PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Simms, Angela
TI  - Fiscal Fragility in Black Middle-Class Suburbia and Consequences for K–12 Schools and Other Public Services
AID  - 10.7758/RSF.2023.9.2.09
DP  - 2023 Feb 01
TA  - RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
PG  - 204--225
VI  - 9
IP  - 2
4099  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/9/2/204.short
4100  - http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/9/2/204.full
AB  - In the United States, most local jurisdictions are challenged as they seek to maintain fiscal strength. But majority-Black jurisdictions are uniquely burdened due to legacy and contemporary racist and racialized policies and racial capitalism. Leaders in majority-Black locales make harsher budget trade-offs than those in majority-White jurisdictions as they seek to invest in public schools and other public services. I use ethnographic and publicly available data to examine how Prince George’s County, Maryland, a majority-Black and middle-class suburban jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., region, navigates its financial constraints relative to neighboring counties with smaller Black populations. I conclude that Black jurisdictions’ fiscal limitations stem from White jurisdictions’ not bearing their proportionate share of responsibility for moderate-income and economically distressed households and fallout from uneven regional development, resulting in Black jurisdictions subsidizing White locales.