This book caught my eye because one of the five families profiled was from “Chicago’s North Shore.” I was dying to know whether I would be familiar with the suburb in question. I was. I grew up just north of Evanston in Wilmette. So that was enough of a hook to pull me into the book. The other locales are suburban Atlanta, a series of Dallas exurbs, Compton, and Penn Hills, which is just outside of Pittsburgh and is the author’s hometown. So, Benjamin Herold, too, has the personal connection motivating his interest in this topic, and it’s one that his interview participant forces him to reckon with toward the end of the publication process.
As with other books I’ve read this year, I have that selfish entry point that draws me in but the writer then takes my hand and pulls me further into the pages. The way Herold does it is by weaving together stories from these five families in big and small sections that serve to emphasize the same story of America’s suburbs as told from different perspectives. The first section introduces us to each family, their members, goals, and history, while hinting of directions to come. For the Becker family (with one exception, all names except public figures are pseudonymous, of course), it’s clear that their inexorable march further and further away from Dallas’ inner ring suburbs is motivated by a fear of Black and Latinx families. They never come out and say that but the idea screams off the page in how they corral their children’s teachers for extra help at school, for instance. When they are not able to do that because the same teachers are working with students who have newly moved to the suburb and also need support, the family sets their sights further north into smaller towns with newer construction and smaller schools. That same idea of opportunity hoarding is present in a within-suburb, not between-suburb, context in the Adesina family’s story in Evanston, a town that is segregated just like the city immediately to its south. Truly, the idea of white flight is one of the common threads tying together all the stories, but it plays out differently with each family.
Where this book contributes to an understanding of white flight beyond opportunity hoarding is what happens to the suburbs after the families who flew have flown. What that means can vary from crumbling infrastructure (as in the sewer system in Penn Hills) to understaffed and underpopulated schools (as in Compton). This is just another version of opportunity hoarding, though. Herold says as much in the preface, arguing “the diversification of suburbia did not lead to a universal American dream, untethered from whiteness and extended equality to all” (p. 7). In other words, Black and Latinx families seeking the safety and security of the suburbs that white people have enjoyed for years are in for a rude awakening if they think they’ll have the same experience. The suburbs are no promised land; there’s nothing magical about their ZIP codes. This is likely most evident in the Hernandez family’s experience in Compton, a suburb of Los Angeles that has not had the stereotypical white wealthy demographic of an American suburb for decades. Although the family’s father has been mostly happy with how his son’s elementary school recognized and rewarded his child’s inquisitiveness and proficiency, he still has doubts about whether to stay in Compton or return to Mexico for a better opportunity.
The bitter irony of the changing demographics of the suburbs is that for some Black Americans, the suburbs had been a place where they were trying to escape whiteness itself for generations. As Herold explains in the introductory section on the Robinson family (in Gwinnett County, Georgia), “one in six Black people fleeing the Jim Crow South settled on the edge of a city… but by the start of World War II, 20 percent of Black Americans were already suburbanites, largely united in their hope of finally being left alone” (p. 73). It seems difficult to find evidence of this first suburban element in the suburbs today. In fact, the Robinson family later grapples with the legacy of segregation as they move further from Atlanta. The issue of school desegregation had reached the Supreme Court in 1992 and the majority opinion was that it was essentially fine that DeKalb County’s schools had resegregated after the Civil Rights era because hey, the schools tried. So much for Black families hoping to escape the clutches of whiteness.
It’s not just the courts that have helped to keep some suburbs mostly white either. In telling the Adesina family’s story in Evanston, Herold introduces one of the members of the local PTA. Lauren Adesina, the Ecuadorian single mother who is the focus of this section’s story, meets a white parent who reflects on how the “PTA functioned as a kind of sorority for white stay-at-home moms.” Lauren herself is not interested in joining the PTA because “It seems like Mean Girls for adults” (p. 159). Both of these statements are true and point toward how white women are responsible for the caretaking and maintenance of whiteness in the suburbs. Plenty of other moments in the text reflect this control, from most of the Becker family’s experiences outside of Dallas, as well as the liberal (but not progressive) members of Evanston’s District 65 who attempt to take over the school board when they think the Black superintendent went too far in supporting racial equity work during the initial months of the pandemic.
Herold himself doesn’t escape criticism, either. Toward the end of the second part of the book, he relates how Bethany Smith, the woman who lived down the street from his childhood home, called him out on the project of this book. Due to the nature and outcome of this interaction, Herold uses her actual name. Her response to Herold’s intrusion into her life is cutting: “I enjoy talking to you, and I’m all for what you’re doing. But there has been a long history of white people telling Black people’s stories and profiting off of it. That right there is what I’m having an issue with” (p. 306). He takes the criticism in stride and they work through the complications of how her life fits into his project. As a result, she pens the epilogue to the book, which functions as both a sign-off to the text itself and a chance for her to provide a different perspective on the story Herold has been telling about her. It reminds me of the work I’ve done with assent and consent when conducting research with human participants. As one of my professors put it, “We make research out of people’s problems.” That’s no argument against doing research, but it does mean academics and journalists should take care to consider their positionality when doing the work. Herold’s text provides an entry point into considering that idea even as it tells a larger story about what is happening throughout suburban America.
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