The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules : Latinos and African Americans in South Los Angeles / Cid Martinez.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Martinez, Cid, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hispanic Americans--California--Los Angeles.

Hispanic Americans.

African Americans--California--Los Angeles.

African Americans.

African Americans--Relations with Hispanic Americans.

Neighborhood government--California--Los Angeles.

Neighborhood government.

Ethnic conflict--California--Los Angeles.

Ethnic conflict.

Ethnic neighborhoods--California--Los Angeles.

Ethnic neighborhoods.

Los Angeles (Calif.)--Race relations.

Los Angeles (Calif.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (197 pages) : charts, maps

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : New York University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

South Los Angeles is often seen as ground zero for inter-racial conflict and violence in the United States. Since the 1940s, South LA has been predominantly a low-income African American neighborhood, and yet since the early 1990s Latino immigrants—mostly from Mexico and many undocumented—have moved in record numbers to the area. Given that more than a quarter million people live in South LA and that poverty rates exceed 30 percent, inter-racial conflict and violence surprises no one. The real question is: why hasn't there been more? Through vivid stories and interviews, The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules provides an answer to this question. Based on in-depth ethnographic field work collected when the author, Cid Martinez, lived and worked in schools in South Central, this study reveals the day-to-day ways in which vibrant social institutions in South LA— its churches, its local politicians, and even its gangs—have reduced conflict and kept violence to a level that is manageable for its residents. Martinez argues that inter-racial conflict has not been managed through any coalition between different groups, but rather that these institutions have allowed established African Americans and newcomer Latinos to co-exist through avoidance—an under-appreciated strategy for managing conflict that plays a crucial role in America's low-income communities. Ultimately, this book proposes a different understanding of how neighborhood institutions are able to mitigate conflict and violence through several community dimensions of informal social controls.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Managed Violence

1. Neighborhood Councils: City Hall Competes with the Street for Legitimacy

2. Alternative Governance: Latino and African American Interrelations outside of City Hall

3. Neighborhood Institutions: Safety from Violence, and the Catholic Church

4. Faith Is the Opposite of Fear: The Catholic Church as Alternative Governance

5. Street Justice: Gangs, the Informal Economy, and Neighborhood Residents

6. Responding to Violence, Keeping the Peace: Interracial Relations between Black and Latino Youth Gangs (co-authored with Dominic Rivera)

Conclusion: Revisiting Alternative Governance

Notes

References

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

0-8147-6097-X

OCLC:

951338197