Abigail Rosas

South Central Is Home

Race and the Power of Community Investment in Los Angeles

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Abigail Rosas is Assistant Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University, Long Beach.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. Juli 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 226mm x 152mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 431g
• ISBN-13: 9781503609556
• ISBN-10: 1503609553
• Artikelnr.: 53539663

Autorenporträt

Abigail Rosas is Assistant Professor of Chicano and Latino Studies at California State University, Long Beach.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Uncovering Black and Latina/o Relations
chapter abstract
The Introduction explains the historical configuration of South Central Los
Angeles's demographic change from a predominantly African American
community to a multiracial African American and Latina/o immigrant
community. It posits that daily acts of community racialization and
activism defined resident belonging and investment in this racially diverse
community. The chapter examines how it is important to enrich existing
scholarship by reconceptualizing South Central as a racialized space and
community forged and sustained by African Americans and Latina/os' sharing
South Central as their home. As neighbors, entrepreneurs, homeowners,
political advocates and representatives, teachers, parents, and students,
South Central residents refused to be overwhelmed by U.S. national
discourses and policies on crime, poverty, education, immigration, and
public health and to live isolated from each other or to abandon or forfeit
thriving together and as members of this community.
1Placemaking in Our Community: Race Enterprise and the War on Poverty
chapter abstract
This chapter introduces African American migration from the U.S. South to
Los Angeles as foundational to South Central being understood nationally as
an overwhelmingly African American community in the post-World War II
period. An in-depth consideration of the emergence and influence of African
American entrepreneurship in South Central's business sector reveals the
power behind African American migrants spearheading the establishment of
Broadway Federal Bank, a minority-owned bank in South Central. By the
1960s, however, the economic realities of South Central and Watts were
increasingly defined as working class, working poor, and poor. The
introduction of War on Poverty funding and programs would play a role in
the relationships fostered between African American and Mexican American
activists and advocates.
2"Let's Get Them Off to a Headstart!" Community Investment in Head Start
chapter abstract
This chapter centers on African American and Latina/o South Central
residents' struggles to establish, lead, teach, and benefit from Head Start
programs throughout South Central. This consideration of the War on Poverty
pre-school education program's vision, design, and implementation
elucidates how this program brought African American and Latina/o South
Central residents together to forge an approach to "school readiness" that
lived up to their expectations for the future of their children, families,
and community.
3"The Wave of the Future": The Emergence of Community Health Clinics
chapter abstract
This chapter historicizes late mid-twentieth-century South Central African
American and Latina/o residents' community investment in the building of a
hospital and community and health centers "where the poorest and most
humble can be treated with respect and feel they belong." It argues that in
the wake of the 1965 uprisings, South Central residents, U.S. political
officials, and physicians waged an interracial campaign for this community
to have access to a hospital and community health clinics that would meet
the diversity of South Central residents' health care needs. The chapter
showcases African American and Latina/o residents' unwavering resolve to
act together and in support of community wellness as a formative step to
asserting their community's humanity, investment, and power.
4Becoming "Bonafide" Residents: Developing Relational Community Formation
chapter abstract
This chapter advances our understanding of the impact of U.S. immigration
policy on the resolve of Latina/o immigrant South Central residents to
invest themselves in forging a sense of community and home alongside and
with their African American neighbors. The chapter elucidates the shared
racialization of Latina/o immigrant and African American South Central
residents' experience. The emotive range of feelings framing this
demographic change speaks to this community's relational interracial
formation, humanity, and livelihood.
5Teaching Together: Interracial Community Organizing
chapter abstract
This chapter considers the enduring reach of Head Start centers in South
Central throughout the 1980s. In the midst of neighborhood demographic
change, Head Start classrooms implemented a multiracial and multicultural
approach to early childhood education and community activism that resonated
with South Central African American and Latina residents. By focusing on
the goals of the educational curriculum framing Head Start, as well as this
program's teachers' receptiveness to training African American and Latina
immigrant parents and residents to participate in the teaching of the
program's curriculum, the chapter provides an analysis of the lasting
legacies of Head Start's benefits. The collaborative efforts of these women
points to the importance of locating and learning from the power of
investing in the educational attainment of South Central as a community of
dedicated and promising children and women.
6Celebrating Diversity: Selective Inclusion in a Multiracial City
chapter abstract
This chapter reveals narratives of selectively acknowledging the ways
demographic change and immigrant diversity influence community relations,
opportunities, and life in South Central Los Angeles. The interracial
tension between African American, Korean immigrant, and Latina/o immigrant
South Central entrepreneurs and residents was the result of heavy policing
and profiling in the community, escalation of the drug epidemic, anxiety
over immigrant enforcement, and the national and local government economic
disinvestment. The chapter examines these lived 1980s realities to argue
that the indignities of underemployment, police brutality, immigrant
enforcement, a drug epidemic, diminished educational opportunities, and
poverty culminated in the 1992 uprising. It concludes with the community's
commitment to not becoming undone by such instability, to magnify their
resilience.
7Banking in South Central: The Limitations of Race Enterprises
chapter abstract
This chapter returns to Broadway Federal Bank in the wake of the 1992
uprisings to investigate this race enterprise's longevity and commitment to
the community. The race-based politics that framed this establishment's
management had to embrace the realization that to thrive and genuinely
serve the South Central community it had to cater to an African American
and increasingly Latina/o immigrant clientele. The economic and social
realities framing South Central's community life leading up to and after
the 1992 Los Angeles Uprisings has compelled some of South Central's most
invested community entrepreneurs and residents to face demographic and
social change with an outlook that cannot underestimate the multiracial
configuration and needs of this community.
Epilogue
chapter abstract
This final chapter alerts readers to the urgency of learning from South
Central's history of relational community formation and solidarity. By
identifying and discussing contemporary local South Central branding
efforts, informal economies, and electoral campaigns shaping this
community's current neighborhood interactions and investments, the chapter
elaborates on the importance of building on the investments, relationships,
and ties that have sustained community building, placemaking, and
friendships in South Central. The onset of gentrification and the rise in
underemployment, homelessness, border enforcement, white supremacy
movements, and police brutality are highlighted as realities that render an
inclusive approach toward race and community as important to maintaining a
sense of home.