Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

From 2016 to 2018, I lived in a small apartment on the border of Cleveland, Ohio (USA) and one of its eastern suburbs, Shaker Heights. I moved to this location to conduct ethnographic research on community race relations in a suburban neighborhood that is routinely touted as one of America’s first suburbs to have a racially integrated housing market. My two-year fieldwork culminated in a book-length manuscript. I present one piece of a larger analysis. This paper focuses on the existence of an African American segregated neighborhood within the larger integrated suburb. This qualitative analysis is based on interviews and observations of thirty-three African American adults that I met during my time living in Shaker Heights. I use the “ethnoburbs” (Lin and Robinson 2005) and “chocolate cities” (Hunter and Robinson 2018) theoretical frameworks to understand African American migration patterns, kinship networks, and histories of U.S. housing discrimination–factors that facilitate the formation of segregated spaces and factious social lives among adults in a racially diverse community.