eness of the situation. Racism was never only a Southern problem, though there was an attitude prevalent that it had been, but it was now emerging more and more clearly in the North as blacks made advances and some whites became alarmed at the changes taking place. The busing of children to redress racial imbalance in the schools caused a great deal of dissension, especially in urban working-class neighborhoods, as poor whites and poor blacks were pushed into competition with one another for scarce educational resources. The movement of the black population into traditionally white neighborhoods came as employment situations improved, but this also caused a reaction from the poor and middle-class whites who felt threatened or who thought that their property values were threatened. The rich were seen as being able to remain aloof from the problem while the poor and middle-class bore the brunt of the changes.
Racism was long described as if it were a regional problem relegated largely to the Old South where the white po
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