Exurbia Now

Starred review from March 4, 2024
Exurbia is “the breeding and staging ground for the far-right insurgency, and, therefore, the battleground of American democracy,” claims journalist Masciotra (I Am Somebody) in this unsparing inquiry into America’s racialized geography. He argues that as the suburbs become more diverse, white conservatives are abandoning them for the exurban fringe, where far-right activists work to gain control of town councils, school boards, and police departments, forming ideological enclaves that percolate white discontent and paranoia. To make his case, Masciotra draws on his personal knowledge of communities on the far edges of Chicago in Illinois and northwest Indiana, along with reporting and sociological studies—including one showing that the most common factor among January 6 insurrectionists was that they lived in counties where the non-white population was growing. Most rewardingly, he delves deep into suburban political history, incorporating a wide array of narrative threads; these range from an interview with a former leader of America’s first neo-Nazi skinhead gang—which in the 1970s and ’80s roamed Chicago’s south suburbs, attacking Black and Latino people on the street—to an inquest into the thinly veiled political agenda behind suburbs’ usual absence of sidewalks. (As one urban planner explains, the idea is that “if we have sidewalks, we’re going to bring people who do not belong.”) It’s both a darkly limned history of Chicagoland and a convincing portrait of a new era of white flight.

Starred review from February 15, 2024
Exurbia is the term used to denote residential areas outside of cities and their immediate surrounding suburbs, encompassing small towns and rural areas. According to political journalist Masciotra's analysis, exurbias are now a major source of the political divisiveness and culture wars that have been shredding the American body politic for the last several decades. Masciotra's thesis is that, as progressive attitudes have taken hold in cities and suburbs, and as the presence and influence of previously marginalized people have grown, those with opposing viewpoints have relocated outwards into exurbia. Now, with nowhere else to go, the flight-or-fight response inspired by fear of change has become focused on fight. Having been born and raised in exurbia, Masciotra brings his personal experience to his cogent and frightening analysis of the mindset that has taken hold in so many American small towns and rural communities, offering insight and a fresh perspective on the culture wars dividing the country. Highly recommended.

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