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[[File:Popular_Culture_in_the_Age_of_White_Flight.jpg|left|250px|thumbnail|<i>Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight</i> by Eric Avila]]__NOTOC__If as Lizabeth Cohen argues in ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375707379/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0375707379&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=83b4b000efacea34c2979a653811829f A Consumers' Republic]'' that postwar government policies as represented by the G.I. Bill, VA/FHA home loans, and new tax policies sought to create a “consumer republic” that enhanced the purchasing power, conflating citizenship with consumerism, this new orientation reverberated politically, socially, economically, and spatially. While most writers have focused intensely on housing and school desegregation struggles, others have employed a broader lens, employing critical race theory to popular culture of the age.
Even Los Angeles' La Fiesta Parade, which featured numerous ethnicities and races did so in the pursuit of profit all while reifying racial/ethnic hierarchies, as Deverall points out "The Genius of La Fiesta was that it appropriated, enviously, celebratory aspects of regional Mexican culture for commercial and boosterish purposes of white Los Angeles. La Fiesta made it possible for whites simultaneously to borrow from and denigrate supposedly innate Latin cultural forms. Even more remarkably, La Fiesta's creators did so in a scripted atmosphere of presumed ethnic peacefulness, even progress." (Deverall, 63) According to Deverall, cultural production attached various traits to Mexican residents while policies and economics conspired to isolate them from whites. If systems, economics, and racism removed the physical presence of Mexican Los Angeles from its white counterpart, then cultural works like La Fiesta and John McGroaty's popular ''Mission Play''provided narratives that minimized or marginalized non-whites, notably Mexicans.
Though Avila’s insights regarding film noir and Disneyland serve as ''Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight’s'' strongest chapters, his observations concerning the construction of Dodger Stadium in the contested area of Chavez Ravine also prove valuable. By tracing the history of the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Avila illustrates the very different urban environment of New York’s most famous borough, Brooklyn.<ref>please do not pretend that anyone really thinks of Manhattan as a borough and if they do they are lying.</ref> As evidenced in Ebbets Field, “[it] thus showcased a restorative vision of white masculinity while catering to an ethnically heterogeneous and boisterous crowd of men and women.” (149)
During the last few decades , the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, the demographics of the borough fundamentally changed. More nonwhites moved into the borough and became Dodgers fans. They began attending games which sometimes caused disagreements with white Dodger fans. Avila acknowledges, “many whites resented how blacks favored black players while seeming to ignore other players.” (151) Postwar housing and infrastructure policies undermined urban teams’ financial support. Additionally, the increasingly interracial environment of Ebbets Field drew suspicion from its once primarily white working-class fan base.
When the Dodgers moved West to Los Angeles, the city agreed to remove those residing in Chavez Ravine so that Dodger’s stadium could be constructed. Labeled “blight ridden,” no doubt in part to the significant Mexican/Mexican American population residing there, public referendums approved of the use of eminent domain by the city. Los Angeles’ proximity to Hollywood enabled Dodger officials to harness the power of fame to promote the decision, “After starring in the opening telecast of Disneyland in 1955, Ronald Reagan appeared on the Dodgerthon, decrying the argument against Proposition B as “one of the most dishonest documents I ever read in my life.” (165) Unions proved no more protective as they joined “the pro-growth coalition … supporting the construction of Dodger Stadium in the Chavez Ravine.” (169) Cohen’s work suggests that unions nationwide adopted this position in a push for increasing the purchasing power of working-class members.
Moreover, though Avila acknowledges that in some ways the Dodgers served as a “communal glue”, it failed to be all-encompassing as it remained tied to masculinity, “in whatever ways major league baseball helped to solidify interracial alliances in Los Angeles, it so around idealizations of male athleticism, competition, and camaraderie.” (181) For Avila, Dodger Stadium reiterated the vision of a “monumental family friendly and well-insulated environment that suited the classless fantasies of a suburban public fleeing Ebbets Field and its slum-like setting.” (183) It symbolized the political shift in which social programs like public housing received increasingly less government funding, instead encouraging subsidies for private development, thus stoking racial tension and conflict.
Avila’s final chapter focuses on the freeway construction in Los Angeles proves less insightful, primarily because the subject has been covered repeatedly. Numerous writers have explored the ramification of freeway construction for urban areas and suburbs. HOLC and FHA policies labeled mixed, and minorities communities blighted, enabling pro-development forces to push through freeway construction that demolished these neighborhoods. Additionally, Avila points out that highway construction, when combined with urban renewal and “their cultural manifestations, reversed the fundamentally urban process by which the city’s classes and races came to “know” each other by their mutual presence within public venues.” (214)
Avila and Deverall provide a useful pair of studies for understanding the history and cultural productions that have created the image of a white LA. Besides their historical inaccuracy, the problem with such conceptualizations the inscribing of whiteness on a region historically not white truncates the public's understanding of its real place. As numerous others have pointed out, the Mexicanization of Los Angeles serves as a return to historical tradition not a break from it. While Deverall and Avila's works remain confined to cultural observations, lacking economic and political contexts of more social or quantitative histories, they successfully establish a frame from which to question the meaning of the Los Angeles narrative.
Ultimately, the importance of Disneyland, Dodger Stadium, Noir, and freeway construction in Los Angeles and Orange Counties represented a broader American shift. Seen in Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s corporatization or as some have labeled it “Disneyfication” of Times Square, “the suburbanism that took shape in locales such as Orange County during the 1950s now extends its reach into the archetypal noir metropolis” New York. (239)
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''This article was originally published on [http://videri.org/index.php?title=Popular_Culture_in_the_Age_of_White_Flight| Videri.org] and is republished here with their permission.''
[http://videri.org/index.php?title=Guide_to_the_Literature Check out other great articles at Videri.org.]
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[[Category:20th Century History]] [[Category:Book Review]] [[Category:United States History]][[Category:Economic History]] [[Category:Videri.org]] [[Category:Historiography]] [[Category:African American History]]
