In our class discussion of The Changs Next to the Diazes, several people mentioned Karen Lacy’s piece on the strategic assimilation of suburban middle-class blacks. Lacy argues that in these middle-class black communities there is “a belief that the construction of an authentic black racial identity is incomplete in the absence of meaningful interactions with other blacks” (Lacy 183). Despite this desire for interactions with other blacks, the community still maintains a preference to “interact with certain kinds of blacks” and “they actively exclude others” (Lacy 183-184).The separation of which types of blacks are acceptable and which are not illustrates the way middle-class blacks separate themselves from the lower-class blacks. The middle-class blacks also attempt to “align themselves with their white counterparts” (Lacy 184). I believe that this alliance is what separates the middle-class blacks from the Asians and Mexicans of San Gabriel Valley.

In San Gabriel Valley, Asian-Americans and Mexican-Americans are the majority and whites are the minority, creating a multicultural identity unique to the area. During class, we briefly discussed the idea of San Gabriel Valley as a heteropolis, although I do not believe this to be true. A heteropolis is a city characterized by high diversity and San Gabriel does not have high diversity as a city. In comparison to other cities in the United States it does, but as its own city, there are only three prevalent ethnicities. In San Gabriel Valley there is a geographic racial divide. Cheng describes San Gabriel as “divided internally north to south, with the north holding larger numbers of wealthier, long-term white residents and the south home to a more heterogeneous mix of working-class to middle-income Asian Americans and Mexican Americans” (Cheng 149-150). In middle-class black neighborhoods, there is an attempt for alignment with the middle-class whites. Lacy suggests that this comes from “the opportunities and constraints that members of the [black] middle-class confront in their suburban communities” (Lacy 184). The black-middle class interacts with the white-middle class in the suburbs, but in San Gabriel there is a clear racial divide. What causes this? Why are some races mixing in some neighborhoods while not in others?

The middle-class blacks “travel back and forth regularly between the black and white worlds. They do not exist exclusively in one of the other” (Lacy 151). There is an ability for middle-class blacks to exist in both black and white spaces. It allows the community to hold onto their culture while simultaneously taking advantage of the opportunities granted in the white spaces. The Mexican-Americans and Asian-Americans in San Gabriel Valley do not this; they do not exist in multicultural spaces. Cheng discusses a “West SGV – developed sense of…Asian American racialized privilege” (Cheng 206). While I do think it valuable to have spaces which are culturally yours, I believe it is a problem when you know no other spaces.

When Asian-Americans and Mexican-Americans leaves San Gabriel, they experience a culture shock. The young adults of color know nothing about being a minority. They enter white spaces and “the trappings of Asian-American racialized privilege, predicated on racial expectations that reinforced white dominance such as the model minority myth, failed when transported to contexts in which whites were clearly dominant” (Chen 206). I think this failure and confusion are evidence of failed socialization in San Gabriel Valley.

Socialization is an invaluable tool all children learn in childhood. The active social interactions with others and the learning of what is acceptable in society cannot be forgotten. San Gabriel is an unique society with a minority of whites, but that is representative of society in the United States. Can one be socialized when they do not know the larger country’s society? I do not believe they can. In San Gabriel this causes identity crises when children leave their cultural spaces and are unable to exist in the white spaces that make up a majority of the United States.

While reading the selections from Massey and Denton’s American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the American Underclass, the contrast between the outcomes of the black neighborhoods and the neighborhoods of European immigrants stood out to me. Massey and Denton write that “the manner in which blacks were residentially incorporated into American cities differed fundamentally from the path of spatial assimilation of other ethnic groups” (10). How were these neighborhoods different? What caused this to happen? Why did the two types of neighborhoods have such vastly different outcomes? Would it have been possible for the black ghettos to have the same outcome as the immigrant neighborhoods?

I believe that one explanation for the cause of the integration differences can be linked to the invasion-competition-succession model. Both the blacks and the European immigrants invaded northern cities. The invasion of the two groups differed slightly for the rate of European immigration fluctuated inversely with the Great Migration of blacks from the south to the north. However, I don’t see how this would have greatly influence the integration of the different groups. I think that the major source of inequality between the immigrants and the blacks stems from competition. When settling in the cities, European immigrants “reaffirmed their own ‘whiteness’ by oppressing a people that was even lower in the racial hierarchy” (Massey and Denton 29). This is a stark contrast to the black population who were forced to compete against both the European immigrants and the whites who were already residing in the cities. The European immigrants were able to solidify themselves above the blacks in the hierarchy and this helped integrate the group into the white section of the hierarchy. This resulted in the succession part of the model with blacks segregated from the Europeans and whites.

Massey and Denton claim a ghetto “refers only to the racial make-up of a neighborhood” (19) while our class defines ghettos as “settlements marked by voluntary or involuntary segregation.” I think the class definition, with its specification of voluntary and involuntary segregation, suggests a different approach to what a ghetto actually is. Massey and Denton’s classification fails to distinguish between internal and external segregation. I believe when contrasting enclaves to ghettos, the difference between internal and external segregation, or voluntary and involuntary segregation, is key. Calling both European immigrant neighborhoods, such as Little Italy, and the black neighborhoods described by DuBois in The Philadelphia Negro does not seem right to me. The European neighborhoods tended to be voluntary segregation. I got the sense that the immigrants wanted to live together to share their culture and Massey and Denton described the enclaves as part of the “process of immigrant assimilation” (33). This feels very different than what is referred to as the black ghetto. Blacks were often forced to relocate to Black Belts due to zoning regulations, race riots, violence, and many other negative things. The relocation was not voluntary. Is this a fair comparison to make? Should there be a greater distinction between enclaves and ghettos?

When looking at the differences between European immigrant neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, and white neighborhoods, I notice that there are still parts of this around today. How do we solve this problem? Is it possible to solve it? I think a lot of this stems back to the larger issues of inequality and equity. Much of American society is built off of these issues and there still seems to be no clear solution to the constant inequality so often seen in the U.S. What role does (or should) the Federal government play in all this? We’ve looked at the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 as evidence that work has been made to try and solve these issues. While I don’t think that solving these inequalities will happen overnight, I think that steps are being taken and believe there will be change.