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New white flight from schools in Metro Detroit is a real phenomena, Bridge Magazine reports.
Mike Wilkinson and Chastity Pratt Dawsey of Bridge start their report with an example: Eastpointe.
The high school in Eastpointe on Sept. 1 welcomed the football team from Lakeview High, a public school district five miles away in St. Clair Shores. Interestingly, nearly 700 students from Eastpointe actually attend school in Lakeview, and many of them are white.
So, as Bridge writes, it wasn't surprising that most students and fans on the home team’s side of the football field were African American and many of their white neighbors filled the Lakeview side.
The situation is not an isolated one.
Bridge writes:
The white flight seen in Eastpointe is playing out in districts across metro Detroit and around the state. In the past 20 years, as African Americans have moved out of Detroit and into the suburbs, white parents have, whether by chance or design, used the state’s schools of choice program to move their children to less diverse, more white traditional public schools. At the same time, some black families have chosen historically white suburban school districts to send their children, while others are choosing charter schools that are strikingly more segregated and black.
As a result, school districts across parts of the state are ending up more racially segregated than the communities from which they draw students.
