Luke Foley apologises for 'white flight' comment, saying he now knows it's offensiveYou can't say the obvious any more. It IS white flight.
All these people kvetching about the expression are complaining in the next breath about too many white in parliament, business, the arts.
Nation divided at school gate as progressives lead white flightROSEMARY NEILL The Australian 12:00AM
December 10, 2016Since 2002 the City of Yarra council has proclaimed Melbourne’s inner north “a Refugee Welcome Zone’’.
But in this ardently Greens-voting area — and in left-leaning suburbs in Sydney’s inner west — progressive, middle-class families have been accused of avoiding schools with high refugee, indigenous or non-English-speaking student populations.
“They are fleeing,’’ African community leader and former refugee Abeselom Nega says of white families who appear to be shunning inner Melbourne schools with large African-Australian student cohorts, many of whom live in social housing.
Mr Nega has accused such families of racism. He admits his contentious allegation is “a big call” but insists that in the absence of an alternative explanation “it can only be explained in the way I have said it”.
“The irony is, in these places, the residents can be described as progressive; that is the contradiction,’’ he said.
Christina Ho — a senior lecturer from the University of Technology Sydney’s faculty of arts and social sciences — says Mr Nega’s allegation of racism is “simplistic’’.
Nevertheless, Ms Ho agrees that even in progressive inner-city areas, parental support for diversity “stops at the school gate’’. Ms Ho says a recent study she co-wrote, focusing on public schools in Sydney’s inner-west suburb of Glebe, revealed how “there’s an acceptance of diversity that stops when it comes to ‘my own kids’. We saw that a lot.’’Ms Ho says “staggering’’ levels of ethnic segregation can also be found among predominantly white, up-market private schools and predominantly Asian selective government schools on Sydney’s north shore.
The latest statistics from the federally funded My School website leave little doubt that low-fee Catholic and public schools located near housing commission towers in Melbourne’s Fitzroy, Carlton and Flemington are out of favour with Anglo-Australian parents.
Between 90 per cent and 94 per cent of students who attended Fitzroy Primary, Carlton Primary and Sacred Heart Primary last year were from non-English speaking or indigenous backgrounds. Only 3 per cent of Sacred Heart’s parents were in the top socio-economic status (SES) quartile, a measure of parents’ social and educational advantage.
Yet at neighbouring schools Fitzroy North Primary, Princes Hill Primary and Carlton North Primary, about 70 per cent of parents — almost three times the national average — were in the top SES bracket, while less than one-third of students across these schools had LOTE (language other than English) backgrounds. Fitzroy Primary and the more privileged Fitzroy North Primary, in Greens MP Adam Bandt’s Melbourne electorate, served as polling booths in the July federal election and returned the nation’s two highest two-party-preferred vote for the Greens — an endorsement of the party’s pro-refugee and asylum-seeker policies.
According to Ms Ho, patterns of segregation are evident in trendy, inner-city areas where “you literally have these people buying up $1 million, $2m houses that are next to social housing’’.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic School in the gentrifying inner-Sydney suburb of Waterloo, is one of the nation’s most disadvantaged — and diverse — schools: 71 per cent of students are indigenous, and another 25 per cent are from migrant backgrounds. More than 90 per cent of these students live in social housing estates in Redfern and Waterloo. Only 4km away at Newtown Public School — a suburb near Sydney University with a distinct Bohemian feel — 80 per cent of the student body is white, and nearly 60 per cent of parents are in the top SES quartile, as opposed to Mount Carmel’s 3 per cent. A mere 16 per cent of students at another inner-west school, Annandale North Public, have LOTE backgrounds, while 75 per cent of the parents come from the top SES quarter.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel principal John Farrell says that when students at his school were described as “disadvantaged’’, they insisted “We’re not disadvantaged”. “It was really refreshing to see that we instil the confidence in them that we can do anything, and we set the high standards,’’ Mr Farrell said.
As new apartments are built in the surrounding area, Mr Farrell hopes his school, where academic results are rising, will expand and attract “a rich mix” of students. Is that happening yet? “Not so much, so far,’’ he admits, pointing out that better resourced families often choose non-local schools. “They lose out, as far as we are concerned.”
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