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Suburban sprawl transformed the political culture of the American South as much as the civil rights movement did during the second half of the twentieth century. The Silent Majority provides the first regionwide account of the suburbanization of the South from the perspective of corporate leaders, political activists, and especially of the ordinary families who lived in booming Sunbelt metropolises such as Atlanta, Charlotte, and Richmond.

Matthew Lassiter examines crucial battles over racial integration, court-ordered busing, and housing segregation to explain how the South moved from the era of Jim Crow fully into the mainstream of national currents. During the 1960s and 1970s, the grassroots mobilization of the suburban homeowners and school parents who embraced Richard Nixon's label of the Silent Majority reshaped southern and national politics and helped to set in motion the center-right shift that has dominated the United States ever since.

The Silent Majority traces the emergence of a "color-blind" ideology in the white middle-class suburbs that defended residential segregation and neighborhood schools as the natural outcomes of market forces and individual meritocracy rather than the unconstitutional products of discriminatory public policies. Connecting local and national stories, and reintegrating southern and American history, The Silent Majority is critical reading for those interested in urban and suburban studies, political and social history, the civil rights movement, public policy, and the intersection of race and class in modern America.

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"Color-blind" Politics and Racial Segregation

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Lassiter's book addresses the creation of contemporary Republican Party dominance in the South. Lassiter distinguishes the "Sunbelt" from the "South" on the basis of class and urbanization, but also history: the South is a complete society with a history going back to the 1600's, whereas the Sunbelt refers to recently developed, high-growth urban population centers. While the South comprises all classes, stata, subcultures, and races, the Sunbelt is specifically the new South of urban sprawl, suburbs, affluent regional immigrants, and (often) technology, finance, or mass retailing. Specifically, the book addresses the urban legend that GOP operative Kevin Phillips won the South for the Republicans through a strategy of ostentatious appeals to racism. However, this question only dominates the preface and Chapter 10 (of a 12-chapter book); otherwise, the book is an outstanding study of the sociological divisions within a specific region of the Southeastern USA. In particular, the book examines a period from around 1960 to 1975 when several policies of the New Deal came to fruition. During this period, Georgia and North Carolina (for example) experienced extremely rapid economic growth and something of a political thaw from the Talmadge & Shelby Dynasties. Federal programs, chiefly in defense and energy, stimulated manufacturing and research in the areas around Atlanta and Charlotte. In 1960, finally, Atlanta and Charlotte were associated with the "New South," in which White Power and paternalism were shunned by a cosmopolitan and business-oriented populace. The wedge issue for these regions was the desegregation of the school districts. In 1959, the Open Schools Movement emerged to resist the scheme of closing all public schools (a scorched policy to resist desegregation, and the precursor to the "Voucher" schemes). The Open Schools Movement seldom or never endorsed the *Brown vs. [Topeka] Board of Education* decision (1954), but merely stuck to the position that compliance within the system of public schools was a practical necessity. An important point that emerges from the complex struggles over desegregation, integration, and busing was that the affluent, managerial class of homeowners and voters (whose voting power and electoral influence far surpassed its actual numbers in the Southern cities) was opposed to the egregious racism of people like Wallace or Maddox, and insisted on colorblindness, attractive neighborhoods, safety, and "fairness" to [White] households living in the present day. Lassiter explains how the idealism and hope of the 1960's and '70's both enabled White acceptance of desegregation, and fueled the suburban sprawl that effectively restored segregation. Definitely a first-rate, measured, and well-documented account of the era, with a strong focus on two specific cases studies (Atlanta and Charlotte).

Great Insight

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Having had the opportunity to have learned from Lassiter at the University of Michigan, reading his book was quite a joy. Lassiter's insight and perspective on the growth of suburbia in the South and the move towards "color-blindness" as opposed to the racially conscious liberal movement offers a great theory that counters the somewhat accepted notion of individual racism as the driving force in the 1960s south. Really a great read for anyone interested in the subject, and even those who may not be as interested. Lassiter has a great way of writing that really makes this book readable.