"The Suburban Firewall Isn't Just Endangered—in a Huge Number of Places, It Has Already Fallen"

"Historians of desegregation like Matthew Lassiter and Kevin Kruse have suggested that the fundamental conflict between exclusionary white suburbs and diverse cities helped define the whole course of American politics after the 1960s. Even half a century later, politicians and pundits see suburban borders as a firewall against racial integration. Many believe that any plan or policy that crosses the firewall risks once again mobilizing the silent majority lurking in the white hinterland. The perceived risk climbs higher when compulsory measures are invoked. Many school-diversity proposals circa 2019 are geographically siloed: Cities are welcome to improve their schools, and suburbs should not ignore questions of racial equality, but only a political naïf would try to integrate one into the other. And heaven help those who would bus a child across the boundary line.
"But there's a problem: While the trauma of the 1970s and '80s seems to have locked these ideas in the national memory, the country itself has not stopped changing."

Will Stancil at Slate writes that decades after the controversy over busing, "suburbia's uniform whiteness is disappearing."