Avila's White Flight

Eric Avila’s “Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles” explores how the quality of city life in Southern California shaped white identity during post World War II era. Los Angeles, California was bulging from an influx of mixed-raced immigrants and migrants, traveling from all parts of the United States. With an increasing population and increasing credibility, the suddenly more powerful city, Los Angeles had to face issues regarding racial awareness. Middle-class whites, who preferred to live in homogeneous communities, found or created neighborhoods in the suburbs. “Suburbanization, a mode of urbanization in which cities extend outward rather than upward to accommodate the spatial appetites of homeowners.” (4) Among the suburbs, two societies emerged, one white (vanilla suburb) and one black (chocolate city). The lurid imagery conjectured through the use of the term chocolate city, caused greater segregation and a greater feeling of empowerment to the vanilla suburb. Avila’s aims to show how popular culture through film noir, Disneyland, Dodger Stadium, freeways, and more, played a significant role in the formation of a postwar white identity and how this identity was consumed and contested by the Other.(6)

Avila begins “White Flight” by explaining the development of white suburban life and how Los Angeles became a “white spot.” Removed from the City center, lay the “better city,” a bundle of suburban communities that served as white peoples’ retreat from the “polyglot congestion of modern city” (12). Although Roosevelt’s New Deal policies reigned supreme before the war, postwar Los Angeles saw a shift toward political conservatism paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s presidency and his New Right policy. The New Right favored privatization and tax incentives to those who were well off. To escape racial mixing, the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) and other prominent white citizens “implemented a racially biased set of policies that virtually prevented blacks and other nonwhite groups from attaining suburban homeownership” (35). By keeping zoning lines clear, whites could focus on maintaining the
strength of the nuclear family and “suburban respectability.” Racial groups were kept in segregated areas such as Watts and Bunker Hill as well as other sections of East LA that would house the impoverished and become LA’s ghetto. Also with the deterioration of public transportation and popularity of automobiles (which lead to the construction of freeways and parking lots,) suburbia was spatially well protected from infiltration.

Popular culture played a very important role in further cementing white identity and its suburban culture. Film noir painted a grim picture of Los Angeles. These films depicted a slanted view of the city, focusing on the seedier parts inhabited by people of color. As a new film genre, “Film noir pointed out the consequences for white men and women who transgressed the boundaries of their own whiteness by stepping into the promiscuous world of the black city.”(81) Film noir’s thematic emphasis was “blackening” white deviance as well as portraying general dark themes of betrayal, alienation, and disillusionment in which the vitality of the American dream was losing strength. (71) This literal coloring of violence further enforced the dangers associated with other races. Hollywood’s portrayal of the urban chocolate city showed the importance of having a white space that offered a “sanctuary from the criminalized and the racialized milieu of the city” (83)

Despite film noir showcasing the importance of having a separate white area, the arrival of the Brooklyn Dodgers affirmed that even with suburbia, Los Angeles was its own metropolis that could compete with other prominent American cities. Influential cities needed to have their own baseball team. To convince Walter O’Malley to bring the Dodgers to Los Angeles, they needed to offer him a space large enough to build a modern stadium. The space chosen was in Chavez Ravine, an area that housed a large Chicano community. The eviction of Arechiga family was the primary symbol of the Chicano evacuations and it reignited class tensions and racial discrimination. (169) However, the Dodgers arrival was welcomed by the city’s black community. Overall, baseball acted as “venue for the promotion of ethnic identity.” Baseball became more than just an American pastime as Cuba was responsible for making the sport popular in Mexico. Baseball allowed for a shared experience across all color lines and allowed for community building. It seems that sacrificing the homes of a few Chicanos was worth it, as baseball was an experience that any race could appreciate and as such it helped bridge a gap in a growing city.

As a native of Los Angeles County, I found this book to be interesting. Although I have lived my whole life in this city, I lacked any true knowledge of its rich history. Though I had never read anything on the topic, I appreciated that to become the somewhat stable melting pot that LA is today, it must have had to overcome various forms of segregation. I am happy that we’ve come this far and that racial struggles although still undeniably present, are not as uneven as they once were. “As urban landscape mirrors the city’s great diversity in more equitable ways, whiteness will lose its saliency as a defining principle of urban culture and identity.” (242)