 1960s and Rankin’s fields gave way to subdivisions and strip malls.
—Nate Rosenfield Rory Doyle For The New York Times, New York Times, 30 Nov. 2023
But there are vast distinctions between the two sides, the residue of disinvestment and white flight by families like Johnson’s.
—Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Washington Post, 29 Oct. 2023
Local officials supported these demands, since universities served as economic-development engines for cities struggling with white flight to suburbia.
—Brandi Kellam, ProPublica, 5 Sep. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'white flight.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
First Known Use
1956, in the meaning defined above
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Dictionary Entries Near white flight
Cite this Entry
“White flight.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20flight. Accessed 17 Jun. 2024.
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