How the Suburbs Became a Trap
Penn Hills’ residents not only shrugged off collective responsibilities for their town; they also combined their poor waste management with racial aggression. In the 1960s, leaders rezoned a ravine so that builders dumped their toxic, flammable construction rubbish next to a Black neighborhood; infected insects bit local children, and underground fires mysteriously broke out. In the following decades, more Black home-seekers arrived in Penn Hills ready to pay the town’s now-depressed home values. As their children enrolled and the school became diverse, however, its teaching staff did not. Meanwhile, the school district’s debts exploded to $172 million, submitting the town to possible state takeover. By 2018 when Bethany Smith, her mother, and young son moved into Herold’s former home, the town presented a respite from the high rents of Pittsburgh’s gentrifying East End, but it was no longer a launching pad for future generations, as it had been for Herold’s own family. It was more of a setup than an escape.
Just outside Atlanta, Georgia, Nika and Anthony Robinson may have been laureled with significant degrees and fancy jobs, but, as Herold describes, they too were forced to confront suburban faithlessness. The Robinsons moved to northern Gwinnet County in 2019 when Nika Robinson was tackling graduate studies in epidemiology and Anthony was climbing the corporate ladder. The suburbs represented the next, obvious, step up in their ascent, a confidence that was shared and accepted. “We were very optimistic then. Sky was the limit,” a friend of the Robinsons told Herold.
Families like the Robinsons—upper middle class and focused on more for their children—are common among the Black, brown, Asian, and multiracial suburbanites who now make up nearly half of the populations living outside the major metro areas. This migration, the sociologist L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy wrote in Inequality in the Promised Land, is frequently driven by a hope that “suburbia would serve as a buffer” against the racism that they and their elders had experienced in cities. Professional achievements and financial success would ease access to generous homes and strong schools once reserved for whites, these families expected. Only after they’d unpacked their moving boxes did the reality become clear.