Fwd: A Journey Into The Mind of Watts

[alice wellintown]

>
> Review by John Putman
>
> The Shifting Grounds of Race focuses primarily on how African
> Americans and Japanese Americans both competed and cooperated with
> each other as they struggled to improve their lives in a city that
> celebrated its white character. Kurashige examines the formative role
> of race, economics, and even foreign policy in shaping the triangular
> relations among whites, blacks, and Japanese residents who inhabited
> the urban space of Los Angeles. Changing historical circumstances,
> especially World War II and the Civil Rights movement, reoriented
> these relations, forging at times promising coalitions between African
> American and Japanese Americans, while at other times propelling them
> down divergent pathways.
>
> To trace the multiethnic making of Los Angeles, Kurashige divides his
> study into three sections. In the pre-World War II years, racism and
> the use of restrictive covenants allowed LA’s dominant white community
> to promote a “white city” which promised newcomers neighborhoods free
> of crime, immigrants, and people of color. Real estate developers
> played a particularly important role in designing a new LA by
> utilizing housing associations and restrictive covenants to close off
> LA’s Westside neighborhoods to African Americans and Japanese
> residents. The author argues that these efforts marked a significant
> change from the turn of the century when racial minorities saw the
> city as a better place to live, especially when compared to eastern
> industrial cities.
>
> Shut out of white neighborhoods, black and Issei residents worked hard
> to create a vibrant multiethnic community on the Eastside. Black
> homeowners, for example, organized improvement associations to
> beautify their surroundings hoping to allay white fear and resentment
> of African American residents. Kurashige reminds us that whites also
> represented an important part of the multiethnic Eastside; however,
> they were less successful than their wealthier white friends at
> defending their neighborhoods from black and Japanese interlopers.
> Remaining white residents instead upheld segregated schools to
> maintain some semblance of a “white city.” While all racial minorities
> confronted similar barriers, Kurashige convincingly argues that
> citizenship provided the larger African American population the
> political power to better challenge white resistance than Issei
> residents who had to worry about their tenuous rights and status in
> the country.
>
> Segregated neighborhoods forced African Americans and Japanese
> Americans to make the best of a bad situation. Kurashige explores how
> both groups built a vibrant local economy as one strategy to achieve
> racial progress. Issei entrepreneurs, for instance, attempted to
> exploit their prominent position in the region’s agricultural sector
> in order to demonstrate their value to the community. Considering the
> extensive labor discrimination, Issei and black leaders also believed
> that self-employment could help them achieve financial security and
> overcome white animosity. Eastside working-class residents, however,
> found solace not in the bourgeois dreams of local businessmen, but
> rather looked to the political left for encouragement and support.
> Marginalized and facing fierce labor discrimination in Depression-era
> Los Angeles, African Americans and Japanese Americans, Kurashige
> suggests, found the Communist Party of the United States of America
> attractive but ultimately ineffective in the wake of fierce state
> repression. Labor unions likewise were unrewarding since white workers
> controlled most unions, including the more radical Congress of
> Industrial Organizations, which at best offered people of color
> segregated locals or weak auxiliaries.
>
> World War II becomes the focal point of the middle section of this
> study. Kurashige begins by briefly outlining local organizations’
> efforts to confront the reality of racism in Los Angeles. Neither the
> LA chapter of the National Negro Congress (NNC) nor the Japanese
> American Citizen’s League (JACL) successfully united members of their
> respective communities. Poor financial support and tepid community
> commitment plagued the NNC, while differences about whether loyalty
> and assimilation were appropriate tactics in the face of fierce white
> resistance deeply divided Japanese residents. Pearl Harbor, Kurashige
> forcefully argues, marked a profound watershed for both African
> Americans and Japanese Americans by bringing to an end shared
> conditions of exclusion. War opened a wedge between groups as Japanese
> residents faced total exclusion and African Americans witnessed a
> unique window of opportunity to press for integration.
>
> To his credit Kurashige avoids sentimentalizing the tragedy of
> Japanese internment. Instead the The Shifting Grounds of Race explores
> how the impending mass evacuation opened a rift within the community.
> JACL’s call for loyalty as the best response to internment outraged
> many residents leading to charges that the organization’s officers
> were little more than collaborators. JACL’s strategy, however, had as
> much to do with white outrage toward Japanese residents as it did the
> group’s conservative character. Its position on internment, the author
> maintains, can only be understood in light of the hostile actions by
> LA’s mayor and other local and state white officials.
>
> “Negro Victory” became the slogan of LA’s African Americans with the
> onset of war. Seizing the moment, black leaders expanded political
> activism, claiming that the community’s participation in the war
> demanded the end of segregation and discrimination. The Negro Victory
> Committee organized protests to open jobs for local blacks and formed
> grocery co-ops to overcome the unequal distribution of food to white
> and black neighborhoods. Exploiting the rapid demand for labor, a
> broad swath of local leaders together egged on the CIO’s efforts to
> organize workers, especially African Americans. Despite the patriotism
> and unity war promoted, Kurashige notes that white resistance remained
> strong. When local white officials placed the entire Mexican [End Page
> 112] community on trial during the infamous Sleepy Lagoon case, black
> leaders publicly expressed support for the defendants because they
> understood that Mexicans were a comfortable scapegoat in LA, whereas
> in other cities blacks fulfilled that role. Racial progress in LA,
> local newspaper editor Charlotte Bass claimed, could only be advanced
> by a multiethnic front against continuing white defiance. The war
> years taught African Americans, Kurashige concludes, that racial
> progress still depended upon government intervention.
>
> In one of his best chapters, Kurashige examines the difficult process
> of reintegrating Japanese Americans following the closure of the
> internment camps. Tensions were high in LA’s Eastside where returning
> internees found that African Americans had largely taken over Little
> Tokyo. Increasing wartime migration and stubborn racial barriers in
> Westside community only encouraged African Americans to spread into
> former Japanese neighborhoods. While numerous black leaders defended
> Japanese Americans’ right to return to LA despite white calls to
> prohibit them, political relations between the two minority groups
> remained lukewarm during the early postwar years. Kurashige argues
> that this was not simply the result of cultural difference, but rather
> the differing attitudes each possessed about integration and the role
> of the state in addressing their concerns. African Americans leaders,
> for example, leveled charges that Japanese American residents were
> indifferent to civil rights and more concerned about taking back their
> old neighborhood. Japanese Americans, however appeared wary of
> integration, which many saw as a white-imposed idea. Moreover,
> Japanese residents, fresh off of government internment camps, did not
> share black enthusiasm for state intervention as the primary avenue
> toward racial progress. By the mid-1950s, it was increasingly clear
> that these neighbors now traveled on increasingly divergent pathways.
>
> The Cold War, Kurashige suggests, further complicated both Africans
> American and Japanese American relations with each other as well as
> their relative status in the United States. The last section of The
> Shifting Grounds of Race explores the “two overlapping processes of
> integration that set the two groups apart and ultimately gave rise to
> multiculturalism” (p. 8, author’s emphasis). Once the erstwhile enemy
> during the 1940s, Japanese Americans were quickly rehabilitated in the
> American mind. The rapidly evolving Cold War in East Asia encouraged
> American leaders to celebrate Japan’s transformation and its vital
> role in the struggle with communism. Benefiting from their homeland’s
> new status, Japanese Americans saw wartime hatreds diminish and their
> standing in the nation rise. At the same time, the United States
> promoted its racial progress and democratic principles by celebrating
> Japanese Americans’ achievements and successful integration. JACL
> leaders, the author explains, exploited this opportunity by pushing
> for better immigration laws and moderate civil rights reforms. The
> Model Minority image that exploded on the scene by the 1970s,
> Kurashige concludes, found its roots in the rapidly changing climate
> of early Cold War America. [End Page 113]
>
> The national struggle with communism, however, proved less
> advantageous for Los Angeles African Americans. The virulent
> anti-communist environment of postwar California weakened coalitions
> and undermined demands for reform. Troubling economic conditions and a
> conservative political climate, for example, damaged progressive labor
> organizations like the CIO, which had promoted a multiracial
> working-class agenda. Even a prominent black leader like newspaper
> editor Charlotte Bass saw her power dissipate when the local NAACP
> purged her from the organization for reported ties to the CPUSA.
> Kurashige notes that the NAACP’s strong anti-communist stance did,
> however, help provide it political cover from which to attack
> segregation and discrimination in Los Angeles. Nevertheless LA’s black
> community saw firsthand how the strong current of anti-communism
> emasculated fair hiring and public housing programs. Claiming that
> such initiatives were akin to socialism, white voters turned their
> backs on fair employment initiatives. Likewise, racism and
> anti-communist sentiments encouraged white officials to reject public
> housing projects proposed for black and Mexican neighborhoods.
> Instead, housing problems were solved by clearing the slums. New
> housing would be left to private development, not socialistic public
> housing programs.
>
> Kurashige concludes his study by tracing the final demise of
> segregated housing in Los Angeles. While the Supreme Court had
> declared restrictive covenants illegal in the late 1940s, informal
> discrimination and the practices of real estate agents initially
> limited integration. Growing prosperity and job opportunities, the
> author claims, allowed professional and middle-class African Americans
> and Japanese Americans to overcome white resistance and move into
> white suburbs. Nisei residents fared better in this effort because
> their small numbers and the positive image of the “model minority”
> made them less threatening. In contrast, powerful racial stereotypes
> and the notion that African American prospective homeowners
> represented an invasion stiffened white resistance. When the barrier
> was breached, white flight rapidly followed. The Crenshaw
> neighborhood, however, emerged as a symbol of hope for Los Angeles.
> Here, black and Japanese Americans constructed an energetic and
> thriving multiethnic community. Integrated Crenshaw, Kurashige
> contends, witnessed a flourishing business district, though troubling
> class divisions continued to separate the community’s working- and
> middle-class neighborhoods.
>
> The birth of Los Angeles as the “world city” closes this important
> study. Kurashige details the final struggle to overcome stubborn white
> resistance to integration. African Americans hailed the passage of the
> Rumford Fair Housing Act in 1963, but the balloon quickly burst when,
> by a wide margin, California voters passed Proposition 14, which
> repealed the act. This outcome, the author contends, illustrated the
> political weakness of moderate integrationists, opening a window for
> more militant approaches to segregation. The battle over fair [End
> Page 114] housing, in short, served as a backdrop to the 1965 Watts
> Riot and emerging black power movements. In the wake of these
> conflicts, Tom Bradley and his fellow Crenshaw neighbors attempted to
> build a multiethnic coalition, which eventually elected Bradley as
> LA’s mayor. In perhaps the weakest part of this study, the author
> argues that Bradley, recognizing the impact of new laws, which
> accelerated immigration from Asia and Latin America as well as the
> emerging economic importance of the Pacific Rim, embarked on a
> campaign to move Los Angeles from a “white city” to a “world city.”
> The upshot of these events, Kurashige suggests, is the multicultural
> mosaic that is LA today. Unfortunately, the author offered too little
> time and space to this complex transition, leaving readers somewhat
> perplexed about the actual process.
>
> The Shifting Grounds of Race is no doubt a welcome addition to the
> rapidly growing interest in the dynamic history of Los Angeles. The
> fact that Kurashige and other scholars often have to reach back to
> Carey McWilliams for insight into mid-twentieth century LA testifies
> to what was, until recently, a rather bare cupboard. However, thanks
> to the efforts of William Deverell, Douglass Flamming, Becky
> Nicolaides, George Sanchez, Mark Wild, and several other young
> scholars, the puzzle of LA is finally being pieced together.1
> Kurashige’s study no doubt helps bring this puzzle into clearer focus.
> He navigates rather successfully the demanding terrain of a complex
> and admittedly difficult period running from the early suburbanization
> of the 1920s to the tumultuous 1960s. The multiethnic emphasis
> dovetails nicely with Wild’s study of early-twentieth-century LA,
> though it lacks a little of the intimacy and vitality of street life
> that Wild nicely probes.
>
> A strength of this study, and there are many, is the author’s ability
> to illustrate the impact of larger social, economic, and political
> forces on a particular urban space and how inhabitants of that space
> participated in the refashioning of it. Kurashige demonstrates how
> this small parcel of Los Angeles was a place of contact, competition,
> cooperation and conflict. This untold story of how African Americans
> and Japanese Americans together, and at times separately, shaped the
> rise of modern LA is an important accomplishment. Some readers,
> however, will wonder how a multiethnic history of LA can largely
> ignore Latinos. The author admits that his story is only one part of a
> larger narrative that scholars are piecing together. A brief encounter
> with Mexican American city councilman Edward Roybal notwithstanding,
> readers will feel that there is an elephant in the room that seems to
> be overlooked. Likewise, whites are a vital side of the triangular
> relationship that comprises this study, but more often than not they
> come off as cardboard figures when compared to African Americans and
> Japanese Americans. Aside from the mention of a white mayor or some
> white organization, the study at times reads more like an isosceles
> than an equilateral triangle. Such criticism, however, may not be
> completely fair since one puzzle piece can help to delineate the
> entire puzzle. [End Page 115] Kurashige has ventured into uncharted
> territory and deserves much praise and applause for advancing our
> understanding of one of the most important, but often overlooked,
> cities in American history.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Doug Millison<dougmillison at comcast.net> wrote:
>> I suspect that IV keys somehow to Pynchon's own '60s-era essay about Watts
>> and the riots,  won't be surprised to find deep intertextual connections.
>>  It might be interesting to compare the language that Pynchon uses in this
>> essay in that '60s moment, to the way IV seems to be parodying the hippie
>> lingo of '60s.
>>
>