Definitely (I’m an African American who grew up in “inner-city” Sacramento). There’s been a reversal of this trend during the 2010s, where the inner city has seen an influx of higher-income residents seeking lower home prices and shorter commutes. Places in San Francisco like the Mission District and Hunter’s Point have undergone significant gentrification. However, low-income renters in the inner city have been unable to keep up with rent increases, which has resulted in an exodus to exurbia or to entirely different metro. I have relatives who moved from Sacramento to Bakersfield for a lower cost of living. There has been a “reverse Great Migration” of African Americans from the inner cities of the North and California to large Southern metro areas such as Atlanta. Some of my relatives have “returned” to the South after three generations in California, albeit not to the same Southern communities or states their grandparents lived.

it's also worth noting that one big contributor to white flight was the desegregation of schools.

Big city school systems would now have to integrate people of color with white children. There were plenty of people who did not want this, and unscrupulous realtors would use blockbusting to generate huge profits, where they basically scared white people into fire selling by telling them minorities would come into their neighborhoods and integrate their neighborhoods, and then turning around and selling to minorities at inflated prices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting

Suburbs were effectively havens for white people since most minorities could not afford to move into suburbs, and their separate school systems became effectively all-white as a result.

Hello! Stocktonian here! I currently commute from Stockton on the ACE train instead of driving. Many students, tech workers, and other kinds of workers also commute on it.

I would definitely find my commute unbearable if I had to drive every day instead.

While there are lots of commuters from Stockton to the Bay, I think it's better attributed to Tracy and Mountain House and Lathrop+Manteca a bit less, since those are more like bedroom communities.

There is a rail line that goes from Sacramento into the South Bay (ACE Rail) which is what you'd probably try to use if you could. Still takes 2.5hr one-way (which doesn't include last-mile parts), but at least you don't drive.

I used to take it going from Pleasanton to Santa Clara, and I remember there was lots of revelry on the way back home.

Out of curiosity I checked some of those locations and it turns out I used to have a commute of roughly the same length as you have now. Bearable, but on the very edge of tolerance.

Meanwhile travelling on a daily basis from places like Stockton or Modesto is, to me, just extreme. I knew a doctor who travelled this far three times a week and he was already perpetually exhausted.

Sometimes I can't help but think that all those RTO policies were enacted only so that we would keep renting all those overpriced, cramped apartments.