Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle-Class Suburb [Hardcover]

Dr. Bruce D. Haynes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2001

Runyon Heights, a community in Yonkers, New York, has been populated by middle-class African Americans for nearly a century. This book - the first history of a black middle-class community - tells the story of Runyon Heights, which sheds light on the process of black suburbanisation and the ways in which residential development in the suburbs has been shaped by race and class. Relying on both interviews with residents and archival research, Bruce D. Haynes describes the progressive stages in the life of the community and its inhabitants and the factors that enabled it to form in the first place and to develop solidarity, identity and political consciousness. He shows how residents came to recognise common political interests within the community, how racial consciousness provided an axis for social solidarity as well as partial insulation from racial slights, and how the suburb afforded these middle-class residents a degree of physical and social distance from the ghetto. As Haynes explores the history of Runyon Heights, we learn the ways in which its black middle class dealt with the tensions between the political interests of race and the material interests of class.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As Haynes elegantly puts it: race makes place, and, in doing so, place makes race." -- Kai Erikson, from the Foreword

About the Author

Bruce D. Haynes is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California-Davis.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300084900
• ISBN-13: 978-0300084900
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,436,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Fabric of a Neighborhood, July 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle-Class Suburb (Hardcover)

Dr. Haynes has captured the unique character of Runyon Heights in a way that brings the neighborhood to life for the reader. This is an important book of research regarding a little studied aspect of African American history. Using both human and historical resources, Haynes faithfully portrays the development of a community that challenges white America's stereotypical perceptions of predominantly Black neighborhoods, and thereby challenges their perceptions of African Americans themselves.

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable Study of Urban Communities, February 24, 2007

By 

Jack Neff (LA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle-Class Suburb (Hardcover)

Bruce D. Haynes writes a readable academic study which is rich in detail through citations and footnotes,with a narrative as wide as the island of Manhattan is narrow. Never losing the line of the story, Dr. Haynes draws on mundane policy-driven sources for his data like census figures and population numbers used in some of the urban planning reports used in the drive for reddening of the redline around Nepperhan. This is not a clinical review of forces which surrounded a community, it the story of how identity, in institutions, in communities and in individuals can withstand the larger forces which seek to structure their lives. To the opposition to government policy makers, individual Nepperhanians stood, as their ancestors opposed earlier chamber of commerce types, to hold their community and hence their individuality.

For example,