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 Another is measuring how much these private schools — which opened across the Deep South to facilitate white flight after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling — continue to drain public school enrollment. Jennifer Berry Hawes, ProPublica, 25 June 2024 In 1968, the presidential race was upended when Democratic candidate Bobby Kennedy became the fourth national figure assassinated in a five-year span also marked by a badly overdue civil rights triumph that reshaped the nation’s politics along with urban riots, rising crime rates and white flight. Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, 27 Apr. 2024 Williams’s play is responding to trends in the heat of its moment—urban decay, white flight, national opinion on the Vietnam War—and renders them broadly (as in some of the caricatures of city scumbags) but also with immediacy. Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 5 June 2024 Amid the crack epidemic and white flight from the city, the department was desperate for recruits. Longreads, 2 May 2024 See all Example Sentences for white flight 

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

Time Traveler
The first known use of white flight was in 1956

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 4 Jul. 2024.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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