Resisting Camelot

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 28-51
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul R. deGuzman
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
White Flight ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Homeowner Associations ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The City

For generations white middle-class residents of the Valley, a longtime symbol of post-WWII suburbia, have attempted to break away from the City of Los Angeles. By the end of the 20th century, the secession campaign brought together homeowner associations, business leaders, and small government libertarians. During a period of massive global migration that transformed the city into an immigrant metropolis, this coalition successfully placed secession on the November 2002 municipal ballot. Critics of secession decried Valley independence as latter day white flight and a means to curtail the growing political power of Latinas/os. This article complicates previous studies that solely focus on the tactical failures of white secessionists, and rather unearths the genesis and impact of grassroots people of color organizing both in the Valley and across the rest of Los Angeles.

Holding the Center

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-255
Author(s):  
Michan Andrew Connor
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Central City ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The City

Early television shows that focused on Los Angeles as subject, such as The City at Night (KTLA) and Jack Linkletter's On the Go (CBS), assured white, middle-class, suburban viewers that they had a place in the larger metropolis by presenting a selective knowledge of its features and issues. On the Go surpassed the entertainment level of The City at Night to address some serious social issues. By the mid-sixties, suburbanization had been fully embraced as the "good life." Shows such as Ralph Story's Los Angeles (KNXT), instead of engaging suburban viewers in metropolitan issues, entertained them with glimpses of the city's "oddities." The change in tone marked the passing of the center of cultural identity from the central city to the suburbs.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Seymour
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Future Thinking ◽  
Future Health ◽  
The Poor ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Ecological Values ◽  
Social Environmental

This concluding chapter maintains that queer ecological values are more aligned with futurity and future-thinking, particularly when it comes to combating corporate greed and social/environmental injustice, even as it highlights the fact that a lack of concern for the future more accurately characterizes regimes such as heteronormativity and global capitalism: while they may operate out of concern for the reproduction of the white, middle-class heterosexual family or for the accumulation of wealth, they also ignore their immediate and future costs to the poor, to people of color, to the environment, and even to themselves. The kind of queer ecological futurity thus posited here is, instead, ethically attuned to the present and future health and safety of the biosphere as it encompasses the human, the non-human, and everything in between.

"A City of Picture Buyers": Art, Identity, and Aspiration in Los Angeles and Southern California, 1891-1914

2010 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-50
Author(s):  
Jasper G. Schad
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Southern California ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
White Middle Class

In less than twenty-five years, Los Angeles and other southern California urban centers evolved from culturally sterile communities into vibrant art centers. That remarkable transformation resulted from a combination of social, economic, and political changes that drew residents to landscape paintings. They enjoyed widespread popularity because residents invested them with meanings that transcended art. They became icons of identity, bolstered visions of an unspoiled suburban Eden, and helped southern California's white middle-class to cope with the mounting stress of modern urban life.

scholarly journals A Critical Review of Bilingual Education in the United States: From Basements and Pride to Boutiques and Profit

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 14-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Flores ◽  
Ofelia García
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Immersion Programs ◽  
Middle Class Families

ABSTRACTIn this article we connect the institutionalization of bilingual education to a post–Civil Rights racial formation that located the root of educational inequalities in the psychological condition of people of color in ways that obscured the structural barriers confronting communities of color. Within this context, bilingual education was institutionalized with the goal of instilling cultural pride in Latinx students in ways that would remediate their perceived linguistic deficiencies. This left bilingual educators struggling to develop affirmative spaces for Latinx children within a context where these students continued to be devalued by the broader school and societal context. More recent years have witnessed the dismantling of these affirmative spaces and their replacement with two-way immersion programs that seek to cater to White middle-class families. While these programs have offered new spaces for the affirmation of the bilingualism of Latinx children, they do little to address the power hierarchies between the low-income Latinx communities and White middle-class communities that are being served by these programs. We end with a call to situate struggles for bilingual education within broader efforts to combat the racialization of Latinx and other minoritized communities.

Race and Disability: From Analogy to Intersectionality

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Frederick ◽  
Dara Shifrer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Minority Model

Sociologists are using intersectional lenses to examine an increasingly wider range of processes and identities, yet the intersection of race and disability remains a particularly neglected area in sociology. Marking an important step toward filling this gap, the authors interrogate how race and disability have been deployed as analogy in both disability rights activism and in critical race discourse. The authors argue that the “minority model” framework of disability rights has been racialized in ways that center the experiences of white, middle-class disabled Americans, even as this framework leans heavily upon analogic work likening ableism to racial oppression. Conversely, the authors examine the use of disability as metaphor in racial justice discourse, interrogating the historic linking of race and disability that gave rise to these language patterns. The authors argue that this analogic work has marginalized the experiences of disabled people of color and has masked the processes by which whiteness and able-bodiedness have been privileged in these respective movements. Finally, the authors argue that centering the positionality of disabled people of color demands not analogy but intersectional analyses that illuminate how racism and ableism intertwine and interact to generate unique forms of inequality and resistance.

scholarly journals “Saudagar Bandoeng”, 1906—1930-an

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Dede Rohayati
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Urban Economy ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Economic Sector ◽  
Commercial Sector ◽  
The City

The growth of Bandung as a city at the beginning of the 20th century, has produced urban groups that dominate parts of the urban economy. One group was known as Saudagar Bandoeng or the Bandung indigenous Muslim merchants. They started growing as middle-class urban Muslims who rely on their economic life in the commercial sector. There are three reasons for the emergence of Saudagar Bandoeng, namely the rejuvenation of Pasar Baru market in 1906, the rise of batik trading and the modernization of Bandung facilitated the traffic goods and people to and from the city of Bandung. The Saudagar Bandoeng emerged as a community of santri traders which were relatively different from that of rural santri traders. The birth of the Soedara Association (Himpoenan Soedara) as an organization for santri traders to promote indigenous economic sector in Bandung represented one of the rise of merchant nationalist identity as has been seen in other cities such as Surakarta.

Incapable of Self-Government

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Myers Asch ◽  
George Derek Musgrove
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
Territorial Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Electoral Power ◽  
Racial Progress ◽  
The City

This chapter explains how Washingtonians, black and white, lost the right to vote in 1874. The success of biracial democracy during Reconstruction triggered a backlash from white conservatives and business leaders who persuaded Congress to retreat from the promise of biracial democracy, first by limiting electoral power in a territorial government in 1871 and then by eliminating self-government altogether in 1874. In the decades that followed, Washington rolled back Reconstruction-era racial progress, part of a region-wide effort to enforce white supremacy. When city commissioners compiled the District Code in 1901, they quietly dropped the local antidiscrimination laws from the books. The city continued to boast a diverse and growing black middle class, but black political power and aspirations withered. The door to biracial, cross-class democracy seemed to have been slammed shut.

Back to Bed

Coming Home ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 9-33
Author(s):  
Wendy Kline
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Home Birth ◽  
The Other ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
La Leche League ◽  
Hospital To Home ◽  
The City

Chapter 1, “Back to Bed: From Hospital to Home Obstetrics in the City of Chicago” analyzes the home obstetrics training practiced at the Chicago Maternity Center alongside the emergence of what would become an international breastfeeding organization, La Leche League. One focused on the inner-city’s working-class population, while the other catered more to the suburban white middle-class. Both the Chicago Maternity Center and the La Leche League relied on the promotion of home birth, but for very different reasons. Under the CMC, home birth provided essential training for obstetrical students, while under the LLL, it enabled mothers to breastfeed and bond with their babies. The different rationales underscored the extent to which race, class, and context shaped ideas about home birth. Taken together, these two examples reveal the complex origins of what would become a contested yet increasingly popular practice by the 1970s.

More and More Enlightened Citizens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Busch
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Public Open Space ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

This chapter looks at the nascent environmental movement in Austin in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that, while early environmentalists achieved many victories and set the tone for later environmental issues in Austin, they also demonstrated a lack of understanding of minority issues and sometimes directly undermined minority communities. Environmentalists fought the business community and worked to maintain public open space, beautify the city, and stave off undesirable development. They sponsored a public planning initiative, Austin Tomorrow, which gave citizens a greater voice in planning Austin’s growth. But their plans often imagined minority places as sites of white middle class leisure. They also failed to incorporate minorities into Austin Tomorrow.

Building Mulholland Highway: The Road to Mulholland Drive

2017 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-70
Author(s):  
Barry Read
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
The Road ◽  
Santa Monica ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
San Fernando ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
Mulholland Drive

The scenic highway along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains that became Mulholland Drive was the brainchild of a group of large property owners, speculators, developers, financiers, and business leaders. This group, organized as the Hollywood Foothills Improvement Association, donated the land for the right-of-way, directed the survey and engineering studies for the roadway, lobbied city officials, convinced small property-holders to approve a municipal improvement district to fund it, and won public support for the project. The scenic drive fostered its members’ real estate goals and the value of their investments. It also promoted tourism in the region and reduced the mountain barrier that had divided the City of Los Angeles from its San Fernando Valley extension.

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