The Black Suburban Sort: Is Suburbanization Diversifying Blacks’ Racial Attitudes?

The recent expansion in Black suburbanization is the most substantial shift in Black American residential patterns since the Great Migration. It has left Blacks more sorted between urban and suburban neighborhoods across metropolitan areas. This study explores whether this increasing residential stratification is associated with differentiation in Blacks’ political views on racialized issues. I first lay out a theory of Black political sorting by place, specifying processes inherent in suburbanization that could lead to opinion stratification between suburban and urban Blacks. This is followed by a descriptive analysis of American Voices Project interviews with suburban and urban Black respondents. The data show Black suburbanization is neither as economically transformative nor politically differentiating as might be expected. Despite subtle opinion differences between suburban and urban respondents, they mostly converge in their bleak assessments of racialized issues.