The Imagined Black “Other”: The Racialization of Safety and Schooling in the Suburbs

• In Event: The Safety of Black Students in Schools

Abstract

This paper examines the racializing discourses that contribute to the reproduction, reification, and naturalization of Black-white segregation across the urban-suburban geographic boundary. Drawing on data pulled from an 18-month ethnographic project in a white affluent suburban town that neighbors a Black city, this paper argues that white and Asian suburbanites participate in the racializing discourses of neighborhood safety, school quality, and school safety by conjuring an imagined Black “Other.” The suburban social imaginary reifies longstanding racist tropes based in cultural deprivation, which underscores how places and ideas become racialized to legitimate and normalize segregation.

Author

• Christopher Hu, University of Virginia