White Flight from California and Elsewhere to Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada

White flight has been taking place in many American cities and regions since the 1950s.

The effects of white flight have been significant for the cities that have been hit by this phenomenon, especially Detroit, Michigan and St. Louis, Missouri, which lost more than half of their peak populations largely due to white flight. In New York City many whites have moved from parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn to Staten Island, suburban Long Island, and suburban New Jersey. Other U.S. cities that have been noticeably affected by white flight include Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Ohio, the West and South Sides of Chicago, Illinois, the Greater Los Angeles Area, Baltimore, Maryland, Newark, New Jersey, and numerous smaller cities.

White flight in Southern California


The forces and groups involved in white flight in Southern California are distinct from those in other areas due to the region´s demography and history.


Many whites once lived in urban neighborhoods in Los Angeles before departing the city in large numbers after the 1965 Watts Riots (a trend that actually began before the riots but accelerated after them). The major 12th Street Riot in Detroit in 1967 and during the following year, after the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., contributed to white flight in that city. Now, the city of Detroit is over 80% black whereas a majority of its neighboring suburbs, such as Livonia, Dearborn, and Warren, are overwhelmingly white.

Similarly, after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, large numbers of white Californians left Southern California or left the state entirely. The phenomenon has affected not only the central city basin, but also the suburban regions of the San Fernando Valley and the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California, where many working-class Hispanics and lower to upper-middle class Asian Americans have moved during much of the 1980s and 1990s.

Some of the people leaving Los Angeles have moved to other states. Many of these ex-Californians ended up settling in the Rocky Mountain States of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Nevada. As these people have tended to be politically conservative, their departure from the state has helped to transform California into a stronghold of the Democratic Party, while making their new home states even more favorable to the Republicans.