The White tribalism aspect is real enough. I've lived through a small example. When my mom died in the 80's, my brother and I took over her house as our part of the estate. It was the house we grew up in, a small starter bungalow in a inner ring suburb of Cleveland. I'm still living here.
At the time we moved in, the first black residents were buying houses. White flight was in full swing - some of the crap I heard from former neighbors and friends truly shocked and appalled me. I was working a factory job at the time and was exposed to and used to black folks, so I did not have a negative view of the transition that those fleeing had. The only thing that did piss me off is those fleeing were low balling their selling price to get out - with the the absentee landlord speculators and cut rate house flippers that came into the market. It was pretty dicey for a long time after that - it's much more stable now.
What I did see was my new neighbors investing in and upgrading their houses. They were getting involved in the neighborhood groups and politics, enjoying the parks and local amenities as any normal resident would. Around this time, I was talking to a new neighbor and the subject of the white exodus came up, she asked me what I thought, and I replied "No big - All the assholes moved out". There was this moment of silence before she started laughing. But it was true - all the Karens and shit stirrers had left - the neighborhood drama factor had dropped significantly and those here now got along.
A side note - someone started a facebook group called "You know your from [suburb name] if" ( and yes, the grammar police showed up and were politely dismissed). I joined and posted on a semi regular basis, as did a large portion of the disgruntled expats. Some of those posts were outright/borderline racist. The Mods were polite, deleted offensive posts and argued against, but didn't really make a dent. This was during the "dicey" period refenced earlier. One post finally broke me and I replied in no uncertain terms that they were to blame for the current situation by abandoning the neighborhood to the flippers and absentee landlords. I basically went on to call them racist pieces of shit without using those specific terms. This was on a Thursday night - I had a weekend trip scheduled and didn't get back on facebook till the following Monday evening. I found the post & thread deleted and a few side discussions about the thread and how some of the group members had been kicked out. I PM'd the moderator and he replied that it had been a shitshow - the N-bomb had been dropped and he had no choice but to delete the thread and ban 5 offenders. They promptly set up a second facebook group called Mourning [suburb name]. It is a public group and I joined to monitor and occasionally debunk. The Mods of the original group set up some new guidelines and took the group private.
To conclude, cause this is getting too long. These people have a hole in their soul and they are filling it with shit. The shit currently wears orange make up and a bad toupee. They will always be with us, the shit changes occasionally but it's still shit.
