Undisturbed Survival Mode

African Americans are moving around the country – again. This time to suburban areas. It seems they are moving to the suburban areas for the same reasons they moved to the urban areas a century ago (jobs, safety, education, and improved living conditions). This chapter focuses on four African American women teachers. Three currently teach in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas. One teaches in the Washington School for Girls—an inner-city, urban school in Washington, DC. Two of the teachers are from rural areas. One teaches in a suburban school outside of Dallas with demographics much like the inner-city schools. The other two teachers grew up in urban Dallas but have taken a teaching position in an affluent Dallas suburb. The notion that African Americans are losing an identity they never had is non-commonsensical. Instead, this chapter suggests that African Americans are still in a survival mode thrusted upon them since slavery while a new developing generation of Blacks view blackness from a different set of identities.