Okay, But Why Were The Suburbs Shaped By Racism?
For nearly a century, the suburbs have been a cornerstone of the American Dream. The suburbs burst onto the scene of American life after World War Two. Veterans were returning from the war, getting married, and having kids. All of those new families needed a place to live, and combined with the new availability of cars that let people live farther out from city centers, that meant Americans were ready to move to the suburbs.
A man named William Levitt is often considered the “father of American suburbia” because he figured out that by buying up land in bulk, subdividing it into lots (which is where we get the term “subdivision”), and mass-producing houses using new technology, he could sell thousands of suburban homes to veterans and their families. And they wanted what he was selling: within just ten years, 85 percent of all new homes built in the United States were in the suburbs. By 1970, America’s suburban population had nearly doubled. That popularity has continued to this day, with more than half of Americans living in suburban areas.
The Suburbs Began as “Whites Only”
Unfortunately, families of color – particularly Black people – were excluded. William Levitt didn’t just believe in segregation, he openly declared that his suburbs were for whites only. His first planned community, Levittown New York, had zero Black residents. According to the 2020 census, Black families only make up 1.3 percent of Levittown to this day.
And it wasn’t just individual developers like William Levitt that were discriminating against people of color. Banks refused to loan money for new homes in neighborhoods where non-white families lived. This practice is known as redlining – the word comes from mortgage security maps that shaded minority neighborhoods in red, implying they were “risky investments.”
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer struck down explicitly racist neighborhood housing covenants, making it illegal to consider race when selling a house. But it wasn’t until a series of housing acts passed in the 1960s that there was any real enforcement of that ruling.
The Suburbs Changed, But Racism Has Remained
Around the 1980s the suburbs began to change thanks to fair housing laws, suburban houses becoming more affordable, the rising cost of housing in cities, and a growing Black middle class. In 1990, 20% of suburbanites were people of color. By 2020, that number had more than doubled to 45%. By some measures, the suburbs are now the most diverse places in America. But that doesn’t mean that they’re integrated. In other words, many suburbs are often primarily white or primarily Black. And now, not only are many white residents leaving the suburbs for further-out exurbs, they’re also returning to downtowns, often displacing communities of color that had been living there for decades in what’s known as gentrification.
Change has always made some people uneasy, and the suburbs are no exception. Suburban public schools in particular have become a battleground, like we saw with Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s war against so-called “Critical Race Theory” in Virginia and the nation-wide dismantling of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. Extremist groups like Moms for Liberty have made it their mission to swoop into suburban neighborhoods and stir up chaos at school board meetings over books that include characters who are Black or LGBTQ.
Of course, most suburban women aren’t afraid of their neighbors or books in their public libraries. In 2023, a whopping 73% of school board candidates endorsed by Moms For Liberty lost their races in suburban districts where Red Wine & Blue did on-the-ground organizing. But we’re still hearing so much of the same dangerous rhetoric about the suburbs that was used back in the days of William Levitt.
President Trump in particular has talked extensively about the, as he put it, “suburban lifestyle dream.” He’s been overturning policies and laws that aimed to reduce discrimination in the suburbs, like the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which is part of the Fair Housing Act. He’s said that fair housing rules would lead to the suburbs becoming “dens of crime and chaos.” To be clear, there is no evidence that fair housing policies have increased crime – in the suburbs or anywhere else.