White Flight and the Future of School Desegregation

Abstract

Among the many debates that have raged over school busing, few have engaged social scientists with more intensity than the “White flight” debate. Although the White flight phenomenon has a long history in both public and social science discussions, it did not become a truly controversial issue in sociology until Coleman, Kelly, and Moore’s (1975) well-publicized work on the subject, which concluded that school desegregation was a significant cause of declining White enrollments in public schools.