Black and Brown in Los Angeles

Black and Brown in Los Angeles is a timely and wide-ranging, interdisciplinary foray into the complicated world of multiethnic Los Angeles. The first book to focus exclusively on the range of relationships and interactions between Latinas/os and African Americans in one of the most diverse cities in the United States, the book delivers supporting evidence that Los Angeles is a key place to study racial politics while also providing the basis for broader discussions of multiethnic America.

Students, faculty, and interested readers will gain an understanding of the different forms of cultural borrowing and exchange that have shaped a terrain through which African Americans and Latinas/os cross paths, intersect, move in parallel tracks, and engage with a whole range of aspects of urban living. Tensions and shared intimacies are recurrent themes that emerge as the contributors seek to integrate artistic and cultural constructs with politics and economics in their goal of extending simple paradigms of conflict, cooperation, or coalition.

The book features essays by historians, economists, and cultural and ethnic studies scholars, alongside contributions by photographers and journalists working in Los Angeles.

Josh Kun is an Associate Professor in the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. His books include Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (California, 2005) and Songs in the Key of Los Angeles: Sheet Music and the Making of Southern California (Angel City Press, 2013). in 2016, he was the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship.

Laura Pulido is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. Her books include Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles (California, 2006) and A People’s Guide to Los Angeles (California, 2012).
 

List of Illustrations
List of Tables

Introduction
Josh Kun and Laura Pulido

PART ONE. THE ECONOMICS OF PEOPLE AND PLACES
1. Keeping It Real: Demographic Change, Economic Conflict, and Interethnic Organizing for Social Justice in Los Angeles
Manuel Pastor

2. Banking on the Community: Mexican Immigrants’ Experiences in a Historically African American Bank in South Central Los Angeles, 1970–2007
Abigail Rosas

3. Black Views toward Proposed Undocumented Immigration Policies: The Role of Stereotypes and Economic Competition
Lorrie Frasure-Yokley and Stacey Greene

PART TWO. URBAN HISTORIES
4. The Changing Valence of White Racial Innocence: Black-Brown Unity in the 1970s Los Angeles School Desegregation Struggles
Daniel Martinez HoSang

5. Fighting the Segregation Amendment: Black and Mexican American Responses to Proposition 14 in Los Angeles
Max Felker-Kantor

6. The Politics of Low and Slow/Bajito y Suavecito: Black and Chicano Lowriders in Los Angeles, from the 1960s through the 1970s
Denise M. Sandoval

PART THREE. COMMUNITY LIFE AND POLITICS
7. Rainbow Coalition in the Golden State? Exposing Myths, Uncovering New Realities in Latino Attitudes toward Blacks
Matt A. Barreto, Benjamin F. Gonzalez, and Gabriel R. Sánchez

8. Race and the L.A. Human: Race Relations and Violence in Globalized Los Angeles
Ofelia Ortiz Cuevas

PART FOUR. REPORTING BLACK AND BROWN L.A.: A JOURNALIST’S VIEW
9. More Than Just the Latinos-Next-Door; Piercing Black Silence on Immigration; and Plugging Immigration’s Drain on Black Employment
Erin Aubry Kaplan

10. Race, Real Estate, and the Mexican Mafia: A Report from the Black and Latino Killing Fields
Sam Quinones

PART FIVE. CITY CULTURES
11. Landscapes of Black and Brown Los Angeles: A Photo Essay
Wendy Cheng

12. Spatial Entitlement: Race, Displacement, and Sonic Reclamation in Postwar Los Angeles
Gaye Theresa Johnson

13. On Fallen Nature and the Two Cities
Nery Gabriel Lemus

14. “Just Win, Baby!” The Raider Nation and Second Chances for Black and Brown L.A.
Priscilla Leiva

15. What Is an MC If He Can’t Rap to Banda? Making Music in Nuevo L.A.
Josh Kun

List of Contributors
Index