RACIAL AND ETHNIC SHIFTS IN THE METROPOLITAN AREA

THE MYTH OF WHITE SUBURBIA

BY S.B.

Suburbia is a space primarily characterized as white. Following the massive exodus of white folks (“white flight”) from cities into the suburbs during the mid-20^th century, these areas represented the modern American dream – a white picket fence around a spacious yard, a nuclear family, a comfortable middle to upper level income, and a palatable distance from the lower class, racialized groups who remained in the city. Freeways that were constructed within the ideology of segregation and car culture (such as Robert Moses’ Cross Bronx Expressway) often cropped up in this period under the guise of urban renewal, allowing those who could afford cars to traverse in and out of the city, but not those of lower incomes who could only rely on subway or bus to have easy access to the suburbs. The creation and explosive growth of suburbia created a great deal of racial segregation in northern and western cities, although this is not mentioned as often as the southern segregationist policies in the typical history textbook narrative that overestimates the progressivism and anti-racism of northern populations. However, this image of suburbia being a white-only space is not entirely true. When the United States began its shift from Keynesian economics to the neo-liberal era, immigration and migration of people of color into some urban but particularly suburban areas boomed. However, the dominant association of suburbia is whiteness. Why is this so, despite the undeniable and numerically significant migration of people of color into suburbia? In this blog-post I argue that through factors such as the relocation of industrial plants outside of urban areas during the de-industrialization era, the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act, and the encouragement of other successfully relocated people of color, there has actually been a great deal of minority movement into the suburbs that contradicts the white stereotype of suburbia. I will be citing in particular the Asian and Latino population growth in the San Gabriel Valley as an example of this phenomenon.

Through the lens of policy and economics, there are a number of systematic changes that stimulated the minority move to suburbia. Certainly, the release of Japanese families from internment camps in the post-war period left them in need of relocation. The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act altered the quotas of immigration laws which only favored European immigrants and advocated for the reunification of families who were split by country boundaries. This allowed a significantly higher number of Asian and Latino immigrants to come to urban and suburban areas (Jones-Correa 183). Furthermore, as discussed in class, de-industrialization and the shift of remaining factories to suburbia and other areas on the periphery of urban metropolises attracted a number of Asian and Latino immigrants to such neighborhoods because of the better guarantee of work.

A little earlier than in the time of deindustrialization, the initial, gradual shift of middle-income Mexican-Americans from east LA and Japanese-Americans from West and East LA moving into the San Gabriel Valley in the 50’s and 60’s was desirable because the act of home-buying in suburbia at the time was seen as symbolic of and essential to true upward mobility. Their acceptance was largely due to racial inclinations of the community at the time, which, though not with open arms, better received model minority working class Asian and Latino families than lower class people of color, particularly black families (Cheng 19). As these initial families successfully transitioned into suburban life, Chinese folks witnessed this phenomenon and followed suit with the comfort that their similarly racialized as “oriental” Japanese counterparts had moved into this area without facing discrimination as extreme as many had in white-majority places during previous decades, so long as they fit the model minority mold (Cheng 20). This was not to say that their white neighbors approved of the changing demographic of the neighborhood, however – after this large migration of Asian and Latino families into San Gabriel Valley, many whites from the area with the financial capabilities to do so picked up and left. Perhaps the continued inaccurate imagery that suburbia is a white-only area is because so many whites responded to the increasing minority populations in their neighborhoods by moving away. Looking at the San Gabriel Valley today, more than half of the population consists of Asian folks (Cheng 16). It seems suburbia has now become a place for residents of any color, so long as the neighborhood itself largely adheres to a white or non-white homogeneity.

Works Cited:

Cheng, W. "The Changs Next Door to the Diazes: Suburban Racial Formation in Los Angeles's

San Gabriel Valley." Journal of Urban History 39.1 (2012): 15-35. Web. 3 Apr. 2016.

Jones-Correa, Michael. "Reshaping the American Dream: Immigrants, Ethnic Minorities, and the

Politics of the New Suburbs." The New Suburban History. Eds. Kruse, Kevin Michael, and Thomas J. Sugrue. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2006. 183-204. Print.