Racial and Ethnic Politics in American Suburbs

Racial and Ethnic Politics in American Suburbs examines racial and ethnic politics outside traditional urban contexts and questions the standard theories we use to understand mobility and government responses to rapid demographic change and political demands. This study moves beyond traditional scholarship in urban politics, departing from the persistent treatment of racial dynamics in terms of a simple black-white binary. Combining an interdisciplinary, multi-method, and multiracial approach with a well-integrated analysis of multiple forms of data including focus groups, in-depth interviews, and census data, Racial and Ethnic Politics in American Suburbs explains how redistributive policies and programs are developed and implemented at the local level to assist immigrants, racial/ethnic minorities, and low-income groups - something that given earlier knowledge and theorizing should rarely happen. Lorrie Frasure-Yokley relies on the framework of suburban institutional interdependency (SII), which presents a new way of thinking systematically about local politics within the context of suburban political institutions in the United States today.

Introduction; 1. Race, ethnicity, class, and the suburban political economy dilemma; 2. New neighbors in suburban Washington, DC: immigrant and ethnic minority settlement surrounding the nation's capital; 3. Educating immigrant, minority, and low-income students in suburbia; 4. The politics of institutionalizing day labor centers in suburbia; 5. Lost in translation: language access at government agencies in suburbia; Conclusion.

Lorrie Frasure-Yokley is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Some of her recent work appears in Urban Affairs Review and the National Political Science Review. She is the Co-Principle Investigator of the Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Study (CMPS) 2008 and 2012, the first multi-state, multi-racial, multi-lingual post election study of racial and political preferences and behavior among registered voters in the United States. She is the recipient of several local and national awards, including the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Research Council of the National Academies, and the Clarence Stone Young Scholar Award of the American Political Science Association's Urban Politics Section.