Confederate Soldier
Diamond Member
I may be reading this wrong, but you're annoyed that whites didn't stick around to suck it up?You are just choosing to ignore the root cause of the maladies you list that caused the shift and, sad to say, it had everything to do with race, at least it did in my AO.....Whites simply did not want to have to deal with the increases in crime and the ever increasing failure of predominantly black public schools.
Not sure about the "bad jobs" thing as most that left still worked where they had before but just commuted. Perhaps that was different in your neck of the woods.
I know that in KY, as in SW Virginia, and WV folks moved out of coal country (mostly white) during the "Appalachian Exodus" into the cities for more opportunity job wise to make a better life for them and theirs......That said they also left the cities and went to the burbs by and by, some even went back home when they retired.