Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles

359 Pages·2007·4.11 MB·English

Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles
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Race, Space, and Riots
in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles
Janet L. Abu-Lughod
1
2007
3
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Abu-Lughod,JanetL.
Race,space,andriotsinChicago,NewYork,andLosAngeles/
byJanetL.Abu-Lughod.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-0-19-532875-2
1.Raceriots—UnitedStates—History—20thcentury. 2.AfricanAmericans—
Socialconditions—20thcentury. 3.UnitedStates—Racerelations. I.Title.
HV6477.A382007
305.896’073—dc22 2006102002
987654321
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
onacid-freepaper
Remembering
mymother’stolerancefordifference;
myhusband’scommitmenttosocialjustice
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Preface
A
nyresearcherwhohasspentlongyearswritingabookisalwaysambivalent
whenitisdone:happytoseeitpublishedbutdisappointedthatitsresults
mustbeengravedinstone(nowdigitized)—justastheprocessesofresearchand
writing have led to a new level of understanding. In an ideal world, perhaps
attainableinhyperspace,writerscouldrevisecontinuously,integratingtheirnew
insights and interpretations, asking and answering new questions, in endless
iterationsandrevisions.Butthatutopiawouldactuallybeanightmareforboth
writersandreaders.
Instead,thisbookrevisitssomeofthehistoricalquestionsIposedinmytoo
lengthyandambitiouscomparativestudyofNewYork,Chicago,andLosAngeles
as global cities within four hundred years of America’s evolving economic,
political, spatial, and demographic patterns and the role of the U. S. in the
world system. This book is a sequel. It explores the ‘‘race question’’ in greater
detail by comparing the types of major race riots each city experienced in the
twentieth century, placing these events in the context of their histories but also
incorporating insights that have continued to mature since the first book
appearedin1999.
In this book I ask in more systematic fashion why the racial and ethnic
relations in the three cities have been so different—despite being based in the
sharedracistpremisesofAmericansociety—andtowhatextentthesedifferences
canbeexplainedbythehistorical,geographic/spatial,andpoliticalcharacteristics
of the cities themselves. There are many fruitful ways these questions might be
approached,andIencourageotherscholarstopursuethem.Mystrategy,howev-
er, has been to focus on race riots as ‘‘disasters’’ (following the example of Kai
Erickson),thatis,asmomentsinhistoricaltimewhentheveneersofcivilityand
the illusions of continuity are shattered, whether from natural or human social
causes(orfromboth, as in New Orleans). Such eventsoften laybarefissuresin
the taken-for-granted social structure, thus revealing agonizing conflicts and
pain. Eventually, some healing takes place, as the skin grows back over the
viii Preface
wounds,albeitleavingscarsoverachangedstructure.ForAmericans,theWorld
Trade Center disaster is the most dramatic recent case of human origin, in
response to which we are witnessing only the first stages of aftershock and
wideningrepercussions.
Disasters, by their nature, take place in ‘‘abnormal time,’’ the experience
bracketedinmemorybysuddenbeginningsandmoredrawn-outendings.Race
riotsclearlytakeplacein‘‘abnormal’’time.Butitwouldbeaterriblemistaketo
eitheroverinterprettheir violenceassymptomsofunbridgeabledifferenceor to
dismissthemas‘‘uncaused’’emotionalresponses.
In this book I use these events as ways to understand more deeply what
GunnarMyrdalandhisassociatescalledan‘‘Americandilemma.’’AlthoughIhave
triedtoreconstructtheorderofeventsandtodescribehow thelevelsofviolence
developedovertimeandspreadinspace,Ihavealsosoughttoavoidsensational-
ism,thealmosthystericalapproachthatjournalisticaccountsexploittodramatize
raceriotsas‘‘crimes.’’Ihaveintentionallynotincludedphotographs.
Rather, I am particularly interested in tracing the various ways that the
actors engaged in or observing these struggles interpret them, and particularly
how the ‘‘forces of law and order’’ (the police and key municipal officials)
respond to the events. In short, my approachviews riots as a revealing instance
of ‘‘social structure in action,’’ when the behaviors of each of the parties to the
conflict not only act, react, and adjust to the situational crisis itself but arealso
guidedbylocalprecedentsforhandlingthem.
Aword of caution is needed. My analysis depends largely on data drawn
fromexistingcasestudiesofthesixmajorriotsselectedforcloserstudy.Thishas
inevitablyresultedinacertainunevennessoftreatment.Therichestsourcesdeal
withthe1919Chicagoriotandwiththe1965and1992LosAngelesriots.Atleast
two good studies exist that describe the New York riots of 1935 and 1943, but a
definitivestudyofthe1964NewYorkriothasyettobewritten.Lackingthat,my
analysisofNewYork’spoliticalsystemanditsdemographicchangeshasbenefited
fromthetwentyyearsIhavespentlivinginandstudyingthatcitysince1987.To
mydespair,nosyntheticaccountoftheChicagoriotof1968yetexists,andIhave
thereforehadtoconstructonefromarchivaldataandpublicreports.Fortunately,
these sources could be supplemented by my 25 years of living in and studying
Chicagoandbymyownobservationsduringtheriotitself.
Thisbook,defectiveasitmaybe,isthefirsttocomparemajorriotsinthe
threecities.Ihopethatitwillencourageotherstofleshoutthemissingaccounts
andtoreviseandcorrecttheerrorsforwhichImusttakefullresponsibility.
Acknowledgments
O
bviously, in the course of the decades in which I have been trying to
understand cities and more specifically to research and write this book,
I have accumulated too many debts to teachers, fellow scholars, friends and
students(notmutuallyexclusive),tocriticalandconstructivereaders,tolibraries,
granting institutions, and supportive universities to even begin to enumerate
them.Theyknowwhotheyare,andIbowtoacknowledgethem.However,Iwant
particularly to single out the anonymous reviewers for the Press who called my
attention toadditional sources,toMichaelJ.Rosenfeld,Amanda Seligman,and
Michael Flamm who read individual chapters and/or provided useful primary
documents, and to Jeffrey Morenoff, Willlam Bowen, and Donna Genzmer for
makingavailableoriginalcomputer-generatedmaps.
My chief debts, however, are to the authors of books and articles I have
absorbed and pondered ever since, as a high school student growing up in
Newark, New Jersey, Iwrote my senior thesis on the ‘‘Negro Novel’’more than
sixty years ago. That was my first attempt to make sense out of what I call the
‘‘American disease’’ of racial oppression, against which I have marched and
protested,althoughthisisthefirsttimeIdaretoaddmypublishedvoicetothe
vast dialogue on race relations in the United States. Truly, we all stand on the
shouldersofgiants:manyoftheirnamescanbefoundhiddenintheendnotes.
Thereis,however,myspecialdebttotheHarryFrankGuggenheimFoun-
dation, which, even as my book on New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s
GlobalCitieswasonitslongroadtopublicationattheUniversityofMinnesota
Press,awardedmearesearchgrantin1997–98tobeginaprojecttentativelytitled
‘‘Race/Ethnicity,Space,andPoliticalCulture:AComparativeStudyofCollective
ViolenceinNewYork,Chicago,andLosAngeles.’’Itiswithembarrassmentthat
I realize that a decade has elapsed since then, but I hope they will accept this
belatedfruitfromtheseedtheyhelpedtoplant.
At Oxford University Press, I have been blessed. I am grateful to editor
James Cook for shepherding the manuscript through the complex intellectual,