Quarters of Racial Minorities in Los Angeles
A name holds a lot of power. It creates a first impression that will be difficult to forget. It often forms the basis of identity. Los Angeles is no exception. Naturally, the names of neighborhoods mean a lot to its residents. It can create suggestions pertaining to a neighborhood’s socioeconomic status, demographic, or overall sense of community. But the unique nature of its neighborhood system creates new challenges in its naming. Los Angeles has no definite neighborhood boundaries, which means that the names that follow these indefinite boundaries can often create complicated issues for its residents.
For example, Rosten Woo mentions in his essay “Naming Los Angeles” a story of Bangladeshi residents who want to name their neighborhood for a sense of community. The problem is that their neighborhood technically resides in the area known as Koreatown. The large population of Bangladeshis, roughly fifty thousand, does not identify with this name and thus wants to change it to Little Bangladesh. But because the area that they want to become Little Bangladesh is considered the heart of Koreatown, there is much opposition, and the Bangladeshi community only gets three blocks as its neighborhood and the rest officially becomes Koreatown. This speaks to the difficulties of naming in Los Angeles. Bangladeshi and Korean cultures are very different from each other, so naming the neighborhood only one of these names would mean that one of the groups would feel excluded from the community. However, because of the nonexistent, constantly changing boundaries of these neighborhoods, there is no easy way for names to be assigned to certain areas without causing controversy and unsatisfaction. Yes, a neighborhood should be able to celebrate and embrace its culture and create a space where all people of that culture are welcome and feel at home, but there are also so many other cultural neighborhoods with the exact same dilemma.
A name can also create connotations about the neighborhood, either good or bad. Woo mentions that the name South Central “indicates mostly ‘places where black people live’” or “people shooting at each other.” Even if an event occurred somewhere with a different name, it is still referred to as South Central, so long as the event happened to the black community. The anecdote continues to tell the story of a man who pushes for the city to stop using the name South Central Los Angeles and instead use South Los Angeles, which is a much bigger area of land. South Los Angeles is too broad, and thus more difficult to identify with and create stereotypes about. This process is meant to help in reducing the stigmatization and discrimination that occurs in certain Los Angeles neighborhoods, and it does this by not providing an easy way to label and thus create stereotypes about a neighborhood. However, the problem of discrimination still exists within Los Angeles. According to Laura Pulido’s essay “Landscapes of Racial Violence,” most of the people inside Men’s Central Jail are black and brown men. In the same way that the name South Central is targeted as the main name that is used to describe things that happen in the black community, blacks and browns are targeted because of a long history of classism and discrimination that has occurred starting from the era of Spanish colonialism in Los Angeles. They are seen as lesser so many assume they must be the root of the problem and they must be incarcerated.
