Los Angeles is a place with a dynamic history. It has grown to be one of the most diverse cities in the world as a whole. Despite the diversity for which it is known for, the city has always had a striving conflict due to racial and class tension. The social stratification of its past continues to take its toll as dividing lines persist in contemporary Los Angeles. Furthermore, these dividing lines redefine place in Los Angeles, whether geographically or personally, to be subject to race and class. Fluidity has become evident recently however it is more common for the identity of people to be fixed in society. Through the novel Southland, by Nina Revoyr, and various means of academic sources, one is further able to explore the subject of race, place, and reinvention in Los Angeles. The history of racial and class stratification in Los Angeles has created tension amongst and within groups of people. Southland, by Nina Revoyr, reveals how stratification influences a young Asian woman to abandon her past in order to try and fully integrate herself into society. The group divisions are presented as being personal divisions through the portrayal of a generational gap between the protagonist, Jackie, and her grandfather. Jackie speaks of her relationship with Rebecca explaining her reasons why she could never go for her. Jackie claims that “she looked Asian enough to turn Jackie off” (Revoyr, 2003, p. 105). Unlike her grandfather who had a good sense of where he came from and embraced it, Jackie rejected her racial background completely. Jackie has been detached from her past and ethnicity. This is why she could never be with Rebecca, Jackie thought of her as a “mirror she didn’t want to look into”. Rebecca was everything Jackie was tr... ... middle of paper ... ...ewish enclave to a predominantly Mexican community” (Sanchez, 2004, p. 640) due to the fact that the “Jewish community of Los Angeles as a whole was transformed by the demographic changes, clearly becoming “white” in the racial hierarchy of the region both geographically and politically” (Sanchez, 2004, p. 640). The place of the Jewish community changed along with their identity. Once they became “white” they no longer were restricted to living in Boyle Heights. In Los Angeles, it is clear through what happened to this one group of people that one’s metaphorical place in society, meant to be one’s racial and class status in what Sanchez refers to as a hierarchy, has a direct link to one’s literal or geographical place in the city. The ongoing divisions within society caused by stratification have become the basis of the meaning of place in contemporary Los Angeles.
The tone of Whitewashed Adobe delivers an ethnic and cultural history of Los Angeles. The author, William Deverell, indicates “Los Angeles has been the city of the future for a long time.” The book takes a revealing and harsh look at prejudice, political power and control in the early vision of 19th century Los Angeles and its surrounding communities. Deverell’s main interest is the economically, culturally and politically powerful Anglos and their view of ethnicity and race that enabled them to distance themselves from the Mexican people. Whitewashed Adobe’s six chapters illuminate how these men “appropriated, absorbed, and occasionally obliterated” Mexican sites and history in going forth with their vision for Los Angeles.
Values are one of the most important traits handed down from parent to child. Parents often pass lessons on regardless of whether they intend to do so, subconsciously acting as the conductor of a current that flows through their children and into generations beyond. This is the case with Ruth, James McBride’s mother and the subject of his memoir The Color of Water: Despite her disgust with Tateh’s treatment of his children, Ruth carries his values into parenthood, whether or not she aims to do so.
A Critical Analysis of Racism in Canadian Law and the “Unmapping” of the White Settler Society in “When Place Becomes Race” by Sherene H. Razack
The author skirts around the central issue of racism by calling it a “class struggle” within the white population of Boston during the 1960s and 1970s. Formisano discuses the phenomenon known as “white flight”, where great numbers of white families left the cities for the suburbs. This was not only for a better lifestyle, but a way to distance themselves from the African Americans, who settled in northern urban areas following the second Great Migration.
In a country full of inequities and discriminations, numerous books were written to depict our unjust societies. One of the many books is an autobiography by Richard Wright. In Black Boy, Wright shares these many life-changing experiences he faced, which include the discovery of racism at a young age, the fights he put up against discriminations and hunger, and finally his decision of moving Northward to a purported better society. Through these experiences which eventually led him to success, Wright tells his readers the cause and effect of racism, and hunger. In a way, the novel The Tortilla Curtain by T.C Boyle illustrates similar experiences. In this book, the lives of two wealthy American citizens and two illegal immigrants collided. Delaney and Kyra were whites living in a pleasurable home, with the constant worry that Mexicans would disturb their peaceful, gated community. Candido and America, on the other hand, came to America to seek job opportunities and a home but ended up camping at a canyon, struggling even for cheapest form of life. They were prevented from any kind of opportunities because they were Mexicans. The differences between the skin colors of these two couples created the hugest gap between the two races. Despite the difficulties American and Candido went through, they never reached success like Wright did. However, something which links these two illegal immigrants and this African American together is their determination to strive for food and a better future. For discouraged minorities struggling in a society plagued with racism, their will to escape poverty often becomes their only motivation to survive, but can also acts as the push they need toward success.
Los Angeles, California is often seen as the city of dreams. Hollywood paints the picture of Los Angeles as a place of endless possibilities. Los Angeles is also thought as the city where dreamers can come with nothing in their pocket and become an over night success story. Many Americans and immigrants come to Los Angeles with the same dream of success. In The Tattooed Soldier Tobar describes how this fictionalized “American dream” version of the Los Angeles affects immigrants. In the novel Tobar followed two Guatemalan immigrants Antonio and Longeria who live very different lifestyles in their home country and in America. Los Angeles seemed to be the land of dreams and promise to both characters, however; Los Angeles becomes a place of harsh reality for Antonio and Longeria. In the novel we watch how Antonio and Longeria adjust to the struggles of being immigrants in Los Angeles, , and what makes man a man.
The award-winning book of poems, Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson, is an eye-opening story. Told in first person with memories from the author’s own life, it depicts the differences between South Carolina and New York City in the 1960s as understood by a child. The book begins in Ohio, but soon progresses to South Carolina where the author spends a considerable amount of her childhood. She and her older siblings, Hope and Odella (Dell), spend much of their pupilage with their grandparents and absorb the southern way of life before their mother (and new baby brother) whisk them away to New York, where there were more opportunities for people of color in the ‘60s. The conflict here is really more of an internal one, where Jacqueline struggles with the fact that it’s dangerous to be a part of the change, but she can’t subdue the fact that she wants to. She also wrestles with the issue of where she belongs, “The city is settling around me….(but) my eyes fill up with the missing of everything and everyone I’ve ever known” (Woodson 184). The conflict is never explicitly resolved, but the author makes it clear towards the end
As Elie Wiesel once stated, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (“Elie Wiesel Quote”). Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which discusses criminal justice and its role in mass incarceration, promotes a similar idea regarding silence when America’s racial caste system needs to be ended; however, Alexander promotes times when silence would actually be better for “the tormented.” The role of silence and lack of silence in the criminal justice system both contribute to wrongly accused individuals and growing populations behind bars.
The difference of color is seen through the eyes, but the formulation of racial judgement and discrimination is developed in the subconscious mind. Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif (1983)” explores the racial difference and challenges that both Twyla and Roberta experience. Morrison’s novels such as “Beloved”, “The Bluest Eye”, and her short story “Recitatif” are all centered around the issues and hardships of racism. The first time that Twyla and Roberta met Twyla makes a racial remake or stereotype about the texture and smell of Roberta’s hair. Although they both were in the orphanage because of similar situations, Twyla instantly finds a racial difference. The racial differences between Twyla and Roberta affects their friendship, personal views of each other, and relationship with their husbands.
On the other side, the Southland around Los Angeles (Angel City) is run by a group of wealthy white men and large corporations called the Stewards. They practice a fundamentalist Christian religion, repression of women, and racial segregation and apartheid. It is basically a militaristic and fascist state with a huge underclass controlled by drugs and genetics that t...
Before the riots there were multiple issues in the LA Community. The was a tremendous amount of racial tension between citizens, merchants and law enforcement. Much of this hatred sown into the hearts of the people at a young age and reinforced as an adult. A common theme that occurs in the beginning of the book is “Enemy”. Many characters have a mind set of them versus us. From here on we shall refer to the them vs us mindset as the “enemy complex”.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. "Maid in L.A." California Dreams and Realities: Readings for Critical Thinkers and Writers. Ed. Sonia Maasik, and J F. Solomon. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 2001. 116-129. Print.
In “Queens, 1963”, the speaker narrates to her audience her observations that she has collected from living in her neighborhood located in Queens, New York in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. The narrator is a thirteen-year-old female immigrant who moved from the Dominican Republic to America with her family. As she reflects on her past year of living in America, she reveals a superb understanding of the reasons why the people in her neighborhood act the way they do towards other neighbors. In “Queens, 1963” by Julia Alvarez, the poet utilizes diction, figurative language, and irony to effectively display to the readers that segregation is a strong part of the American melting pot.
The intersection of dominant ideologies of race, class, and gender are important in shaping my social location and experiences. By exercising my sociological imagination (Mills, 1959), I will argue how my social location as an Asian American woman with a working class background has worked separately and together to influence how I behave, how others treat and view me, and how I understand the world. The sociological imagination has allowed me to understand my own “biography”, or life experiences by understanding the “history”, or larger social structures in which I grew up in (Mills, 1959). First, I will describe my family’s demographic characteristics in relation to California and the United States to put my analysis into context. I will then talk about how my perceptions of life opportunities have been shaped by the Asian-American model minority myth. Then, I will argue how my working class location has impacted my interactions in institutional settings and my middle/upper class peers. Third, I will discuss how gender inequalities in the workplace and the ideological intersection of my race and gender as an Asian-American woman have shaped my experiences with men. I will use Takaki’s (1999) concepts of model minority myth and American identity, Race; The Power of an Illusion (2003), Espiritu’s (2001) ideological racism, People Like Us: Social Class in America (1999) and Langston’s (2001) definition of class to support my argument.
Racism is not a factor of the heart, according to Tommie Shelby in “Is Racism in the ‘Heart’?” He writes “the ‘heart’ does not have to be involved in order for an action or institution to be racist” (483). Instead, Shelby argues that racism is based on the effect of a person’s actions on deepening racist institutions or promulgating the oppression of a particular group of people based on their race. The individual intention of a person or the “purity” or his or her heart does not take precedence over the effect of his or her actions. Shelby’s argument is constructed as follows: Individual beliefs can be true or false but not inherently immoral. Therefore, it is not appropriate to morally condemn someone for holding a particular belief. However, when the particular belief leads to “race-based hatred...actions...or institutions” that is when it becomes appropriate to hold the individual with the belief morally culpable for racism.