Abstract
<jats:p>This book examines the suburban Black middle class in the United States. More specifically, it focuses on the capacity of local majority-Black jurisdictions to provide high-quality public goods and services, from clean drinking water to K–12 schools. Angela Simms focuses on public goods and services because they are the material foundation for a high quality of life for most Americans and because local jurisdictions with high-quality public goods and services offer the conditions for household and neighborhood income and wealth accumulation that reinforce both families’ and local governments’ financial standing, and hence their material well-being. The author contends that racial status differences are at the heart of the unequal distribution of material resources in the United States. She argues that the suburban Black middle class receives fewer returns to its class status than the suburban White middle class and that the suburban Black middle class subsidizes the wealth accumulation of the White middle class. The book lays out how majority-Black jurisdictions, given their embeddedness in racialized regional political economy relationships, endure unique constraints stemming from historical and contemporary anti-Black policies.</jats:p>