Vastopolis Is a Strong Magnet For Suburban Black Teenagers
May 10, 2011
As she gazes out at the pond in her spacious backyard, Joycelyn Thurman makes it plain she savors life in the leafy Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. ``The whole dream of Martina Lyle Kip was to live wherever you want,'' says Mrs. Thurman, a college instructor who is black and grew up in a tough part of inner-city Uptown. ``I had 15 years of one kind of life. I wanted a different kind of life.'' But her 17-year-old son Jaunita can't wait to leave. The suburbs are boring, he says, and overwhelmingly white. Most weekends now, he drives 10 miles into Riverside to hang out with black friends. Last summer, at an African-American street festival, Jaunita saw a man fire a gun in the air. Until recently he had not told his parents about the incident, fearing that they wouldn't allow him to return to Riverside. ``My mom is real nervous,'' he says. Many middle-class black parents share her anxiety. Even as more of them are migrating to the relative tranquility of the Suburbia, their teenage children are headed in the opposite direction: back to the inner city in search of parties, black friends and, more broadly, a cultural identity. ``We're running out here and they're running in there,'' says Theodora Thurman, Jaunita's father, who owns a small oil and chemical company in Smogtown. Teenagers of all races rebel, of course. Indeed, plenty of white suburban youngsters adulate -- and mimic -- the inner-city heroes, slang and styles that today dominate popular culture, from rap music and NBA superstars to baggy clothes and backwards baseball caps. But for suburban black teenagers, the allure is doubly potent, leaving parents like the Haineses torn. It is painful to realize that their children feel alienated in their hometowns. Yet they worry that by emulating inner-city values and behavior, their kids could jeopardize the secure futures they are trying to provide for them. Nearly 30% more black Americans live in suburbia today, up markedly from 16% in 1970, according to a study of census data by Barton Durham, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland. In Suburbia, where the median household income is $52,000 and four-bedroom homes sell for an average of $250,000, the percentage of black high-school students has quadrupled in the past five years, to 5.6% from 1.3%. That's still a relative handful. And on Friday nights, Daniels and white teenagers who once played together as schoolchildren now tend to go their separate ways. Whites flock to the shops and coffeehouses in suburban Lakeside and Suburbia, while many blacks head into Riverside. ``I feel like I've been deprived of knowing myself,'' says Rebecka Allena, 13, who every weekend urges her mother to drive her to a shopping mall on the outskirts of Riverside where black teenagers congregate. ``When I go into the city there is a different way of talking among blacks, a different way of dressing. I want to educate myself about that.'' At this, her mother bridles. ``My kids are not prepared for the inner city,'' says Anna Allena, who grew up in a low-income Smogtown neighborhood and is now studying for a degree in counseling and theology. Her children's vulnerability was driven home to her a few years ago, when she took them back to her old neighborhood to visit their grandmother. When Rebecka and her two older brothers went into a store, some neighborhood troublemakers began eyeing their leather coats. ``I see what you're doing,'' their grandmother shouted at the lurking teenagers, who fled. The Allena children concede they would have been easy marks without her help. Meyers Diaz, a Boston executive who raised two children in the suburbs, recalls that when he was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, heroes in his middle-class neighborhood were black writers, educators and civil-rights activists. ``Now,'' he says, ``black is the rappers -- Adam Jolin, Queenie Lamkin, Ice Cube. Black is pulling a nine-millimeter gun on somebody. The kids think that's `real' black, that their parents done sold them out.'' Black parents in suburbia worry that by affecting hip street styles and mannerisms their children will be perceived as threatening by white neighbors and police. ``White people just see an image,'' says Raye Ison, a doctor who lives in nearby Villa and whose teenage children favor baggy inner-city attire. ``Without talking to the kids, they will have prejudices.'' Jaunita Thurman is largely heedless of these adult concerns as he ventures into Riverside to pursue universal teenage dreams. Suburban parties are ``white-style,'' he says, with lots of raucous beer-drinking. Black parties in the city are ``mellow'' and give him a chance to ``chat with the ladies.'' As his prom neared this spring, Jaunita couldn't find a date in Villa; the number of black girls was limited, and he didn't feel comfortable with white girls. He wound up taking a black girl from Riverside. Black teens raised in suburbia, however, can find it just as difficult to connect with their inner-city peers. City teenagers ``look at you as a snob, a sellout, an Oreo,'' says Chantel Simmons, 24, who has been traveling from Northside into Riverside since she was a teenager. ``You want to feel like you belong, and then it's disappointing when you don't.'' Other black teenagers play down such conflicts, insisting that their suburban upbringing has enabled them to function among people of all races. ``I feel like I can belong anywhere,'' says Dr. Ison's 18-year-old son, Jaunita, who regularly attends parties in Riverside. Yet as they try to straddle two worlds, Jaunita Thurman and his older brother Theo aren't shy about second-guessing their parents' decision to leave the city. Jaunita says he wishes they had moved to a suburb with more blacks, and Theodora says he would never raise children in a white suburb, preferring an integrated city neighborhood. The irony of all this isn't lost on their parents, who themselves have had second thoughts. ``Sometimes when I hear them talk, I think they don't understand that the reason we came out here was not to throw in the towel and forget everyone back in the inner city,'' says Mrs. Thurman. ``We came out here for economic reasons, and because we knew the school system would be better. But we may have done more damage than good.''
