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The majority of Americans live and work in suburbs, but the social problems arising in these communities are rarely studied by sociologists. Far more scholarly attention is devoted to understanding the distinctive character of urban communities. This review directs attention to three emerging trends affecting the nation's suburbs disproportionately: the suburbanization of poverty, the settlement of post-1965 immigrants in the suburbs, and the impact of reverse migration to the South on black suburbanization. The review provides a critical discussion of the valuable contributions demographers have made to our general understanding of these trends, then it engages the work of ethnographers to assess the processes underlying these outcomes. These emerging trends constitute the basis for a robust research agenda rooted in the sociology of suburbs.

Is the protracted foreclosure crisis eroding the Black middle class? Foreclosure rates in the United States have reached an all-time high. Blacks have been hit especially hard by this crisis. I focus here on intraclass distinctions within the Black middle class precisely because scholars and journalists so often fail to distinguish between the experiences of the Black lower middle class and those of middle and upper-class Blacks, leaving the unintended impression that middle-class Blacks all have the same odds of losing their home. I argue that conventional explanations of the foreclosure crisis as a racialized event should be amended to account for the differential impact of the crisis on three distinct groups of middle-class Blacks: the lower middle class, the core middle class, and the upper or elite middle class.

Compares race relations in two suburban communities in order to show that middle‐class blacks meet with some success when they temporarily exchange their racial identity for a class‐based identity. Collects data through ethnography and individual interview to examine the conditions under which middle‐class blacks construct and assert a sub‐urban identity. States that success varies with the racial composition of the suburban community and the white neighbours’ level of the satisfaction with the community.

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