ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the Black exodus to the suburbs is a factor that has had a transformative impact on the Black counterpublic. It offers a set of empirical predictions about the potential effects of suburban migration on Blacks' political views. The chapter presents hypotheses based on how the suburban trend is producing shifts in the Black public sphere, and how the dynamics, in turn, might be generating new fault lines and moderate turns in African Americans' attitudes. Black suburbanization has been driven at least in part by Black flight, the departure of hundreds of thousands of African Americans from central cities. One of the most politically consequential developments fueled by Black migration to cities was the emergence of the consolidated network of all-Black institutions dubbed the Black counterpublic by scholars of Black politics. The chapter presents analyses of Pew Research Center survey data that find support for some of the hypothesized relationships.
