“African Americans in Suburbs and Coastal Communities: Two Projects on Achieving Security and Facing Structural Risks”

Speaker: Greg Smithsimon, Professor at Brooklyn College and GC

Gregory Smithsimon’s forthcoming book, Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism, looks at middle-class suburbs outside Baltimore to understand how residents use the tools of the suburbs to confront racism and inequality, and the distinct ways race shapes politics and community in the suburban landscape. The project, which balances attention to residents’ agency and structural inequality, revises understandings of segregation developed in studies of urban areas.

Greg’s upcoming project looks at the three Atlantic coast cities most threatened by climate change outside of Florida: New York City; Atlantic City, NJ; and Norfolk, Va. In places where sea level rise threatens the viability of whole neighborhoods, there is an urgent need to identify residents’ priorities, strategize about how to respond and when to retreat, and how to develop such plans in a country where disaster responses diverge dangerously by the race of people affected.