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

Abstract

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.