published April 29, 2002
maps designed by Albert Benedict / Chicago
text written by Ben Helphand / Chicago
1 | INDEX
| Myth and reality in South Central SPECIAL MAP FEATURE. Charting the past and future course of the neighborhoods at the heart of the unrest |
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published April 29, 2002 1 | INDEX |
| MAPS In the popular imagination, the 1992 Los Angeles riots are synonymous with South Central, a notorious section of town that stretches along either side of Central Avenue directly below the city's downtown. "For a while after the riots," explains William Fulton in his book The Reluctant Metroplis, "the definition of South Central seemed to expand every day to include any area where damage and violence had occurred and, more broadly, any area where nervous white people were reluctant to venture." In reality, the areas lumped together and labeled "South Central" comprise at least three different sections: Pico-Union, a Hispanic neighborhood near downtown; the middle-class African American neighborhoods of the Crenshaw district; and the Korean neighborhoods in and around Koreatown. Though popularized as the quintessential African American ghetto in films such as Training Day and Devil in a Blue Dress, nowadays South Central is largely Hispanic. Likewise, the 1992 riots--often talked about as black-and-white event, that supposedly took place in an African American enclave--were in fact a multi-ethnic uprising stretching across many distinct and economicallydiverse neighborhoods. From 1970 to 2000 the African American population of South Central dropped from 73 percent to 38 percent. According to Fulton, "black flight" has been responsible for much of the decline. "Affluent blacks are moving westward to the hills, and middle-class blacks are basically skipping over all the white suburbs to a few traditionally black suburbs where there's an established African American community," he said at a recent public lecture. "Increasingly as well, they'll just skip out of this region entirely and go to Las Vegas, where housing is cheap and there's lots of jobs, and there's an established African American community." Those who remain find themselves in a poorer and older community--and one in which they are steadily being outnumbered. (The Hispanic population in South Central increased from 13 percent in 1970 to 54 percent in the 2000 census.) The golden age of African American South Central may have rivaled that of Harlem, but the foreseeable future of the area lies with the Mexican and Central American ethnics who are laying roots and investing in its neighborhoods. One portentous trend is the recent boom in the market for starter homes in South Central--the vast majority of them bought by first-time Latino homebuyers. "The young Latino families--children or grandchildren of immigrants most of them, who are moving into the middle class and want to buy starter homes--are not willing to drive eighty miles to buy a single-family home," says Fulton. "They want to buy a house near their families, in the neighborhoods they grew up in, near their churches and other institutions." Ironically, the 1992 riots paved the road for this transformation in South Central by driving out large numbers of the area's former residents and businesses. "This created an opportunity that didn't exist previously for working-class, mostly immigrant folks who wanted to buy a house to go buy one," Fulton says. "And so in a certain, really weird kind of a way, the riots gave the emerging Latino populations a stake in South Central they didn't have." MAPS Mapping services courtesy of the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The 1990 maps were designed using census tracks from the 1990 census. The 2000 maps were designed using census block groups from the 2000 census. The boundaries of the riots and of South Central are approximate.
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Myth and reality in South Central |
