| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle-Class Suburb. By Bruce D. Haynes. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. xxviii, 180 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-300-08490-0.)

This volume is a welcome addition to the literature on African American suburbanization and the black middle class, linking the formation of race, class, and space through local interest politics. As a sociologist, Bruce D. Haynes confirms the continuing appeal of historicism in the social sciences, demonstrating the virtues of working from a clear theoretical position but also highlighting several drawbacks. 1

Haynes's subject is Nepperhan/Runyon Heights (1990 population 1,378), a historically black community in Yonkers, New York. He traces the development of the community from the purchasing of real estate during the Great Migration through struggles to overturn school segregation, block public housing, and secure local amenities and finally to residents' contemporary fears that the neighborhood would be gentrified by whites or "ghettoized" by poorer blacks. These fears, marking the extremes of black middle-class anxiety, symbolize Nepperhan's dilemma. Over time, inhabitants sought to secure "middle-class" prerogatives even as whites sought to isolate them racially and exploit the community as a dumping ground for unwanted projects.

2

In a residential environment where community boundaries were defined by race and [where] class position was threatened by racial subordination, race became the focal point for defending community interests through collective mobilization.

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