This interview with L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy, Associate Professor in the Sociology of Education program at NYU, comprises part of The 1701 Project, a venture led by The Yale Historical Review.

1. INTERVIEW
L'HEUREUX
LEWIS-MCCOYHow suburban spaces,sexism,and COVID affect the Black community
Interview by Henry Jacob Transcribed by Nick JacobsonJULY 30, 2020
I am a sociologist at New York University. I am an African
American man who is proud to be a father, a community
member, and a teacher.
I want to dwell on the words community member and
teacher. Your scholarship centers around the sociolo-
gy of education. At the same time, you enrich your re-
search through activism. How do you blend your work
inside and outside of the classroom? I came to sociology
mistakenly thinking people who study inequality want to
do something about it. At graduate school, I met brilliant
people who had great, analytically rigorous methods. I as-
ked them, "What do we do with all this information we
find about inequality?" They replied, “well, that is what we
do, we study.” As somebody who is Black in America, I
can'taffordtojuststudyinequality:Ineedtodosomething
about it.
For years, I've been concerned with what it means to
be a minoritized person, to have less power, to be dis-
connected from privilege. That focus comes from my own
upbringing. I was one of three Black boys in my kinder-
garten classroom. The school asked all of the Black boys
to remain behind a grade. They justified this decision by
claiming that we were emotionally immature. Then my
mother, who's now passed, and my father stepped in and
advocated for me.
From that early moment, I knew that activism played a
role, that when injustice arose, you had to confront it. As
a scholar-activist, I research communities not only to un-
derstand problems, but also to offer solutions. I hope to
continue in a long tradition of social scientists—folks like
Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Anna Julia Cooper—who ef-
fectuate change.
I want to tie these comments in with your first book,
Inequality in the Promised Land. In the introduction,
you write, “this book is not simply about what it means
to be black or white in suburban schools, rather, it is
about being how being white provides unearned and
pervasiveadvantagesthatinimplicitandexplicitgrades
oday we are fortunate to be joined by R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy,
Associate Professor of Sociology of Education at New York University.
Thank you so much for being here, Professor Lewis-McCoy. To start,
please describe yourself in two sentences, one personal, one professional?
T
1YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW
1701 Project

2. constrain the ability of black families to harvest the
fruitsofthesuburbanfrontier."Thesesentencescontain
the brilliant thrust of your work. This reflection also re-
sonates with your own experience when teachers tried
to hold you and your classmates back a year. But now
you confront the educational system that once tried to
restrain your development as a sociologist and as a pa-
rent. One of the most difficult things about studying su-
burban space as someone who is Black, as someone who
understands inequality, is that I meet families who have
made a leap across the town line. They tell me, "I'm mo-
ving here to give my children a better chance." It is hard to
listen to them and then have to say, "You're going to have
to fight for everything your child gets." Until we construct
something different, we’re going to be in a constant battle.
The suburban dream is part of a racial project. Suburbia
was built on the outskirts of cities. It took over farmland
through federal and private investment and practiced re-
dlining. This is a history of White authority and control.
That being said, I do not assume that if you're in a city,
you're Black, you're Brown, you're poor. In equal measure,
I don’t presume that if you're in a suburb, you're affluent
and White. Now more children of color are raised in the
suburbs than in central cities. The suburbs are the majo-
rity destination for immigrants who come to this country.
I want to trouble notions of how power exists and rethink
what suburban space is.
As part of your project to rethink suburban space and
the power dynamics you wrestle with Charles Tilly in
Inequality in the Promised Land. To use your phrase,
how do you “trouble” dominant academic notions in
your work? I had an opportunity to sit on a panel with
Gary Orfield, a renowned scholar, about 15 years ago. The
discussion centered around school desegregation and in-
tegration. I respect Gary greatly, but we disagreed on the
purpose of integration, what constitutes it, and for whom
it exists. I remember having a challenging exchange where
I told him, "I don't think there's anything magical about
Black and white people sitting together. Even though you
suggest that that's not your belief, it seems to be the en-
gine of change when you locate the value of good being
attached to White people."
We had a tough moment there, but I learned a couple of
lessonsfromit.Irealizedthatyoucanrespectfullydisagree
with a colleague and still come to a similar conclusion. I
definitely support many of the policy recommendations
that Orfield and his colleagues at the Civil Rights Project
have put out over the years. We can arrive at a similar place
via different channels, and I honor those different paths of
arrival. If not, those differences will lead to the breakdown
of any form of coalition.
Also, I regret that Inequality in the Promised Land is lar-
gely a story about race and class. It is also a story about
gender, but the gender lens in the book is woefully un-
derdeveloped. Conversations with and reading the works
of colleagues like Salamishah Tillet, Treva Lindsey, Carla
Shedd,BettinaLoveandotherfolkswhohavedonecritical
work around gender have reshaped my framing and shar-
pened my thinking. It opens up space for different sets of
questions such as what it means to be queer in suburban
space and how it relates to home ownership. I'm excited to
continue to learn and grow. I don't think the highest value
inintellectuallaborisalwayshavingalotofjournalarticles
or writing a book every year. It’s just as important to learn
to think and act differently.
Yes, in a 2016 blog post you demonstrated the value of
thinking differently by giving a lesson on masculinity
to fellow alumni from your alma mater. Some of the in-
tellectual and social work that I've done revolves around
gender justice. I went to Morehouse College, a historically
Black, all-male college. While I was there, I was socialized
towards a particular image of Black masculinity. This tra-
dition includes folks like Spike Lee, Martin Luther King,
Dr. Lewis-McCoy's research has appeared
in multiple edited volumes and academic
journals such as Urban Education, American
Educational Research Journal, and Ethnic &
Racial Studies.
Photo by Charles H.F. Davis III
“I want to trouble
notions of how power
exists and rethink what
suburban space is.”
ON THE NEXT PAGE
2 L’HEUREUX LEWIS-MCCOY

4. Samuel L. Jackson, and a number of other phenomenal
Black men—but there are also limits to it. Oftentimes
when we construct a Black middle-class male identity, we
narrow the definition in a dangerous way.
I came of age in the 80s and the 90s. I grew up with the
narrative that as Black men we were an endangered spe-
cies. Sometimes that emphasis on needing to protect Black
men and boys keeps us from seeing the ways that Black
men and boys can perpetuate harm to other communi-
ties as well as to their own. While I was at Morehouse, I
didn't wrestle fully with how sexuality figured into my
constellation of commitments to the Black community. In
my junior and senior years, I started to think about who
wasn’t there and visible on campus, who wasn't part of the
curriculum, and what that meant for inclusion.
In response, I returned to the college to give talks on the
future of Black male scholarship. I gave one lecture on
Black male privilege that went viral at the time. Later, I was
invitedtoserveonacommitteeonMorehouseandmascu-
linity. To be committed to justice cannot mean that you're
committed to just us. You've got to see the intersections
of power, the places where you’re advantaged and disad-
vantaged, so that you can work on dismantling, as Patricia
Hill Collins has called them, the "interlocking systems of
oppression." Narrowness can work when trying to find a
policy solution, but it doesn't serve as a social solution to
the complex ills that we live under.
You used the phrase “endangered species” to describe
the political climate of your formative years. With CO-
VID-19anewformofvulnerabilityhasemerged.Please
discuss how social conditions enable this pandemic to
disproportionately affect communities of color. We’re in
a special moment. For better or worse, everyone has been
rendered vulnerable by coronavirus. Everyone doesn't
share the same level of vulnerability right now, but no one
is immune. As I looked at the communities that are of-
ten most vulnerable—lower income communities, Black
communities, communities that have experienced deep
histories of racism—I realized that even as we do our best,
we are living in the midst of a federal and sometimes state
and city governments who don't care about our lives.
I'llusemyownexperienceasanexample.Whenwetransi-
tioned inside as COVID-19 pandemic expanded and New
York City schools closed, I had the privilege of being able
to spend more time with my children. At the same time, I
was vulnerable. My grandfather, who was staying in a re-
tirement home, became sick with COVID. He went to the
hospital and he passed away. Days after that, my father fell
ill with coronavirus. For the next two months he fought
for his life. I had more resources than the majority of Black
Americans, and I felt powerless. My grandfather migrated
up from Selma, Alabama following the Civil Rights Move-
ment. He was a fighter. My father was the first Black po-
lice officer in West Haven. He is a fighter. People who have
been fighters in the struggle were rendered either dead, on
their deathbed, or near death. The politics of disposability
and premature death, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore speaks of,
were so clear to me as a Black man, even though I am in
the middle class. I called up doctors with little success. The
federal response was ineffective. New York responded far
better to coronavirus than other states, but it was also far
from perfect. Sitting in my apartment, thinking about my
grandfather and my father, and hearing only ambulances
outside created its own trauma.
As I said, vulnerability manifests itself unequally. People
clap for doctors and nurses, but they do not applaud as
delivery people come in to bring food. We do not value the
essential workers on the front line who are not privileged
by education.
There is a pandemic of coronavirus, and then there's a
twin pandemic, always, of police violence. I am thankful
that, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a natio-
nal conversation reemerged. Many of the folks that I love
and who do some of the greatest work finally got a chance
to have their voices amplified. While I feel vulnerable in
this moment, I find sources for hope. Hearing the names
Mariame Kaba, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Charlene Car-
ruthers, and Angelo Pinto mentioned regularly excites me.
Angela Davis is a name that has emerged, not simply as an
icon who had an afro in the Black Power Movement, but
4 L’HEUREUX LEWIS-MCCOY
“There is a pandemic
of coronavirus,and
then there's a twin
pandemic,always,of
police violence.”

5. in popular conversations about abolition and defunding
the police. We've been having these conversations in living
rooms, community centers, and small webinars for years
but now they are part of the national vocabulary.
I'm very sorry to hear about your loss. I want to pivot to
another way coronavirus has exacerbated existing ine-
qualities: pods. As a father, what do worry most about
as the school year approaches for your children? I'm not
against the notion of sharing resources. Black and Brown
and poor folks have shared resources for time immemo-
rial from a spirit of mutual aid and collective need. But in
this moment, people who have money will hoard instead
of distribute. Those who have the means will pull together
three to five other people from their networks—which are
often segregated along race, class, and language lines—
and hire a private tutor, a teacher, or students from elite
universities. These pods will become akin to speedboats.
This will allow certain families and children to take off ra-
pidly: these are not life rafts. If we're not careful in talking
to these families and addressing the structural inequality
that exists between educational systems, we will find our-
selves with a gap that is too large to close.
In the spring, families most vulnerable to COVID around
the poverty line already struggled with online learning.
People don't have universal access to the internet, com-
puters, or other instruments. Maybe you're accessing the
learning portal, but you're doing it through a cell phone
with shoddy wireless connection. You can't properly learn
that way. I'm scared that opportunity hoarding is so nor-
malized, so central to how people think, that they're going
to excuse it with the idea that they have to do well by their
children. Doing well by your child doesn't have to be at
odds with doing well for our children. I hope that people
will have conversations about how to create equity in our
everyday choices. We must reach school districts; school
buildings; local, state, and federal governments, PTAs, and
demand that we do more to better our most vulnerable.
You mentioned the pressing structural issues we need
to address, but you also offered reasons for tempered
optimism. What do you look forward to in the coming
year? I'm excited for sustained movement work. I'm ex-
cited about the conversations people are now being forced
to have around police accountability and terrorism that
have been called for since Reconstruction. If we can conti-
nue to get people to think and act, we'll get some traction.
During the protests around George Floyd our White si-
blings began to be brutalized. The police knew the wor-
ld was watching, and they still did the things that police
do every day. I am also hopeful that people will recognize
that while electoral politics are by no means a cure, they
are a tool that can be strategically engaged. I think some-
times people think voting is enough, and I hope in this
moment folks are realizing and recognizing that it is far
from enough, and even sometimes the people you vote for
don't fulfill your interest and needs. The ballot has never
been enough. It’s necessary, but not sufficient. Grassroots
activism is essential because it can change thinking, create
interventions, and collectively we can build something
worth living in and fighting for. We need to have activism
at multiple levels.
Activism at multiple levels emerges from education.
You noted earlier that you are happy that people are dis-
cussing authors such as Angela Davis as an intellectual
rather than as an image. I know as well that you inter-
viewed Colson Whitehead a few years back. What are
you reading now? Right now, I'm reading #HashtagActi-
vism by Sarah Jackson, Brooke Foucault Welles and Moya
Bailey; Beyond Survival, an edited volume about forms of
harmandhurt;andParentingforLiberationbyTrinaGree-
ne Brown. I'm also getting through Noura Erakat’s publi-
cations on Black and Palestinian solidarity as well as Marc
Lamont Hill’s We Still Here that looks at coronavirus’s im-
pact on the vulnerable. But there will always be more to
read and more work to be done.
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