Blogging Social Difference Week 9: Response to Danielle Reppen's Blog Post

Outline of Inglewood, CA

This week I wanted to respond to Danielle Reppen's post on Inglewood and Brentwood, specifically the part about Inglewood. I found her comments on Inglewood very interesting! Especially where she showed the billboard for gambling, which of course would be unseen in richer, majority-white neighborhoods. I decided to look into the demographics of Inglewood in detail.

Based on data from the LA Times’ Mapping LA project, I found that Inglewood is approximately 46.4% Black. At first thought, it would seem integrated, yet looking at it by census tract, it appears Inglewood is actually segregated by neighborhood. There are some census tracts that are about 85%-90% Black and some with only 5% Black, all within the same small city of Inglewood.

The white population is at 4%, and remains consistently at this statistic throughout the all census tracts in Inglewood. There is an explanation for this too, and I will expand later in the blog post/comment.

In addition to its black and white population, Inglewood is 46% Hispanic. Furthermore, those census tracts that are 5% black are also 90% Hispanic. The neighborhoods that are more mixed follow a gradient from a majority Hispanic to a majority black. It seems as though, based on this analysis, that there is Hispanic/black segregation, and a clear color line.

The color line. Hispanic is yellow and black is represented by blue. The darker shades are above 80%. The gradient between majority/minority is clear.

Inglewood didn’t always look like this. In fact, Inglewood used to be one of the whitest neighborhoods in the US. It was so white that it was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan in the 20’s. Signs saying ‘Caucasian-only” were posted in Inglewood and racial covenants, discussed in Massey and Denton, kept it that way. Interestingly enough, an incident involving a suspected bootlegger, the Klan and Inglewood police made national headlines.Inglewood continued to have a majority population through the 60’s, but by 1980 it was 20% and kept dropping in half in continuing censuses until the year 2000 when it reached 3% (link). This is due to the phenomenon of white flight, explicitly referenced in an obituary for Inglewood’s first black mayor. Massey and Denton state that “White prejudice is such when black entry into a neighborhoods is achieved, that area becomes unattractive and whites begin departing at an accelerating.” This is how the demographics in Inglewood shifted.

Looking at Inglewood, I also found it has a budding arts district. These tend to be indicators of gentrification. Whether or not that happens is speculation, but this would raise rent prices and drive out the mostly lower/lower-middle class population as it did in Echo Park and as is currently happening in Highland Park. This is a possible future demographic shift for a city that has seen a few.

Theoreticals aside, Inglewood today is a city of equal black/hispanic mix but it is also one with a clear color line. Yet it is interesting that a minority-majority city was once a hotbed of racist ideology. The radicalism faded, yet fear and racism led the whites to flee Inglewood and the white population divided with each census. Though Danielle stated that this did not seem to be a low income area, Inglewood is still a ghetto. A ghetto is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.” Today’s demographics of Inglewood were created by the social structure of racism.

Blogging Social Difference Week 8: Bus Route 232

232 Bus Route 

This week I took the 232 Bus from Long Beach to Wilmington. This bus took me through Long Beach and Wilmington. I chose to pass through these locations to examine the lower class communities along the highly polluting ports of LA and Long Beach. The many cargo ships that pass through the port are a source of pollution, and in addition many other polluting industries are located around the two ports. I believe that the clustering of lower class and minority communities around the port is due the the “class” side of the debate detailed in the Elliot and Pais reading; that is, that low-income minority communities emerge around environmentally-degraded sites because of lower property values.

I began by waiting at the Long Beach Transit Mall for the bus. This is a transit hub serving Long Beach, and the end point for the Metro Blue Line. Downtown Long Beach itself is fairly nice, a business district with a thriving bar scene and restaurants. The bus takes me north on Long Beach Boulevard towards Anaheim Street. The bus contained a mostly hispanic clientele throughout the trip.

The bus made a left on Anaheim. What I saw in Long Beach from Long Beach Boulevard to the LA river is a fairly economically deprived area. However, there were still businesses thriving there. The bus then took me across a bridge over the LA River. Long Beach west of the LA river is “West Long Beach” and directly north of the port. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods and very close to polluting industries. The median home prices for these two areas of Long Beach, 90810 and 90813, are $234,000 and $208,000, respectively. There weren’t many business seen here on this street other than industry. There were also a few strip clubs, which I’ve also usually noticed in Downtown LA. North of Anaheim there were more residential zones.

Industrial area near the Port of Long Beach

Wilmington continued this trend. There were other industrial areas seen besides the port. I believe I saw a refinery and also close by I saw a pile of what looks like sulfur. The area containing the east of Wilmington and west of Long Beach also had a lot of salvage yards. The industrial part of Wilmington gave way to an area of mostly shops and a few grocery stores. This lasts until Figueroa. Most of the signage in Wilmington was in Spanish.

Spanish Language Signage

Mapping LA tells me most the residents of Wilmington are Hispanic, and that approximately 44% of the residents are foreign born. In addition, asthma levels for children who live in communities around the port is about 21.9%, compared with 15.6% in Los Angeles. This leads me to believe that this is a destination for new Hispanic immigrants, drawn by lower property values in an environmentally degraded area. This exemplifies the argument detailed in the Elliot and Pais reading.

The bus made a right on Figueroa and then another on PCH, which allowed me to see some of the housing first hand along Figueroa. There were many small single family homes and a trailer park. I’ve driven the rest of Anaheim Street many times before, and past the 110 Freeway there is another large refinery.

A neighborhood along Figueroa Street

The concentration of highly polluting diesel ships, oil refineries and other large scale industry create a high risk area around the Port. The low income communities around there are at higher risk for pollution-related maladies than other areas surrounding. In addition, the areas are a destination for new immigrants drawn by the lower rents. The revenue created by the 6th largest port in the world is contrasted with lower class communities surrounding it.

Blogging Social Difference Week 7: Response to Madison Beall's Post on West Hollywood

Last week Madison Beall detailed a trip through Beverly Hills to West Hollywood. She drove there on Sunset Boulevard and ate at Griddle Cafe. On the way there she observed that the houses were huge and expensive looking. At the restaurant she observed many races except for African-Americans.

She links her experiences to the chapter in Massey and Denton’s American Apartheid to explain why she didn’t see any African-Americans. She paraphrases their assertion that the black-white contact is at a minimum in cities like Los Angeles and that like in West Hollywood, little or no segregation is needed. She then details Massey and Denton’s argument that race is what shapes neighborhoods. I have come to understand that these two arguments contradict each other if used in reference to the same place. The first argument implies that segregation occurs because the area has a low population of African-Americans. The second argument implies that segregation happens to keep one area free of other peoples.

Although West Hollywood is not a part of Los Angeles itself, it is surrounded by municipal Los Angeles. West Hollywood can be better understood if looked at as a neighborhood rather than an entirely separate city, as well as how the greater city and region influence it. The Los Angeles Metro African-American population share is approximately 7.1%, greater than the threshold Massey and Denton (5%) use to classify regions that need little or no segregation to keep black-white contact at a minimum. The Los Angeles population itself has an African-American percentage of 13% (Fact-Finder). According to Massey and Denton, segregation throughout the Los Angeles area has indeed shaped the distribution of African-Americans in of the region.

Miracle Mile's changes in population since 2000 (LA Times)

There is an interesting trend occurring in Mid-City (including Miracle Mile), one of the closest areas to West Hollywood, which has a significantly large African-American population. This area is fairly integrated, with an equal mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian peoples. The African-American population is declining there, and the populations of other races are increasing. This may be a result of gentrification (there are many art galleries in the area) or possibly black suburbanization. The point is that the assertions Massey and Denton make are not exactly 1:1 in Los Angeles. Its true that LA is hardly a model of integration, but the evidence is harder to pin down than areas like Detroit.

Blogging Social Difference Week 6: Palos Verdes Peninsula

This week I went to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. I chose this location partly out of convenience, since it is where my parents live, but also because it exhibits a concept discussed in class: restricting access. Palos Verdes is a collection of four cities (Rancho Palos Verdes, Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling HIlls and Rolling Hills Estates) on a peninsula in south Los Angeles county (approximately 25 miles from UCLA). The peninsula is also a hill which makes it an ideal location for an exclusive, and restricted, community. The four cities have combined median income of $156,517.50 (data from Mapping LA), which is extraordinarily high. Entry into Palos Verdes is limited to only 8 points, with approximately only two bus routes running throughout the area.

Crest Dr. gate entrance to Rolling Hills 

I traveled to locations around Palos Verdes that I knew reflected this restriction of access. My first stop was at the gate of Rolling Hills. The gates here block off the public, even within Palos Verdes to an entire city. There are only three points of entry, and I stopped at the Crest Drive entrance. Entry is only granted to residents and their visitors. This is the extreme side of restricting access, where an entire city denies entry to anyone who does not need to be there. This is an active way of restricting access, requiring security.

Border between Palos Verdes Estates and Redondo Beach

I then drove to another aspect of the restriction of access in Palos Verdes, on the border between Palos Verdes Estates and Redondo Beach. Here, the streets of Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes Estates are cut off from one another by a walking trail. The streets show evidence of once being continuous and part of the same grid, but they end at the trail. One can see the other side easily but cannot drive across to another city; instead one would have to drive around to another point of access in order to reach it by car. This also makes shortcuts through the neighborhood on the Palos Verdes side unusable, thus restricting traffic to the main streets and points of entry. Exclusivity is reinforced.

Palos Verdes Drive North, a major street through Palos Verdes that does not have sidewalks or street lights.
Navigating through here is made even more difficult by small, hidden street signs.

This neighborhood also shows other signs of maintaining exclusivity, which can be seen in areas throughout the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Many streets have no sidewalks, no crosswalks and no street lights. The lack of sidewalks and crosswalks make walking through here difficult. The lack of streetlights make it inhospitable at night to anyone without a car. All of these aspects of this area reinforce the notion that anyone who doesn’t have to be there, shouldn’t. These are passive and subversive methods for maintaining exclusivity and restricting access, which stand in contrast to the more active tactic of a gated community.

The exclusivity of the Palos Verdes Peninsula can be seen in a few different manifestations, but the point is clear. This is an affluent and upper class neighborhood isolated, largely by choice, from the surrounding cities. The urban planners who designed the various neighborhoods wanted to create a suburb that is safer and quieter than surrounding cities and they succeeded, with crime rates being lower than neighboring Lomita and Torrance and traffic being fairly light. In regards to our class, the exclusivity represents the limited access to an undifferentiated public. What reinforces exclusivity ultimately reinforces social difference.

Blogging Social Difference Week 5: South Los Angeles

This week I decided to cover South Los Angeles. Although I am a Los Angeles native, I have never truly explored this area in detail. South LA, known previously and infamously as South Central, is ingrained in the collective national consciousness as the definitive inner city or “ghetto”. After all, this is the site of two of the worst riots in American history: the 1968 Watts riots and the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the latter having its 20th anniversary last April. This image of “ghettoness” was also brought to the attention from LA rappers and “hood movies”, who came to national spotlight to highlight the reality that they were facing. Our readings from last week from William Julius Wilson and Peter Kerr deal with the issues African-Americans faced immediately preceding and following the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Is South LA still a bastion of inner city strife? Is it really a homogenous contingency of a mostly black, lower class that is depicted in the movies and news of the 1990’s?

Since covering South LA is a big task (akin to covering West LA), I decided to do a wide traverse by car from the Florence exit of the 110 Freeway through to Culver City. I picked Florence because it would take me through the intersection of Florence and Normandie, where the 1992 LA riots first started. I ended up circling a few times to get the feel from of a few communities. Looking at Mapping LA’s section of South LA, I see that I passed through Vermont-Slauson, Harvard Park, Chesterfield Square, Hyde Park, Leimert Park, and View Park. My trip did not exactly give me a detailed look at South LA’s true character; instead I got a glimpse of the division of Los Angeles I have seen or known very little of. What I found is an area more diverse than I had anticipated.

Exiting from Florence, I immediately observed that many of the signs were in Spanish. This may come as a surprise to someone who buys into the stereotype of South Central being a largely African-American enclave, but South LA has seen a demographic shift towards hispanics. At Hoover and Florence I came across UMMA, which is a free clinic run by Muslim-Americans serving South LA. I continued to the infamous Florence and Normandie. At this intersection I did not see anything quite out of the ordinary. People waiting at the bus stop, two gas stations and cars driving through.

One of the few differences from other areas of Los Angeles was the empty space. From here to Crenshaw, and in other parts of South LA, I noticed empty lots with overgrown weeds, fenced off at every couple of blocks. This could be an example of disinvestment in this area post-1992 as forecasted by Peter Kerr in Riots Raise Concerns About Insurance Redlining. I also noticed the space in the streets. As I made a right onto Crenshaw, I found that this street is massive. It is six lanes wide, with the business on the street blocked off from the rest of the street by medians.

I also noticed a lack of grocery stores; I only observed one grocery store throughout my entire trip. Using the USDA Economic Research Service Food Desert Locator I found that there is actually food desert around Florence and Crenshaw. Food deserts are areas (defined by the USDA by census tract) with minimal access to fresh food. This area, as shown in the map is one of the few food deserts in Los Angeles. As for other indicators of poverty, the houses here are small, almost all in this area were fenced off, with some having junk on their lawns. I also saw some homeless people walking and bicycling while pulling shopping carts filled with recycling in the middle of the streets.

I found this mural of African-American Progress along Crenshaw

Eventually I came to Leimert Park, which is a center for black culture nation wide. The park itself had many people standing around, staring off into space which was strange. But the Leimert Park neighborhood had a look to it that would surprise many who have never been to South LA. The neighborhood was clean and well taken care of and many of the homes had security systems. The scene could have been set in neighborhoods like Pico-Robertson or Mid-Wilshire. Across Crenshaw in the neighborhood of of View Park I found even nicer homes. No home was without fresh paint and gardening trucks were parked outside tending to their lawns. View Park is as nice as Mar Vista or Santa Monica, yet I personally have never heard anyone in person or in the media talk about. Mapping LA describes these neighborhoods as being 79.6% and 86.5% black, respectively.

What my trip answered for me is that the national idea of South LA is fairly inaccurate. South LA is not a monolithic block of black poverty, at least anymore. The more poverty stricken areas I saw had signs of a Latino population. There were neighborhoods with homes as nice as any I have seen in West LA.