People wanted their children to be separate from people of other socioeconomic classes (and races), and the way to do that in the US is to move to a school district they others can’t afford.
Heck yes I want to move away from socioeconomic classes that could potentially put my daughter in harms way. We lived in a lower class neighborhood and while my two year old daughter was playing with a shovel in the front yard a drug deal went bad at the house across from us and the kid (he was maybe 16) started shooting his gun into the air. I’d stopped his mom from strangling him two years before that. Before that, I’d stopped his mother from being assaulted by her boyfriend a few years before. And until my daughter was born, I didn’t really care.
But thinking of my daughter getting hit by a stray bullet was terrifying, and we got a mortgage and moved to a house worth 6x the price a few months later. It was sad because our neighbors behind us were Venezuelan refugees with two kids and we got along really well.
I’m not ashamed of wanting to keep my children safe, and I’m not going to put them at risk so I can fulfill others vague notions of “inclusiveness”. The police took 45+ minutes to show up any time I called.
Funny thing is, the middle class neighborhood I live in now is much MORE diverse, not less. We have Africans, Southern Asians, East Asians, Spaniards, Russians, and all manner of professionals from all over the world. We bought the house from some Pakistanis. Heck, my neighbor is a convicted felon for dealing in his younger days but even him and his wife and six kids are okay.
Not just afford - often time those suburbs specifically barred non-whites from owning property. Additionally red-lining and racist loan practices forced that wealth gap to grow.
But I think that's separate from the car issue, mostly. Originally satellite communities had commercial services - local shops and the like. But those were phased out due to a lack of demand, I think due to societal shifts that were egged on by marketing "cool kids have cars" - and the like.
Are you speculating or do you have specific examples? It sounds far fetched. Not to mention that whites are not even a majority in many of the wealthy suburbs. Many of Asian and Indian families.
Diversity in suburbs is a very recent development. Look at the historical demographics of the suburb you probably live in. It's great that it's changing but suburbs are not a product of seeking to preserve diversity.
Not to the same extent. It wasn't until cars became a thing that it became practical for most rich people to live more than a (healthy) walking distance away from working class people. If they lived too far away, then you wouldn't be able to have them work for you.
