South Central Dreams

South Central’s evolution from almost entirely African American to mostly Latino is a bellwether for an important part of a changing America. Through statistical and ethnographic analysis, Hondagneu-Sotelo and Pastor describe that change at several levels, showing how Black-Latino relations challenge traditional notions of ethnic succession and assimilation. Rather, they reveal how residents have formed an identity based on their shared home and a minority linked fate, to organize and empower their communities. -- Edward Telles, co-author of Durable Ethnicity: Mexican Americans and the Ethnic Core
South Central LA looms large in the American imagination. Media reports of racial violence, drug trafficking and Gangster Rap music, dominate portrayals of this iconic Black and Latinx community. But as is so often the case with media depictions of marginalized urban communities, such images are largely distortions of the reality experienced by those who called South Central home. Drawing on interviews with residents, stories from those who have witnessed this community transform from predominantly Black to predominantly Latinx, and demographic and economic data that offer quantitative measures of a community in transition, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor provide texture, nuance and flavor so that outsiders can appreciate that South Central is so much more than has been depicted in films and news reports. This book captures the vibrancy, dynamism and complexity that makes South Central unique, and it reminds us that beyond the challenges and hardships facing its residents, there is also a heart and a spirit that makes this much maligned space special and unique. -- Pedro A. Noguera, author of The Trouble With Black Boys: ...And Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education
South Los Angeles is a dynamic urban space shaped by decades of demographic change, cultural sedimentation, and multi-ethnic home-making. In South Central Dreams, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor beautifully capture the soul of the area through a mixed-method study that places quantitative data in dialogue with informant voices. The result is a must-read volume that complicates popular notions about Black-Brown relations and provides important lessons for sociological theory. -- Darnell M. Hunt, co-editor of Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities
South Central Dreams offers a penetrating look at immigration, adaptation, and social change in a poor urban community shifting from black to brown. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor masterfully document how the specifics of place and time shape the actions of ordinary people as they transcend social difference to construct a common identity and transform a stigmatized urban quarter into a cherished place called 'home.' This book moves well beyond the usual cliches of a fraught relationship between Blacks and Latinos and offers a model for how community studies should be done, hopefully one that will be emulated in other cities throughout the nation. -- Douglas Massey, author of American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
Bravo! In this book, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor document a powerful new age of Latino politics. In South Central Los Angeles, Latino youth have blended the immigrant insights of their elders with the experiences of their African American classmates, neighbors, and friends, expanding the possibilities of Brown/Black solidarity by forging a brand-new political identity. 'We are South Central!,' they exclaim, embracing as their own every struggle that has determined the conditions of life in their community. -- Kelly Lytle Hernandez, author of City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor breathe life into the understudied and underappreciated complexities of South Los Angeles. Through the historical analysis of the friends, families, organizers and activists of our neighborhoods, we are shown not just our past, but our future as well. Especially in a time of racial reckoning in this country, and after an administration that spent its entire four years picking at the fabric of a delicate bond of solidarity across communities of color, South Central Dreams stands out as an important commentary on identity and civic engagement with implications for not only Los Angeles, but the rest of the country. -- Congresswoman Karen Bass, former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (2019-2020)
Two of our most esteemed scholars of immigration have given us a new paradigm for how to think about race, place, and identity. This book takes a deep dive into the lives of first- and second-generation Latinx immigrants as they shape home and identity alongside their Black neighbors in South LA. Rather than retelling the classic narrative of immigrant assimilation, this book shows the tensions and negotiations that go into making home in a multi-racial community and the power of shared struggle. The authors’ relational perspective allows them to explore the ways Latinx identity is shaped by Blackness and gives us new insights into how people set roots, find friends, and forge identities around urban anchors like community gardens, parks and neighborhood markets. -- Natalia Molina, author of How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts
South Central Dreams is a major contribution to both Latinx and Los Angeles Studies. By revisiting community residents in South Central Los Angeles a full generation after Latinos began moving into the area, the authors provide a nuanced and careful portrait of neighborhood life with important implications for Brown/Black spaces across the U.S. -- Laura Pulido, co-author of A People's Guide to Los Angeles