The Changing Terrain of the Suburbs: Examining Race, Class, and Place in Suburban Schools and Communities

ABSTRACT

Suburban school districts in the United States (U.S.) have experienced major demographic shifts in recent decades and vary substantially in their student populations. More than half of Asian, black, and Latinx students in large metropolitan areas attend suburban schools, and the suburbs are commonly the first destination for new U.S. immigrants. Thus, suburban schools offer the opportunity to study the confluence of race, ethnicity, class, and immigration in education. Yet most scholarship on race and education has focused on urban contexts. The articles in this symposium examine how students, parents, and educators understand, navigate, and confront racial inequities and whiteness in suburban schooling. Drawing from qualitative studies of suburban communities in the Midwestern U.S., these articles reveal the ways in which racial discourses and racialized patterns of inequality are taken up and contested by students, families, and educators in suburban schools.

The United States (U.S.) is a majority suburban country and most U.S. students currently attend suburban schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). In the most straightforward definition, suburbs are “the physical space beyond a city’s boundaries, yet still within the metropolitan area” (Lacy, 2016, p. 370). However, these spaces symbolize much more than just geography (Leonardo & Hunter, 2007). The words white, suburb, and affluent are commonly conflated in the realms of discourse, policy, and research even as a growing body of scholarship highlights the history and contemporary realities of black, Asian, and Latinx residents in suburbia (Cheng, 2013; Lewis-McCoy, 2014; Nicolaides & Wiese, 2016; Wiese, 2005).

While suburbs are often imagined as affluent white spaces (Leonardo & Hunter, 2007; Lewis-McCoy, 2018), these communities and their schools have experienced major demographic shifts in recent decades and vary substantially in their racial, ethnic, and social class compositions (Frankenberg, 2013; Frankenberg & Orfield, 2012; W. Frey, 2011; W. H. Frey, 2015; Lacy, 2016). In fact, more than half of Asian American, black, Indigenous/First Nations, and Latinx people in large metropolitan areas currently live in suburbs (W. Frey, 2011), as do the majority of each of these groups nationally (W. H. Frey, 2015).¹ Given that suburbs have become a common first destination for many new U.S. immigrants (Li, 2009; Singer et al., 2008), and that 55% of low-income people in the U.S. live in suburbs (Kneebone & Berube, 2014), examinations of the confluence of race, class, ethnicity, and immigration are critical to understanding contemporary suburban schools and communities.

While suburbs are fertile sites for study of some of our most important educational challenges, education scholarship has paid insufficient attention to these contexts. In fact, between 2000 and 2018, the top five American Educational Research Association journals published 164 articles focused explicitly on urban schools compared to only 24 on suburban schools, and only 17 on rural schools. It appears that our scholarly focus on large city school districts has led us to miss the spaces where most of the demographic and educational change is occurring (Frankenberg & Orfield, 2012; W. H. Frey, 2015; Lacy, 2016). This symposium seeks to motivate a needed conversation about race, ethnicity, inequality, and education in metropolitan suburbs.

Suburbs, whiteness, and exclusion

The history of U.S. suburbs cannot be told fully without an understanding of how whiteness and racial exclusion were central components of their creation. The very construction of the suburbs was a white supremacist racial project (Omi & Winant, 1994) that created opportunities for white residents to self-segregate, hoard opportunities, and construct institutional and social settings rooted in (un)marked whiteness (Nicolaides & Wiese, 2016; Oliver & Shapiro, 2006). Several scholars have characterized the creation of suburbs as a process of opportunity hoarding carried out by white racial actors and supported by numerous white-dominated institutions (Darby & Rury, 2018; Rury & Rife, 2018; Rury & Saatcioglu, 2011). During the early- to mid-twentieth century, the federal government subsidized the creation and growth of suburban communities by providing Federal Housing Administration loans mostly to whites while simultaneously undermining the development of central cities through redlining and large-scale disinvestment. Likewise, the real estate industry, real estate boards, and financial institutions conspired to exclude minoritized groups from suburban communities (Oliver & Shapiro, 1995; Shapiro, 2017).

Racialized suburbanization also was supported through restrictive covenants that limited home sales to whites (Brooks & Rose, 2013). For example, 16 of 18 suburban Milwaukee communities used restrictive covenants throughout much of the twentieth century that explicitly prohibited selling homes to “non-white” residents (Quinn, 1979). In addition, various forms of racial intimidation and violence designed to terrorize minoritized people who sought to buy homes or move into many of these “white” communities was common in suburbia.

The new suburbia

From the late twentieth century to the present, demographic trends and changes in federal policy (e.g., Fair Housing Act, 1968), have led to shifts in the racial composition of suburbs (W. H. Frey, 2015; Lacy, 2016). Today, more than half of all the minoritized groups who live in large metropolitan areas reside in the suburbs (W. Frey, 2011; W. H. Frey, 2015). For instance, between 1990 and 2010 in large metropolitan areas, the share of the Latinx population living in suburban communities (as opposed to central cities) increased from 47% to 59%, the share of Asians living in suburbs grew from 54% to 62%, and the share of black people living in suburban communities grew from 37% to 51% (W. Frey, 2011).

Although these changes have been studied by demographers (W. Frey, 2011; W. H. Frey, 2015), sociologists (Clerge, 2019; Jiménez, 2017; Lacy, 2016), urban planners (Lung-Amam, 2017), and political scientists (Jones-Correa., 2008; Orfield, 2002), more attention to these changes and their implications is needed in education scholarship. To the extent that education scholars have taken up race and class in the suburbs, the experience of African Americans in mostly white, affluent suburbs has taken center stage (Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Lewis-McCoy, 2014; Posey-Maddox, 2017). However, given that much of the growth in racial diversity in these contexts is rooted in increasing Latinx and Asian suburbanization, more work is needed that helps us understand the experience of these groups in suburban schools and communities. While important work is emerging in this area (e.g., Dhingra, 2020; Jiménez, 2017), this symposium seeks to expand the extant literature by moving beyond the black/white racial binary.

Navigating whiteness in schools and communities

The changing face of the suburbs also means that historic patterns of exclusion and whiteness are being troubled (at least in terms of population characteristics). However, even as the racial composition of residents and students change, whiteness and white supremacy are deeply embedded inside schools as organizations (Diamond, 2018; Lewis-McCoy, 2014; Ray, 2019), and in the communities that surround them (Posey-Maddox, 2017), making them continue to function as white spaces (Moore, 2008). Therefore, examining how whiteness shapes the experiences of Asian, black, Latinx, and white members of these communities is important.

Inside schools, for example, the changing demographics of suburban students has outpaced changes among educators. Currently, over 80% of teachers in the U.S. are white and this percentage is even higher among suburban teachers (Frankenberg, 2013). This racial mismatch between students and teachers has real implications for African American and Latinx students because of the symbolic message it sends about race, intelligence, and power and because white teachers hold lower academic and behavioral expectations for African American and Latinx than they do for white and Asian students (Downey & Pribesh, 2004; Irizarry, 2015). At the same time, blanket application of the model minority stereotype to Asian American students can lead educators to overlook these students’ academic challenges and needs (Cooc, 2017; Jiménez, 2017; Lee, 2005) and reinforce whiteness. Navigating schools also is about moving through less formally-structured spaces beyond the classroom, spaces that can be critical locations in which whiteness structures students’ experiences (Diamond & Lewis, 2019; Wun, 2016) and where minoritized youth must seek to create affirming, safe spaces for themselves (Carter, 2007).

Living in communities that are experiencing demographic change is about more than just schooling (Posey-Maddox, 2017). Whiteness and white supremacy permeate organizations and institutions outside of schools as well. Work has already begun to identify the contemporary day-to-day challenges faced by black people who live in suburbs. Posey-Maddox (2017), for example, details black parents’ experiences of racial microaggressions navigating a predominantly white suburban community in Wisconsin. Black parents there report hypervisibility, being seen as a monolithic group without class distinctions, and presumed criminality based on racial stereotypes. Studies also have demonstrated negative interactions between black suburban residents and the police which include frequent traffic stops, tickets, arrests (Bates, 2010), and other forms of racialized policing (Boyles, 2015).

Unfortunately, the school-centric nature of education research more generally is reflected in education scholarship on suburbs. But thinking about schools in isolation misses the reality that education also happens outside of them, and that students and families must navigate suburban institutions that are steeped in whiteness. We need to know more about how minoritized families navigate these spaces in an effort to enhance their children’s education and social development and what educational resources they draw upon in doing so. In this symposium, we seek to better understand the suburban education experience both inside and beyond schools.

Finally, much of the work on minoritized youth and families in suburban schools focuses on their experiences and outcomes, but comparatively less attention has focused on how whites respond to demographic change in schools. Whiteness is often treated as a default category which is underexamined in studies of race and education, with a few important exceptions. For instance) shows how increased numbers of Asian Americans in elite suburban communities shape how more established white residents view themselves and the educational characteristics of their children. There is other work that examines how school and district leaders understand, frame, and respond to racial “diversity” (Turner, 2020; Welton et al., 2013). Work also has highlighted white educators’ lack of racial literacy (Guinier, 2004) and resistance to professional learning opportunities focused on race (Di Angelo, 2018; Pollock et al., 2015). Still, more work is needed that interrogates the behavior and beliefs of whites and how they make sense of and respond to demographic change in suburban schools and communities.

While we believe that the education scholarship on suburban schools has made many important contributions, we also think it has at least three limitations. First, most work focuses on black/white racial dynamics to the exclusion of work on other minoritized populations and work that interrogates whiteness. Second, this work has focused almost exclusively inside schools and failed to contend with how race matters in navigating broader community contexts. Finally, much of this work misses the increasing racial and ethnic diversity that is characteristic of many of these communities. The articles in this symposium open up the discussion of race in suburban schools by examining racial dynamics across multiple categories of students, exploring race in suburban community spaces and institutions, and examining how white educators are grappling with changing demographics. We view this symposium as an important addition to this emergent body of scholarship on suburban education. Below we provide an overview of the symposium papers.

In this symposium

The three articles in this symposium empirically examine how students, parents, and educators understand, navigate, and counter racial inequities and whiteness in suburban schooling. Drawing from rich qualitative data collected in well-resourced, “good” suburban school districts and communities in the Midwest, these articles reveal the ways in which racial discourses and racialized patterns of inequality are taken up or contested by students, families, and educators in these predominantly white or “diverse” racial contexts.

In the article, “Asian Americans in the Suburbs: Race, Class, and Korean Immigrant Parental Engagement,” Eujin Park examines how Korean immigrant parents’ race and class identities, as well as broader processes of racialization, inform their motivations and forms of engagement in their children’s education in a Midwest suburb. Most studies of middle-class parent engagement focus on white parents or group white and Asian middle-class parents together in analyses of opportunity gaps and class advantage in public schooling. Similarly, few studies examine the experiences and engagement of Asian Americans and Asian immigrant parents in suburban contexts, despite the fact that over 60% of Asian Americans live in suburbs and that Asian immigrants are more likely to settle in suburbs than in traditional gateway cities (W. Frey, 2011). Based upon ethnographic data collected in two community-based educational spaces serving Korean American students in a Chicago suburb, the research findings reveal the ways in which Asian immigrant parents’ engagement practices were shaped by broader racial discourses that position white parents’ practices as “good” and “normal” and Asian practices as “Other.” Informed by racial formation theory, this article demonstrates how race, immigration, and class intertwine to shape Asian parental engagement in suburban educational contexts. The findings have implications for both research and practice in suburban schooling, as they highlight the importance of understanding Asian American parents’ experiences and engagement as distinct from those of white parents in suburban school and district contexts.

Gabriel Rodriguez, in his article, “Suburban Schools as Sites of Inspection: Understanding Latinx Youth’s Sense of Belonging in a Suburban High School,” expands our understanding of suburban educational and racial inequality through a focus on Latinx student experiences in a predominantly white suburban context. Specifically, this study draws from spatial theory and borderland theory to examine how Latinx youth in a suburban school outside of Chicago understand the racialized spaces they encounter and traverse in the school, as well as how they construct spaces of belonging within the racially stratified suburban school context. Drawing from in-depth, critical ethnographic fieldwork, the research findings illustrate the social and academic borders that Latinx youth encountered in the suburban high school. The study also highlights the agency of Latinx youth, using in-depth examples to highlight the ways youth made sense of, navigated, and resisted these borders and also created spaces of community for themselves and their peers. This article concludes with recommendations for suburban school leaders and educators seeking to create more inclusive and equitable schooling spaces and learning opportunities for Latinx youth.

In the article, “The Onus is on Us”: How White Suburban Teachers Learn About Racial Inequities in Their Schools in a Critical Book Study,” Van Lac, John Diamond, and Maria Velazquez examine the participation of white educators in a monthly professional learning group aimed at examining racial inequalities in their suburban, Midwestern high school. Through an in-depth qualitative case study of white educators participating in a teacher-led monthly book study, the research explores how white teachers talked about race and racial disparities in the context of the book study, as well as participants’ beliefs about how their thinking shifted over the course of the book study. The authors offer critical book studies as an approach for promoting conversations about race and racism among school-based educators, as well as a context for critical reflection and action. They suggest that the critical book study contributed to changes in white educators’ thinking about race and racial inequality through the use of a critical text that challenges taken-for-granted notion of structural inequality, through the use of the centering of the voices and lived experiences of minoritized groups in U.S. schooling, the combination of reflection and action (praxis), and a year-long process of continual self-reflection as opposed to a one-time professional development workshop or class. This article adds to our understanding of the possibilities and challenges associated with professional learning for racial consciousness-building among white teachers, and outlines the potential for critical book studies to provide sustained, critical reflection as well as promote action among school-based educators.

Taken together, these articles demonstrate the importance of understanding how youth, families, and educators in suburban schools understand, contribute to, and resist the institutional and cultural racism they encounter in predominantly white or racially-mixed suburban educational contexts. Whereas much of the emergent literature on race and suburban schooling has focused on the experiences of black youth and families, or the opportunity hoarding and racism of white families and educators, few studies center the experiences of Latinx or Asian American youth, or white educators working towards antiracism. These articles offer important insights related to racialization and racial inequality that can inform the work of educators and school leaders in increasingly multiracial and multiethnic suburban school contexts. The research findings in this collection of articles also illustrate the need for more in-depth understandings of the experiences of Latinx and Asian American students and families in suburban educational contexts, as well as the need for continued interrogations of whiteness and white advantage in increasingly diverse suburban educational spaces.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John B. Diamond

John B. Diamond is the Kellner Family Distinguished Chair in Urban Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and faculty affiliate in Afro-American Studies and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A sociologist of race and education, he examines how educational leadership, policies, and practices shape students’ educational opportunities and outcomes. He is co-author of Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools (Oxford University Press).

Linn Posey-Maddox

Linn Posey-Maddox is an associate professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research focuses on urban and suburban education; the intersections of race, class, and gender in family-school relationships; and education and urban policy. She is the author of When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools: Class, Race, and the Challenge of Equity in Public Education (University of Chicago).

Notes

^1. Although this symposium focuses on the experiences of Asian, Latinx, and white students and families in suburbs, 66% of Indigenous people reside in suburbs (W. Frey, 2011); thus, we recognize that this is an area for future inquiry.