Review of “Disillusioned” by Benjamin Herold
There is a saying in real estate, “drive until you can buy.” But for many families in Benjamin Herold’s new work “Disillusioned”, the suburban American dream would always remain in the uncertain distance. “Disillusioned” follows the tradition of Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted” and Isabel Wilkerson’s “Warmth of Other Suns” in its exploration of suburban five families pursuing learning opportunities for their children. Herold notes that despite the push to move black and brown to the suburbs, “the diversification of suburbia did not lead to a universal American Dream, untethered from whiteness and extended to all.” Together, the stories form a mosaic of the ironies and tragedies of the suburban landscape and the deferred American Dream. With each passing page, the reader is left pondering Langston Hughes’ decades-old query — will the dream deferred “sag like a heavy load. Or will it explode?”
Herold is a masterful storyteller, weaving together the stories of the families through the rings of the suburbs — a single African American mother and her son, an immigrant family in Compton, a well-to-do and conservative Caucasian family in Dallas, a black family outside of Atlanta, and multiracial mother in a Chicago suburb, and his own family’s suburban experience to which the author couldn’t wait to escape. Herold writes, “It seemed obvious that the country’s social contract had been broken in the cities that we abandoned. . . It never occurred to me that the heart of the problem might reside on the tidy ranch houses and solid SAT scores of places like [his hometown suburbs].” A journalist by trade, he effortlessly and deferentially frames his subjects — especially Bethany Smith who later writes the epilogue. In describing his own family, his tone relies on the absurdities and ironies of his racialized experience, writing “Initially, it was thrilling to be invited into my dad’s visions. But as the silent minutes stretched into silent hours, I’d stand there full of dumb hope that he might notice the questions swirling inside me, about why I wasn’t allowed to wear suede Pumas to school and why I’d felt so awkward and exposed the first time I went to a classmate’s birthday party in Lincoln Park.” Despite writing extensively about the perils of suburbia, over and over, I found myself rooting for the families, knowing full well what happens to a “dream deferred”.
To be sure, Herold’s account is not a primer on suburbia. However, while masterful in his exploration of contemporary racism, unsustainable development patterns, and schooling, a preliminary on historical de jure racial segregation may help situate the family’s experiences of place among larger national trends a la Richard Rothstein. For the ardent and knowledgeable reader, Herold’s well-researched account doesn’t shy away from noting the absurdities of history that keep the otherwise bland historical accounts congenial — from details of a “teaching machine that functioned as a cross between a View-Master and a voting booth” to apt detail about students bending forks to function as brass knuckles. Herold’s account doesn’t actively bridge concurrent urban and suburban realities. Despite its widespread positive reception, Herold’s account is for the individual who is already aware of the blinding issues of the country’s urban poor. While there is a “competing vision of dreams”, both suburban and urban schools are a byproduct of the confluence of localized and state actors. Those with a salinized Abbott Elementary understanding of urban placemaking and schooling will struggle to appreciate converging trends that have come to define the national landscape. Herold could have not known that weeks before the book’s release, the state of Pennsylvania would release its new budget appropriations following William Penn vs Pennsylvania, which highlighted income inequality across the Keystone’s landscape based on race, both urban and suburban alike.
Unlike other thought leaders in the field, Herold doesn’t provide an easy answer, a neoliberal alternative, or an oversimplified guide map. (Thank god, let me assure you as an educator in a high-needs school — they do not work!) Intensive and longitude research, including the federally funded Moving to Opportunity program, and heck, even current home interest rates, suggest the suburbs aren’t an easy solution. Perhaps this is because Herold is a journalist by trade, perhaps it is because his research heavily draws on Maddox Posey and Douglass Massey. Perhaps its humility towards his subjects, the book’s epilogue, humbly given to Bethany Smith, does not suggest swift means. “There has always been an American Dream that refuses to get stuck, even when stuck is all there is.” Instead, the journalist is comfortable with nuance and the power of “net yet” — a seeming look forward to the next story. Wilkerson has released “Caste”, and Desmond’s “Poverty, By America”, I cannot wait to read what is next for Benjamin Herold.
