Race and popular culture

Lesson 17SOC 86 – Popular CultureRobert Wonser 1

Pro sports teams

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White Flight and Popular Culture

Disneyland

LAs freeways

Dodger Stadium

White Flight and the Suburban IdealPre WWII LA was very white; LA was once

known as “seaport of Iowa”Encapsulated the utopian aspirations of the

suburban society; reinforcing the formation of a suburban white consciousness

White flight describes a structural process by which post war suburbanization helped the racial resegregation of the U.S., dividing presumably white suburbs from concentrations of racialized poverty.• The corollary that is often overlooked is that this allowed for the creation of a suburban white identity (based in part on privatized values)

The FHAWhite flight was fueled by the FHAs anti-

urban bias; anathema to a secure investment were “the presence of inharmonious racial or nationality groups”

Policies prevented blacks and other nonwhite groups from attaining suburban home ownership

Deed restrictions“If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is

necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.” changes in this lead to declining property values. – the FHA’s Underwriting Manual

Favorable Effect on Property Values

1) English, Germans, Scots, Irish, Scandinavians2) North Italians3) Bohemians or Czechoslovakians 4) Poles 5) Lithuanians6) Greeks7) Russian Jews of lower class8) South Italians9) Negroes10)Mexicans We see the formation of a suburban white identity

beginning … For whites, conforming to “American standards of living”

helped remove themselves from the FHA’s least wanted list

Simultaneously we begin to see the market approach trumping the public vision; the defeat of public housing in Cold War Los Angeles illustrates the transition to a new political culture that encouraged the spatial and racial fragmentation of the postwar urban region

The Birth of a New Political IdentityBased on suburban home ownership and

segregation in opposition to the noir slumsAn “anxious, tightfisted conservatvism” that

revolved around racialized social issues.Racial homogeneity, dependence on Cold War

economy, high rates of home ownership, flurry of intense real estate development fostered distinct political culture that foreshadowed national politics in the 70s and 80s

Its epicenter? Orange County

DisneylandExtols the virtues of consumerism,

patriarchy, patriotism and small-town midwestern whiteness

Disneyland emphasized cultural motifs of retreat from the public culture of New Deal liberalism and instead asserted a privatized suburban alternative to that culture.

Explicitly in contrast to Coney Island where women could escape the supervision of parents and discover a newfound sexual freedom sanctioned by the modern city and its anonymous venues for heterosocial interaction

Main Street, USA upheld Disney’s faith in the virtues of small town America and symbolized a nostalgic retreat from the decadence of the noir city

Homogeneity and dissonance that defined urban culture inspired Walt to create a counterculture of order, regimentation and homogeneity

A “Rage for Order”To eliminate distractions from the contrived

vistas, Disney buried all water, power and sewer lines beneath street level

Each land is completely self contained and cannot be seen from other lands

Forced perspective (trick to make objects appear larger, larger at the bottom and smaller on top) used in Sleeping Beauty’s castle and the Matterhorn Bobsleds to guarantee the perfect view from any angle unlike real cities

Employees: “clean and natural without extremes” and “blond, blue-eyed…outdoorsy [and] vacuously pleasant”

Animatronics to replicate the perfect show every time

Race at DisneylandThe Other

Frontierland (in contrast to the marvels of civilization and white modern culture of Tomorrowland) clearly upheld long standing distinctions between white progress and nonwhite “savagery”

Aunt Jemima’s pancake house where Aunt Jemima herself “will serve her famed pancakes and also will sing to entertain her visitors”

The Jungle Cruise – “wild animals and native ‘savages’ attack your craft as it cruises through their jungle privacy”

Americans could use these images to reify their own sense of whiteness, particular in Main Street USA where the Others were conspicuously absent, further reifying Disney’s racialized and deeply nostalgic vision of American “folks”

Frontierland, 1960

Suburbanizing the City CenterDodger fans had to dodge streetcars and

trolleys on their way to Ebbets Field in New York

Urban sprawl in LA scared elites

Canceled plans for public housing after residents of Chavez Ravine were removed conveniently left the space vacant for Dodger Stadium, after all, public housing = communism, private use of land = laissez faire

Baseball was a more American alternative to public housing

Dodger stadium would serve as a popular counterpart to the temples of high culture erected upon remnants of Bunker Hill (revitalizing urban blight)

By the 1950s “blight" became invoked as a strategy for privatized, downtown redevelopment, not as it used to be, for improving the living conditions of the urban poor

The city’s deed to the land explicitly stated that the land was to be used “for public purposes only”

“strings had to be pulled” by the City Housing Authority (CHA, same ones who evicted the ravine residents) by changing the wording of the deed to eliminate that provision

To make way for a private construction

IronyDisneyland: idealized suburban community and

politics of white home ownership

Dodger Stadium: facilitated “whitening” of the city center by fueling a racialized political culture predicated upon a privatized corporate version of downtown redevelopment

Built upon a site originally designated for public housing, Dodger Stadium was both the product of and producer of a shifting political culture that negated social programs (like public housing), favored political subsidies for private development (note the irony…), and heightened simmering racial tensions.

Team name made little sense in Southern California’s freeway metropolis where there are no speeding trolley cars to “dodge” on the way to play ball…

The Red Cars

LA had a light rail system.

Between 1880-1930 most Angelinos depended on the Red Cars: the interurban system of streetcars that radiated outward from downtown Los Angeles, west to Santa Monica, east to Riverside and south to Long Beach.

The automobile, freeway system, GM and Standard Oil ended this

The PE Cars’ DemiseHarry Chandler, publisher and owner of

the Los Angeles Times, held major investments in Goodyear Tire, Western Construction Company, Southern California rock and Gravel Company, and Consolidated Rock Products Company and Union Oil.

“The Pink Sheet” was a newspaper section devoted exclusively to the automobile

Editorials against the streetcar were ran

Denunciations declaring the motorists rights over the streetcar’s right of way declining streetcar patronage less incentive to maintain the streetcars they get worse

LA’s first freeway, Arroyo Seco Parkway

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These Routes became Freeways

And this is what became of our streetcars…

Sutured City: Freeway MetropolisUnlike the streetcar which promoted

interconnectedness among urban dwellers and provided a window onto the city’s distinct neighborhoods, the freeway severed the commute from his urban context and furthered the distance, literally and figuratively between racialized cities and white suburbs.

Whose neighborhoods were bisected?

The freeways go to directly to Disneyland and Dodger Stadium as well as OC and other housing subdivisions; this was no coincidence.

Because no one wants their commute bummed out by the sight of poor people…

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The Division of the Barrios