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.
Hello Patrick,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Jaeseok Cho. It’s an honor to respond to your blog post. First of all, I wish to express my respect on your choice of topic, “South Central Los Angeles.” I feel that South Central Los Angeles is the best place to apply the concept of “City and Social Difference” in Post-Metropolis. As we learned in the first lecture, ethnicity, class, and gender are the three most important components of social differences; South Central Los Angeles reveals the difference of race and class in the most extreme way. According to SimplyMaps.com, this area shows a high concentration of both low-income households and African Americans.
Additionally, this region is significantly important in studying social difference because the inequality of income and segregation of race consequently led to two very famous riot, the Watts riot of 1965 and the Los Angeles riot of 1992 as you mentioned in your post. South Central Los Angeles is stigmatized as a deadly and dangerous area partly because of the concentration of poorer African Americans and also because of those two riots in the past. When I first moved to Los Angeles and asked people “where is the most dangerous area in Los Angeles?” they almost always replied that South Central was the worst. My mother and aunt were mugged there and my uncle’s store was burned to the ground in the 1992 riots. I personally recognize South Central as an extremely dangerous place.
After reading articles about social difference, when I was passing by this region, I just thought of South Central as a modern day “Great Town” generated by current-day bourgeois. In his book, Engels depicted a great town as a place being hidden from the bourgeois but still possessing many unpleasant individuals who were essential in running a capitalist economy. Maybe this tradition still perpetuates in modern-day Los Angeles. Most of the workers who perform dangerous and difficult jobs are of a low economic status and as a result live in a low rent area. The South Central region is a typical one in Los Angeles and also, this area is hidden from the wealthier parts of Los Angeles. If people do not live in this community and do not pay close attention, this region is easily ignored by people passing this area via the freeway. The way these people are exploited and hidden from wealthy residential areas is similar to the situation of the 19th century Labor workers in Manchester.
Another interesting point from your post is the increasing Latino population in this area. I recognized the high Latino population near the University of Southern California, but did not know that there has been an increasing Latino population in South Central Los Angeles in general. I verified this by myself with both Simplymaps.com and a Los Angeles Times article showing this demographic change in South Central Los Angeles
ReplyDeletehttp://articles.latimes.com/1990-05-03/news/ti-151_1_south-los-angeles
In this article, the author explained this demographic shift based on the low-rent of South Central Los Angeles. However, even though the rent is low, how did Latino people begin to move to a community prominent with African Americans? Did this shift occur without any cultural conflict between the two ethnic groups? I wonder what brought about this successful shift of the region.
Although your post did an excellent job in elaborating South Central Los Angeles with social difference, I have a slight suggestion to offer. I think this post would be even more interesting if you could expand on the riot’s movement into Koreatown. Although you covered the beginning of the 1992 riot from South Central Los Angeles, one should note that the riot actually ended in Koreatown. I wonder why the riot advanced there and did not go further to areas with a high concentration of whites, such as Beverly Hills or West Hollywood. Did this happen accidently? I would expect a certain mechanism of social difference and social control led to tragedy in both Koreatown and South Central Los Angeles but not the affluent areas of Los Angeles. I appreciate, again, your great post and I look forward to see your next one!
Regards,
Jaeseok