* evolutionary psychologists hold that people in many cultures and historical epochs have relied on skin color and other bodily features to classify their fellows, and have further believed that such classifications also group together people who share underlying biological commonalities.
* there is evidence that across cultures and historical epochs—e.g. in Classical Greece and in the Roman Empire (Isaac, 2004)—people have relied on classifications that are similar to modern racial categories in two central respects. First, these classifications are supposed to be based on phenotypic properties: members are supposed to belong to the same racial category because they share some phenotypic, i.e. morphological or behavioral, properties. Second, people assume or act as if racial categories map onto biological categories: members
who share the relevant phenotypic properties are assumed to share some important and distinctive set of underlying biological properties as well.
* The presence of these common themes across different cultures is just what an evolutionary psychologist would expect, since evolutionary psychologists view racial cognition as a by-product of a cognitive system shared by all normally developing humans. In contrast, because socialization accounts cannot explain why these core elements should recur across times and cultures, they are at best incomplete.
* children do not acquire the tendency to classify racially from their familial environments. If children were explicitly taught by their parents, or if they merely picked up the classifications their parents used even without being explicitly instructed in their use, one would expect children’s beliefs about races to be similar to their parents’ beliefs. However, this is not the case…
* 3- to 7-year-old preschoolers treat skin color differently from other properties. Unlike properties like body shape, for instance, preschoolers expect skin color to be constant over a lifetime and to be transmitted across
generations. By contrast, they believe that body shape can change across a lifetime and is not necessarily transmitted across generations (ibid.: 97–101).
These beliefs about racial properties reflect a kind of intuitive essentialism: racial properties are viewed as stable (racial properties do not change during one’s lifetime), intrinsic (racial properties are thought to be caused by one’s inner nature), innate (the development of racial properties does not depend much on one’s rearing environment), and inherited (parents transmit their racial properties to their children).
* Racial categorization develops early and reliably across cultures; it does not depend entirely on social learning; it is, in some respects, similar to commonsense biological classification. Thus racial categorization seems to be neither the product of socialization alone nor of the perceptual salience of skin color alone. It does not appear to result from a general tendency toward group prejudice, either. Rather, this body of evidence is best explained by the hypothesis that racial categorization results from a specialized, species-typical cognitive system that, even if it did not initially evolve to deal with racial categorization, has been recruited for this purpose.
* First, we are impressed by mounting evidence that race and racial bias can still have measurable and
important effects in real-world situations. In a field study by Bertrand and Mullainathan (2003), researchers responded to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers with a variety of fabricated resumes. Each resume was constructed around either a very black-sounding name (e.g. ‘‘Lakisha Washington’’ or ‘‘Jamal Jones’’) or a very white-sounding name (e.g. ‘‘Emily Walsh’’ or ‘‘Greg Baker’’). When the resumes were sent out to potential
employers, those bearing white names received an astonishing 50% more callbacks for interviews.
* Similar evidence of race and racial bias influencing real-world situations comes from a recent statistical analysis of officiating in NBA (National Basketball Association) games, which claims to find evidence of an ‘‘opposite race bias’’ (Price &Wolfers, ms). The study, which took into account data from the 12 seasons from 1991–2003, found evidence that white referees called slightly but significantly more fouls on black players than white players, as well as evidence of the converse: black referees called slightly but significantly more fouls on white players than on black players.
* The racial composition of teams and refereeing crews was revealed to have slight but systematic influence on other statistics as well, including players’ scoring, assists, steals, and turnovers. The study found that players experience a decrease in scoring, assists and steals, and an increase in turnovers when playing before officiating crews primarily composed of members of the opposite race.
* the last couple of decades have shown a significant decrease in the expression of explicit racist attitudes…
* alcohol consumption interferes with the capacity to intentionally control the expression of these biases.
John M. Doris writes the Introduction:
* In the academy, the study of morality has historically been a special province of philosophy, while the study of mental processes has, for the past century or so, largely been the province of psychology and allied sciences. At the same time, recent philosophy has been largely speculative or theoretical (despite the robust empirical interests of many canonical philosophers), while the methods of contemporary psychology have
characteristically been empirical or experimental (despite the robust theoretical interests of many canonical psychologists). The results have been uneven: philosophy has often been light on fact, and psychology has often been light on theory.
From elsewhere in the book:
* So…what follows from the evolution of morality…? Very little.
* Norm violators are likely to feel shame or guilt (depending on which emotion is emphasized in their culture). Victims of norm violations and third parties are likely to feel anger or disgust toward norm violators. These emotions motivate behavior: the anticipation of feeling ashamed and guilty motivates avoiding the violation of norms, shame and guilt motivate reparative behavior, and anger motivates punishment. Disgust causes third parties to distance themselves from norm violators, which results in the loss of cooperative opportunities for the norm violators. Anticipatory fear of shame or guilt often motivates norm compliance…
* Norms, either informal or formal, are ancient: the historical record has no trace of a society without norms. Furthermore, norms are universal (although the content of norms varies tremendously across cultures). Small-scale societies are typically regulated by informal norms, while large-scale societies are typically regulated by informal and formal norms. All known societies also have policing mechanisms that ensure people’s compliance with the prevalent norms…
* While people reason poorly about non normative matters, they are adept at reasoning about normative matters…
* The existence of a cognitive system that seems dedicated specifically to produce good reasoning about norms from an early age on provides some suggestive evidence that normative cognition is an adaptation. Generally, the functional specificity of a trait is (defeasible) evidence that it is an adaptation. Furthermore, the fact that a trait develops early and that its development is distinctive—it is independent from the development of other traits—suggests that natural selection acted on its developmental pathway. The early development of a psychological trait suggests that it is not acquired as a result of our domain-general learning capacity; the distinctive development of a psychological trait suggests that it is not acquired as a by-product of the acquisition of another psychological capacity (for further discussion, see Machery, forthcoming). Thus, evidence tentatively suggests not only that normative cognition is an evolved trait, but also that it is an adaptation.
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* Musicians and singers, not surprisingly, used the widest range of notes. In the course of a conversation, they’d use many thirds (moving from do to mi), fourths (do up to fa), and fifths (from do to sol). Engineers used mostly thirds and tended to stay within that small range. And bankers used only seconds (do-re), which
are very limiting and almost monotonous. After a while my friend had no trouble guessing what a person did for a living, based simply on the intervals used in speech. He also identified the odd, dissonant intervals (minor seconds and flatted fifths) that cause us instantly to back off from someone we think might be emotionally off — the wackos and crazies we sometimes come across.
* Whispering and soft, airy speech happen to be murderous for the vocal cords. That alone is reason enough for me to encourage you to broaden your repertoire of “approachable” voices to include something a little easier on the pipes. A full 80 percent of all singers who develop physical problems with their vocal cords do so because of the way they speak, not the way they sing.
* To the brain, speaking and singing feel almost like the same thing. They use the same body parts, the same
muscles, and when you sing, your brain simply thinks you’re speaking but sustaining words an unusually long time and using more pitch variation.
* Paying attention to alignment will help you eliminate much of the muscle tension that impedes good singing and speaking. I’m impressed by the ideas developed by movement specialists like those practicing the Alexander Technique, and I think they have definite applications for the work we’re doing here. Alexander Technique experts believe that our bodies were designed to move and perform easily. Watch a healthy toddler in action and you will see an erect spine, free joints, and a large head balancing effortlessly on a small put unwanted pressure on the body, exerting more force than we need for even the simplest act — standing, sitting, or, I would add, singing. Paying attention to the alignment of the head and the spine can help correct the body’s overall coordination and bring us back into balance. So can being aware of how much force we’re putting into simple actions like lifting a book, opening a jar — or breathing. Balance, once we find it, is essentially effortless, and so is the flow of air into and out of our bodies. Discovering a way of standing that opens and lines you up may seem incidental to singing, but it frees space and energy for producing beautiful sounds.
* A newscaster’s goal is most often to make negative information sound intriguing but not depressing. Rather than giving in to the emotions tied to news of death and devastation, they look for ways to keep a high-energy, positive sound in their voices. The feeling of energy is created in part by the way they “punch” particular words, making them louder, or lifting the pitch, for emphasis. These speakers also end nearly every sentence by either staying on the same note or going higher. In regular conversation, most of us drop the pitch at the end of a sentence, which releases tension and lowers the feeling of intensity we’re creating. But by ending on the same pitch or going higher, news voices sustain the feeling of importance that they’ve built around what they’re saying — and leave you wanting to hear what comes next.
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* When I signed a lease on an apartment on Corning in 2018, I couldn’t believe my luck. The location couldn’t be beaten — 15 minutes from the beach, 20 from Downtown, a stone’s throw from Beverly Hills — yet I could afford it on a writer’s salary. Moreover, at a moment when I felt ambivalent about Orthodox Judaism, I could observe as I pleased. Most of the block’s residents were of Mexican descent, as was my new roommate, a stranger who had posted on Craigslist. But the neighborhood was adjacent to the heavily Orthodox Pico-Robertson area where I grew up, and I could walk to my parents’ for Shabbat dinner.
What I did not then understand was that the neighborhood, the very block, had changed a lot over the past 60-plus years. My good fortune had actually come at the tail end of a decades-long process of race-based discrimination. The Jewish revival of La Cienega Heights, as the neighborhood has been known since 2003, has not quite happened at the expense of Black life. But the trajectory of these 18 square blocks underscores the subtle ways in which American Jews, including myself, often benefit from structural anti-Black racism without realizing it.
* La Cienega Heights stayed predominantly white and Jewish through the 1950s.
Then, in 1967, came the first seeds of integration. That was the year the original cohort of Black students from South Los Angeles was bused to Alexander Hamilton High School, a mile from Corning Street. By 1972, half the school’s students were Black; by the 1980 census, 60% of La Cienega Heights residents were Black. Many of the area’s white residents, including most of its Jewish population, had moved out.
La Cienega Heights was not spared the introduction of rock cocaine into Black communities or the emergence of street gangs during the 1980s. Wrought-iron window bars and barbed wire went up around the neighborhood as a homegrown gang, the Playboy Gangster Crips, sold crack on Corning Street and controlled the surrounding blocks. The 1987 injunction developed to stop that gang, the first of its kind in the country, was the first of a series of crackdowns on crime in the neighborhood; what followed over the next 30 years was a gradual outflow of the neighborhood’s Black residents and an influx of Latino immigrants who took their place.
* La Cienega Heights — the area bound by Robertson and La Cienega boulevards, between Sawyer Street and Cadillac Avenue, and to be clear, a place with no heights to speak of — is now roughly 20% Black and 50% Latino.
* La Cienega Heights has sprouted a kollel (an institution that supports full-time Torah scholars), more sukkahs crop up every fall, and I see as many yarmulkes as pet dogs on the walk to shul. The Black community does not seem likely to return to its previous numbers.
* In her 2015 book “Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries,” which contains a historical ethnography of La Cienega Heights, Ana Muñiz, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California-Irvine, writes that one resident estimated the neighborhood was 80% Jewish in the 1950s. As they found professional success, those Jews sent their children to Hamilton, one of the top public high schools in the city. They got zoning laws changed so they could put up apartments in their backyards.
Then came busing.
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* For their part the kings were aware of all the advantages of the Roman faith. Christ was a more powerful support in war than Woden, and the Christian God offered more effective lordship than Thor. One hitherto pagan priest went to the trouble of destroying his own temple to prove the point. The Roman Church preferred the rule of strong kings and unified governments; it made the work of religious control much easier. The priests were the literate members of the kingdom and, at a time when legal documents and title deeds and proclamations of every kind were being published, they became the indispensable administrators of the state. Almost as soon as the first missionaries set foot on Thanet, the kings of the vicinity began to issue laws. ‘If anyone kills a man, he is to pay as ordinary wergild 100 shillings. If hair-pulling occurs, 50 sceattas [silver pennies] are to be paid as compensation.’
The kings were also happy to adopt a quasi-liturgical role as the embodiment of the people in public ritual. This was a way of enhancing authority. It was a way of enforcing respect and ensuring obedience. Kings and saints appear, in England, within the same period. And they are often the same thing. King Edwin and King Aethelbert are known to posterity as St Edwin and St Aethelbert. There were occasional reactions. King Sigeberht of Kent was killed by two of his kinsmen for the tiresome practice of forgiving his enemies.
Yet on the whole Christianity helped to bring unity to a kingdom. To adapt the old Catholic motto, a people who pray together stay together. The encouragement of moral discipline, by the priests, had a material effect upon the social discipline of the country. In the graveyard remains of great ladies in the seventh century, from Kent and Wessex, from Mercia and East Anglia, there is a much greater uniformity of ornament. The various regions of the country were slowly coming together. A single English Church seemed to require a single English nation as its stage. It was the time of the Christian conversion that turned all the people of the country, in the words of Pope Gregory the Great, into ‘Angelcynn, of English race’. Soon after a list was compiled of ‘the Saints of God who rest in Engla lond’. Bede wrote of ‘the Holy Church of the English nation’, implicitly excluding the Welsh and the Picts. England, as we understand it today, was created by the Christian Church.
So the Church was an essential aspect of government. That is why the boundaries of the dioceses followed the frontiers of the old tribal kingdoms. Worcester followed the same area as the district of the Hwicce, for example, and Hereford of the Magonsaetan. The lines of authority had been passed on. The diocesan synods were like parliaments, where laws were debated and where kinfolk could meet. Bishops were in any case aristocrats, members of the various royal families of the land. When the king called a Church synod in London, secular as well as spiritual lords would attend.
The king’s edicts invariably took an ecclesiastical tone. The archbishops, of York or of Canterbury, drew up the national law codes in consultation with the king. Only after the arrival of the Normans in England was there any formal separation between Church and State. In a similar spirit abbots and bishops were often part of the war-bands of the great magnates; one bishop of Sherborne, Heahmund, was killed in a bloody battle against northern invaders. He may have fulfilled the former role of the pagan high priest guiding companies of warriors.
There existed large organizations known as minsters, communities of priests and monks that, as the word suggests, ministered to their surrounding areas. Between the seventh and ninth centuries many hundreds of such foundations were planted so that every district had its minster. They represent the original expression of Christian England, with all the energy and power of first things. They acted as centres of patronage and learning; they maintained trade and agriculture. They organized the surrounding countryside with their constant demand for food rents. They were essentially royal courts, their abbots and abbesses an integral part of the aristocracy, where Christ was overlord.
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Criminology professor Ana Munoz produced this 2015 ethno-graphic history of La Cienega Heights.
From Amazon: “Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries…explores the history of the area to explain how Cadillac-Corning became viewed by outsiders as a “violent neighborhood” and how the city’s first gang injunction—a restraining order aimed at alleged gang members—solidified this negative image. As a result, Muñiz shows, Cadillac-Corning and other sections became a test site for repressive practices that eventually spread to the rest of the city.”
Here are some highlights:
* Thank you, Adam and Christina at the Soros Justice Fellowships for your continued belief, concern, and support.
* During the first part of my research, from the summer of 2007 to the summer of 2010, I lived in the 18- square-block Cadillac-Corning neighborhood.
* I was struck by how residents, prosecutors, business owners, and police spent entire meetings vehemently complaining about Cadillac- Corning as well as by how they collaborated on repressive strategies. It was also apparent, however, that civilians and law enforcement often conflicted with one another on their assessment of
proper tactics in the neighborhood. In fact, the residents were often more militaristic than the police. Community group members were not representative of neighborhood residents. Their high levels of formal community
involvement made them unique. It is precisely this uniqueness and unrepresentativeness, however, that interested me. Community groups planned to shape the neighborhood in specific ways. They reached out to leaders in local government, the LAPD, the City Attorney’s Office and to business interests to control access to the neighborhood, resource distribution, the appearance of the area, and the behavior of residents.
* Cadillac-Corning is a predominantly working- class black and Latino immigrant neighborhood. It sits on the edge of the West Los Angeles police jurisdiction, which includes some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country.
* The neighborhood consists primarily of two- and three- story apartments built in the 1960s, punctuated
occasionally by a single- family home built in the 1920s. Most apartments are surrounded by wrought- iron fences, some with spikes pointing inward, that were installed in the 1970s and 1980s. The housing is dense, with narrow alleyways in between and behind apartment buildings. Parking along both sides of every street essentially creates one-lane roads throughout the neighborhood. According to the 2010 Census, 86% of all occupied housing in Cadillac-Corning was renter- occupied units. Sixteen percent of residents in Cadillac-Corning were white, 18% were black or African American, and 59% were Hispanic or Latino. The median household income for the 2000 Census, however, was $28,180. Thirty-two percent of families lived below the poverty level.
* Crossing the street to a surrounding neighborhood is an abrupt change from dense city life to an almost suburban space of trim lawns, ample parking, quiet sidewalks, and large houses. For example, in 2010, 66% of residents in the census tract to the north were white, 9.5% were black or African American, 8.5% were Asian, and 11% were Hispanic or Latino (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2010c). In the 2000 Census, the median household income was $45,641 with only 9% of families below poverty level (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2000d). The area to the north included more owner- occupied units and more whites than Cadillac-Corning. Furthermore, according to the 2000 Census, the inhabitants in the renter- occupied units to the north had higher incomes than those in the Cadillac-Corning census tract.
The tract to the immediate west, which includes Beverlywood Estates, had a drastically different composition than Cadillac-Corning, with 93% of all occupied housing owner- occupied (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2010d). The area to the west was 86% white, 1.5% black or African American, 5.5% Asian, and 4% Hispanic or Latino (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2010d). In 2000, this area had a median household income of $114,097, with only 2% of families below poverty level… Many of the residents in the surrounding neighborhoods are upperclass,
white, and Jewish.
* In 1997, Cadillac-Corning was a site for the SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment) model. The SARA model is a problem- solving policing method in which officers collaborate with neighborhood prosecutors, landlords, and community groups to fight crime, blight, and quality- of- life offenses. The SARA method is now
widely used by police departments nationally.
* In 2003, a blue sign went up at the intersection of Cadillac Avenue and La Cienega Boulevard. The sign boasted the city seal of Los Angeles and the name “La Cienega Heights.” A dozen or so people in a community group voted to rename the neighborhood. They were hoping the new name would “rehabilitate” the neighborhood’s status. But the new veneer has not buried a reputation decades in the making. There are still whispers about Cadillac- Corning at homeowners association meetings in the surrounding wealthier, whiter neighborhoods. A thirty- something white man with dark- rimmed glasses confided to a fellow Beverlywood Homeowners Association member, “I drive Cadillac every day. My wife is terrified.” A young pantsuit-clad woman gasped in response, “Oh my god, I would be scared too.”
* The ideal of the single- family home was central to Los Angeles’s sprawling development (Fishman 1987, 156– 157). Los Angeles was the land where everyone could have a car and where everyone’s backyard was assaulted by year- round sunshine. The first houses were built in the Cadillac- Corning area in the 1920s. Through the 1930s and 1940s, architect and Bel- Air developer Elwain Steinkamp built Spanish- style houses and duplexes characterized by tile roofs, courtyards, and large glass windows (Oliver 1989). The shopping center where a Ross Dress for Less discount store and CVS drug store now stand was a dairy farm at the time. Bill, a Jewish man who lives just south of Cadillac- Corning, grew up in the area and graduated from Hamilton High School in 1966. He
recalled, “Most of the time I was there it was about 90 percent white and about 80 percent Jewish.”
* Property management companies began accepting Section 8 renters (people entitled to governmental low- income housing assistance). Rental prices decreased, and tenants stayed for shorter periods of time than they had previously. Lower- income renters with a shorter tenure may have been to whom Brenda, the longtime resident quoted in the beginning of this chapter, was referring when she said, “When the big management companies started to purchase the buildings and take them over, there just seemed to be a shift in the type of person that you would see living in the neighborhood.” The changes in housing were followed by the demographic change from a Jewish to African American residential area, a shift that was important in the development of Cadillac-
Corning’s reputation.
* During World War II, employment in the defense industry brought large numbers of African Americans to Los Angeles. The rapid expansion of the aerospace industry and the establishment of military bases opened up
new job opportunities. Until 1948, racially restrictive covenants to maintain “neighborhood stability” were common throughout the United States. African Americans were confined to the southern part of the city.
* After the war, Jews also migrated to Los Angeles in large numbers. Jewish veterans from across the nation purchased homes in Los Angeles. Despite being shut out of the WASP (white Anglo- Saxon Protestant) downtown elite by a wave of anti- Semitism in the 1920s, Jews were able to enter retail, Hollywood, and Westside real estate. Consequently, Jewish elites formed a Westside power center around Century City, just west of Cadillac- Corning (Leonard 2003).
Hamilton High School (“Hami High”) opened in 1931. In the mid 1960s, Hamilton and the surrounding neighborhoods were still overwhelmingly white, Jewish, and upper middle class. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) adopted an open- school transfer policy for integration purposes in 1954 (Turpin 1967b). The open- school transfer policy in theory allowed students to enroll in schools outside of their neighborhoods if space was available. It was not until the mid 1960s, however, that the LA School Board actually issued open-transfer permits to minority students.
* Hamilton was central to integration struggles on the Westside of Los Angeles. Jewish and black groups formed (sometime uneasy) coalitions to end school, housing, and employment segregation, white supremacist violence, and police brutality (Eley and Casstevens 1968; Lockard 1968; Greenberg 2006). In the wake of World War II, the Holocaust, and the Red Scare, black and Jewish organizations allied to challenge institutional anti- Semitism and antiblack racism (Collins 2006, 27). For example, when Proposition 14 passed in 1964, repealing the 1963 Rumford Fair Housing Act, only Jewish and black communities voted overwhelmingly against the proposition (Leonard 2003, 48). The Rumford Fair Housing Act prohibited discrimination by property owners and landlords on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, physical handicap, or familial status.
On Friday, September 20, 1963, members of the Congress of Racial Equality, local clergy, and black and white students from Hamilton and other high schools began a hunger strike at a Los Angeles Board of Education meeting to protest a special report on de facto segregation. Many of the white students cited their Jewish background as motivation to participate in the protest. A 17- year- old female Hamilton student remarked, “I went to
temple first. Then I thought I would do something more for my religion and my country.”
* Increasing numbers of white parents sought transfers out of Hamilton, especially to the nearly all white Culver City High School. In 1968, 8% of Hamilton students were black (Faris 1970). By 1970, the number of black students reached 20% in a student body of 3,000 students. The same year, Hamilton’s white enrollment dropped 22% from the previous year (Los Angeles Times 1973d). By the 1971–1972 school year, black enrollment had reached 34%, and minority enrollment was at 43%. In 1972 black- white enrollment reached a 50- 50 split (Smith 1972). For the first time in district history, the Los Angeles Board of Education banned transfers of minority students into and white students out of Hamilton in order to “racially stabilize” the school (Greenwood 1972). Only two
other schools were included in the ban, middle schools that were also on the Westside.
* School segregation and housing segregation relied upon one another because housing prices were (and are) tied to the quality of public schooling (Haurin and Brasington 1996; Figlio and Lucas 2004; Kane, Staiger, and Riegg 2005). The transformation from a white to a black Hamilton facilitated a parallel change in Cadillac- Corning, and vice versa. The white migration from Hamilton was later reflected in Cadillac-Corning. As one white parent moving from the area warned, “When the school goes all black, then the neighborhood goes all black”.
* In 1960, Cadillac- Corning was 99.6% white. In 1970, Cadillac- Corning was still about 98% white. The 1980 Census tells a completely different story. Over the course of the 1970s, Cadillac- Corning had become 25% white, 60% black, and 9% “Persons of Spanish Origin” (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1980a). The census tract to the north was 72% white (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1980b). The area to the west, which includes Beverlywood Estates, was over 90% white (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1980c). The average household income (in 1979 dollars) in Cadillac- Corning was $15,802 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1980d). To the west, it was over $50,000, and 97% of housing units were owner occupied (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1980e, 1980f).
* In 1973, the Los Angeles Times issued a five- part special on Hamilton. The series portrayed Hamilton so negatively that white transfers surged after it was printed, and the Los Angeles Times then issued a statement
highlighting Hamilton’s positive attributes and encouraging white parents to keep their kids at the school…
* The first article was entitled “Boredom and Tension Replace ‘Golden Age.’” The special grieved for the downfall of a segregated Hamilton:
Once it was the very image of an All- American high school on the suburban fringes of Los Angeles. Now it is an urban high school, with all the pressures and troubles which accompany that change in status. Apartment houses and homes surround the rear and two sides of the 21- acre campus, while the Santa Monica Freeway and a somewhat weary commercial district of small stores and businesses are its close neighbors to the front.
Some veteran members of the faculty look yearningly back on that period and call it Hamilton’s golden age. Their memory is of classrooms full of parent- prodded, anxious- to- succeed students who did not question a teacher’s authority and who often bit off more work than they were even assigned. It was, says one teacher, “like an
exclusive prep school.”
After the Golden Age, white teachers, students, and administration accused black students of bringing violence, drugs, conflict, and militancy to school…
The Los Angeles Times articles detailed white students’ fears: “Whites talk in apprehensive tones about being jostled in the halls or not using the bathrooms because they might be beaten up or exhorted for loose change by blacks. . . . White students tend to shun school dances and athletic events at night, largely because they or
their parents fear violence at the hands of blacks. . . . There are white students who stay away from school dances because blacks laugh at the way they dance. One coach, lamenting the problems he has getting some white boys to go out for sports, thinks the youngsters are not only unsure they can measure up to blacks athletically, but are also fearful of them.”
Teachers struggled with educating a racially and socioeconomically diverse classroom. One Hamilton teacher commented, “It’s not unusual to have a kid who is the son of a doctor and another who is from a family of seven and does not know who his father is in the same class” (Los Angeles Times 1973c). Teachers complained that students were less willing to take commands than in the old days, and they exhibited more “attitude.”
In 1970, Hamilton qualified for the first time as an “inner-city school.” The new designation earned Hamilton resources for 13 additional teaching positions. Some of the positions were converted to hire armed security agents instead of educators (Los Angeles Times 1973b). Hamilton administrators started to lock the school’s gates during school hours, and LAPD cars regularly patrolled the perimeter. As black students entered Hamilton in greater numbers, the school became more militarized. Suspensions and arrests of black students rose steeply. Black students complained that they felt as if they were in a prison. A Los Angeles Times staff writer recounted the school’s daily disciplinary routine: “The signal that a security agent is needed is one bell, sounded throughout the school by a control device in the school’s main office. One hears it periodically during the day, and it is a somewhat ominous sound. Everyone knows there is a problem, and maybe trouble.”
* In 1978, LAUSD announced that no student could transfer to a school in which the student’s racial group already made up more than 50% of enrollment.
* By 1984, minorities made up 78% of the student population… Parents threatened to sue the school district unless they investigated the number of students who had illegally migrated out of Hamilton to schools more west and more white. Parents replied that they would just enroll their children in private school rather than return
to Hamilton.
* Jews moved west into the area to gain access to employment and housing. Forty years later, black families migrated west into Cadillac-Corning for the same reason. Currently, Cadillac- Corning is home to recent Latino immigrants in search of the same things— reasonably priced housing, proximity to employment, and quality education for their children. For generations, the neighborhood offered opportunities to groups rejected elsewhere in the city, acting as a narrow passageway into the affluent Westside.
* In the 1980s, Los Angeles street gangs were exploding into popular consciousness. Rock cocaine was about to become big business. During a 1987 court case involving Cadillac- Corning residents, an LAPD officer pleaded with the judge, “Can you imagine meeting 15 year old kids who have $5,000 cash in their back pocket? Or meeting a high school junior who has the keys to a brand new Mercedes?” (City of Los Angeles v. Playboy Gangster Crips 1987b). A probation officer in the Cadillac-Corning area reflected the frustration of the police and the city prosecutors with the juvenile system: “Try to rehabilitate some of them if you can. I tried at first to help some of the kids, but I soon learned that it was a wasted effort” (City of Los Angeles v. Playboy Gangster Crips 1987c). Law enforcement officials had been locking up black youth in Cadillac- Corning, but they argued it had not worked. Probation had not worked either. They wanted a more powerful tool.
Law enforcement would have their prayers answered in the form of a gang injunction. Injunctions are civil lawsuits against neighborhoods based on the claim that gang behavior is a nuisance to nongang-involved
residents. Injunctions then restrict the movements of those labeled gang members.
* If alleged gang members are listed on an injunction, they are not allowed to engage in behavior that is
otherwise legal, including— but not limited to— congregating in groups of two or more, standing in public for more than five minutes, wearing certain clothes, and making certain gestures. They can be arrested if they engage in any of these activities. Alleged gang members can be subject to enhanced sentences of 10 years upon conviction. Gang injunctions are civil orders. Consequently, unless the enjoined are on probation or parole, they are not entitled to public defenders if they choose to appeal the order.
* By 2003, 47% of African American men in Los Angeles County between the ages of 21 and 24 were on the Los Angeles County CalGang Database.
* It is perhaps surprising that Los Angeles City’s first gang injunction was implemented in Cadillac- Corning. It was not the area with the most murders or assaults. Cadillac-Corning, however, was a threat to the boundaries of white, middle- and upper- class areas. Part of the reason Cadillac-Corning was targeted for the injunction is that it threatened geographic racial and class separation and control. Despite the sanitization of race in gang injunction policy, fear of black men and stereotypes about black families were central to the rationale for the injunction. Race is central in the evidence that was presented to attain the injunction. The injunction was meticulously designed to control the movement of black youth by criminalizing activities and behavior that is unremarkable and legal in other jurisdictions. Thus, the injunction shored up racial boundaries.
* In the 1980s, John, a white male, was a city prosecutor assigned to the West Los Angeles area. As we sat in his office on a sunny spring morning over 20 years later, he remembered asking West LAPD officers at the time
what the worst area in the division was. They took him to the corner of Cadillac Avenue and Corning Street. The neighborhood gained its name from the intersection that was infamous among West LAPD officers. In an interview, an LAPD Officer who worked Cadillac-Corning explained, “It was just the two major streets where all the activity was. It was where all the problems were occurring. Officers knew that’s where you go when you want to pick up some crimes.”
* LAPD officer: “It’s funny. If you walked or drove through RD 869 [Cadillac-Corning], you’d think the neighborhood just has young black males by the looks of who dares to walk outside.” In court testimony, he characterized black gangs as far more threatening than Latino gangs:
“They don’t even do the things that you’ll sometimes see the Mexican gangs do, like play football or have a picnic. They have only one purpose in life . . . to profit from crime. . . . Unlike the Mexican gangs where there is a very strict hierarchy and strict decisions as to who will commit a crime, in the black gangs there is less respect for that hierarchy and all the players are scrambling to be the number one guy.” (City of Los Angeles v. Playboy Gangster Crips 1987d)
The greater comfort with Latinos extended beyond gangs into stereotypes about family values, competence, and morality. In an interview, John argued that the police initially ignored black gangs based on assumptions about family structure:
“Hispanic gangs came from families with very strong family values. You’re not supposed to say it but it was real clear that in the black culture they didn’t have that kind of value system that Hispanic families had. And it carried over into the gangs. . . . A lot of times in the early, in the mid- eighties, the feeling was as bad as it gets, and you could call this maybe prejudice in a way, but the black gangs will never get it together. It was like, yeah, Hispanic gangs sold more pot. Black gangs are more ruthless, at the time they were at least, and selling, you know, and selling crack cocaine but they’re not organized. You know, one person will kill another one in a second. And that was true, there was only so much respect for their hierarchy. Law enforcement kind of rested on their laurels thinking they will never get to be really organized because we see in the black community they can’t pull their families together.”
* Early on, authorities saw the PBGs and black gangs generally as a problem. They did not, however, expect black gangs to be able to run an organized drug operation. Regarding the difference between the Italian Mafia, the Brown Shirts of Nazi Germany and black gangs, an officer testified, “All that’s is [sic] missing is the intelligent gang member who has a head on his shoulders” According to law enforcement, black gangs were violent, “ruthless,” savagely aggressive, immoral, and out of control. But they supposedly did not have the smarts that Italian- American gangsters or German Nazis possessed.
Law enforcement quickly realized their mistaken assumption about social disorganization as they tried unsuccessfully to stop the PBG’s flourishing drug trade.
* A Los Angeles Times article, entitled, “Drug- Peddling Street Gang Holds Neighborhood in Fear” mentioned only two murders. One was the murder of a 14- year- old, who the report emphasized was a gang member. The other murder covered was that of the white youth on the motorcycle: “Drug buyers have also been robbed, raped or gunned down, authorities say. In late 1986, a 16-year-old involved in a business misunderstanding with a Playboy Gangster drug dealer was killed by a lookout who, upon receiving a signal, stepped out of an apartment building and fired a gun as the youth drove off on his motorcycle”.
* For years, wealthier whites from nearby neighborhoods had enjoyed Cadillac-Corning as a convenient drug market. However, Cadillac- Corning garnered attention after several white drug patrons were robbed and one
was murdered.
* John mentioned another success to me, regarding property values: “The Realtors were— and by the way, this was at a point when real estate in the city was the highest ever— and in Corning nobody could buy a house or sell a house. It was like the way the whole country is now. Then Realtors were saying, ‘Oh, we’re seeing a change. Property values are going up and the street is looking better.’”
* One community group member commented, “I have been in the neighborhood for three years. I own two buildings. I believe that it is up to landlords to get rid of the neighborhood’s crime problem. Landlords need to raise rents and renovate their buildings to get rid of the riffraff. If any other landlords are interested, talk to me after the meeting about getting together. Thank you.” The predominantly white, home-owning group of residents was also concerned about the neighborhood’s black youth. “They have no respect for cars or anything else. They will not
move for cars that come into the intersection. The other day, a car clipped one of the kids. The driver was black, the kid on the skateboard was also black, so they laughed it off. I fear that if the driver had been another color it would not have been settled so easily.”
* Hamilton High School students are also a reliable topic. Today, Hamilton is essentially a two- track school. The campus consists of the “original school” and two magnets. The two magnets have larger percentages of white students, higher test scores, and better college attendance rates than the predominantly black and Latino original school.
* The majority of the firepower for the 64-square- mile West Division of the LAPD is concentrated within the boundaries of Cadillac- Corning. The local council office assigns a field deputy to drive though the streets and
alleyways of the neighborhood daily to address graffiti. Local media reinforces the stigmatization of the neighborhood by referring to Cadillac-Corning as a “tough pocket” that the good forces of gentrification have
not been able to “revitalize”.
* Throughout the early and mid-20th century, police in American cities strove to keep their distance from the neighborhoods they policed (Garland 2001). Detachment was not only intended as an antidote to rampant corruption but also as a way to shield departments from public scrutiny. Professionalization gave the appearance that policing could be scientifically efficient and apolitical (Lyons 1999). However, social unrest, high-profile cases of police brutality, and consistently high crime rates were a few factors that sparked misgivings about professionalized policing in the 1970s.
Two prominent models that emerged, broken windows policing and community policing, entail distinct roles for community members and law enforcement. Community policing involves cooperation between police and residents in the development of crime prevention strategies. Broken windows policing places emphasis on order maintenance by officers with community members in a supporting role. Despite the traditional theoretical differences in the two paradigms, in practice many urban police forces implement both simultaneously.
* The practice of broken windows policing relies on a racial ideology that connects the dark/foreign other to
unpredictable chaos and criminality. The disorderly people targeted by police are overwhelmingly lower-class, black, and Latino, who are using public space.
* The shoring up of threatened lines developed Cadillac-Corning as a sort of borderland space. Borderlands are places of untamed and destabilizing ambiguity. They are geopolitical spaces in flux. There is a lot at stake, which is why community groups, police, and policy makers dedicate so much time and resources to those spaces. They tried to turn upheaval into stasis and reestablish smudged lines.
* The racist policies and practices that increased the militarization of Hamilton High School and Cadillac- Corning ended up stigmatizing the neighborhood.
* While police had a monopoly on authoritative force, wealthy residents had political connections and
resources that even the police did not.
* I want people to oppose LA’s treatment of youth because they feel it viscerally and ethically, because the knowledge enters them and becomes entwined in their insides— not because investigating murders of youth or locking them up is getting too costly.
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