Visualizing Variation in Majority-Black
Suburbs in the United States
Douds, Lewis-McCoy & Johnson (2021)
Although suburbanization has largely been a racial project by Whites to create exclusionary communities, Black suburbs have always been present in metropolitan landscapes. However, scholars “have done a better job excluding African Americans from the suburbs than even White suburbanites,” as Black suburbs have received comparatively scarce scholarly attention (Wiese 2005:5). In this visualization, we provide a demographic portrait of Black suburbs in 2018 to highlight their prevalence and variety. We recognize the complexity of Black suburbs both as communities profoundly shaped by spatial systems of white supremacy (Taylor 2019) and as opportunities for Black placemaking, where “[sub]urban black Americans create sites of endurance, belonging, and resistance” (Hunter et al. 2016:31).
