There’s no sunshine: Spatial anguish,deflections,and intersectionality in Compton and South Central

Abstract

Research on “territorial stigmatization” analyzes how residents of stigmatized spaces negotiate their blemished reputations. It reveals their distress, despondency, and resistance as they encounter the space’s negative imagery. Building on this research, this paper introduces the concept of spatial anguish to capture the shame and embarrassment residents feel because of their stigmatized space. To do so, it uses an intersectional analysis to show how anguished residents try to deflect the stigma through reinforcing racist and sexist imageries of their neighbors.

Keywords

Intersectionality race gender space Los Angeles ethnography

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allen N (2014) Straight into Compton. The Telegraph, 26 December.

Alonso

(2010) Out of the void. In: Hunt

Ramon

(eds) Black Los Angeles, New York: New York University Press, pp. 140–167.

Anderson

(1992) Streetwise, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

August

(2014) Challenging the rhetoric of stigmatization. Environment and Planning A 46(6): 1317–1333.

Authurson

Darcy

Rogers

(2014) Televised territorial stigma. Environment and Planning A 46(6): 1334–1350.

Beckett

(1997) Making Crime Pay, New York: Oxford University Press.

Bennett

(2010) Looking for the ‘Hood and Finding Community. In: Hunt

Ramon

(eds) Black Los Angeles, New York: New York University Press, pp. 215–231.

Blatchford

(2009) The Black Hand, New York: HarperCollins.

Blumstein

Wallman

(2000) The Crime Drop in America, New York: Cambridge University Press.

10.

Bourdieu

(1990) The Logic of Practice, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

11.

Bourdieu

(1993) Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

12.

Brown

Vigil

Taylor

(2012) The ghettoization of Blacks in Los Angeles. Journal of African American Studies 16(2): 209–225.

13.

Castro T (2013) Latino immigration transforms South Los Angeles. Huffington Post, 17 August.

14.

Choo

Ferree

(2010) Practicing intersectionality in sociological research. Sociological Theory 28(2): 129–149.

15.

Collins

(2008 [1990]) Black Feminist Thought, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge.

16.

Connell

(1987) Gender and Power, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

17.

Connell

(2005 [1995]) Masculinities, 2nd edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

18.

Contreras

(2013) The Stickup Kids, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

19.

Contreras

(2015) Standpoint Purgatorio. In: Javier

Bourgois

Scheper-Hughes

(eds) Violence at the Urban Margins, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 249–264.

20.

Crenshaw

(1991) Mapping the margins. Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241–1299.

21.

Curtis

(1998) The improbable transformation of inner-city neighborhoods. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 88(4): 1233–1276.

22.

Davis

(1992) City of Quartz, New York: Vintage.

23.

DeGraaf

(1970) The City of Black Angels. Pacific Historical Review 39(3): 323–352.

24.

DeGraaf

(1980) Race, sex, and region. Pacific Historical Review 39(3): 323–352.

25.

Del Barco M (2011) Hate-crime arrests signal ‘Victory' for California City. National Public Radio, 14 June.

26.

Devereux

Haynes

Power

(2011) At the edge. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 26(2): 123–142.

27.

Fanon

(2008 [1952]) Black Skin, White Masks, New York: Grove Press.

28.

Ford A and Rivera C (1992) Hope Takes Hold as Bloods, Crips Say Truce is for Real. Los Angeles Times, 21 May.

29.

Garbin

Millington

(2012) Territorial stigma and the politics of resistance in a Parisian Banlieue. Urban Studies 49(10): 2067–2083.

30.

Gilens

(1999) Why Americans Hate Welfare, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

31.

Glover S and Winton R (2009) Dozens arrested in crackdown on Latino Gang accused of targeting Blacks. Los Angeles Times, 22 May.

32.

Goffman

(1963) Stigma, New York: Simon & Schuster.

33.

Hammonds

(1999) Toward a genealogy of Black female sexuality. In: Price

Shildrick

(eds) Feminist Theory and the Body, New York: Routledge, pp. 93–104.

34.

Hastings

(2004) Stigma and social housing estates. Journal of Housing and Built Environment 19(3): 233–254.

35.

Hipp

Tita

Boggess

(2009) Intergroup and intragroup violence. Criminology 47(2): 521–564.

36.

Horne

(1995) Fire This Time, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

37.

Hunt

(1997) Screening the Los Angeles “Riots”, New York: Cambridge University Press.

38.

Hyams

(2003) Adolescent Latina bodyspaces. Antipode 35(3): 536–558.

39.

Jennings A and Esquivel P (2015) ‘Straight Outta’ a different Compton. Los Angeles Times, August 14.

40.

Kirkness

(2014) The Cités Strike Back. Environment and Planning A 46(6): 1281–1296.

41.

Kretsedemas

(2010) But She’s Not Black!. Journal of African American Studies 14(2): 149–170.

42.

Krikorian M and Krikorian G (1997) Watts Truce Holds Even as Hopes Fade. Los Angeles Times, 18 May.

43.

Lamont

(2000) The Dignity of Working Men, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

44.

Lamont

Molnar

(2002) The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology 28(1): 167–195.

45.

Leitner

(2012) Spaces of encounters. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102(4): 828–846.

46.

Lewis J (2008) Villaraigosa unveils South LA plan. Los Angeles Sentinel, October 16.

47.

Linthicum K (2016) Donald Trump says immigration is at a record high. Los Angeles Times, 27 April.

48.

Littlefield

(2008) The media as a system of racialization. American Behavioral Scientist 51(5): 675–685.

49.

McCall

(2005) The complexity of intersectionality. Signs 30(3): 1771–1800.

50.

Massey

Denton

(1993) American Apartheid, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

51.

Medina J (2012) In the years since the riots, a changed complexion in South Central. New York Times, 24 April.

52.

Merskin

(2007) Three faces of Eva. The Howard Journal of Communications 18(2): 133–151.

53.

Parenti

(1999) Lockdown America, New York: Verson.

54.

Pereira

Queiros

(2014) It’s not a Bairro, is it? Environment and Planning A 46(6): 1297–1316.

55.

Quillian

Pager

(2001) Black neighbors, higher crime? American Journal of Sociology 107(3): 717–787.

56.

Quinones S (2014) The end of gangs. Pacific Standard, 29 December.

57.

Quinones S (2015) A change in the landscape. Los Angeles Times, 7 February.

58.

Robinson

(2010) Race, space, and the evolution of Black Los Angeles. In: Hunt

Ramon

(eds) Black Los Angeles, New York: New York University Press, pp. 21–59.

59.

Rodriguez G (2007) Harbor gateway's commuter gangs. Los Angeles Times, 21 January.

60.

Rubin J (2012) Despite weak economy, crime in Los Angeles County still declines. Los Angeles Times, 5 January.

61.

Said

(1978) Orientalism, New York: Penguin.

62.

Sides

(2004) Straight into Compton. American Quarterly 58(3): 583–605.

63.

Sims C (2003) In Los Angeles, It’s South-Central No More. New York Times. 10 April.

64.

Slater

Anderson

(2012) The reputational ghetto. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 37(4): 530–546.

65.

Smith

(1996) The New Urban Frontier, New York: Routledge.

66.

Terry D (1992) After the riots; hope and fear in Los Angeles as deadly gangs call Truce. New York Times, 12 May.

67.

U.S. Census Bureau (2012) American community survey 5-year estimates. Available at: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml#none.

68.

Vasquez

(2010) Blurred borders for some but not ‘others’. Sociological Perspectives 1, 53, 45–72.

69.

Wacquant

(2007) Territorial marginality in the age of advanced marginality. Thesis Eleven 91: 66–77.

70.

Wacquant

(2010) Urban desolation and symbolic denigration in the hyperghetto. Social Psychology Quarterly 73(3): 215–219.

71.

Wacquant

Slater

Pereira

(2014) Territorial stigmatization in action. Environment and Planning A 46(6): 1270–1280.

72.

Warr

(2005) Social networks in a ‘discredited’ neighbourhood. Journal of Sociology 41(3): 285–308.

73.

Wassenberg

(2004) Renewing stigmatised estates in the Netherlands. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 19(3): 271–292.

74.

Watt

(2006) Respectability, roughness and race. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30(4): 776–797.

75.

Webb

(1999) Dark Alliance, New York: Seven Stories Press.

76.

Weide R (2015) Race War? Inter-Racial Conflict Between Black and Latino Gang Members in Los Angeles County. (Unpublished Doctoral Disseration) New York: New York University.

77.

Wilson

(1987) The Truly Disadvantaged, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

78.

Wilson

(1997) When Work Disappears, New York: Vintage.

79.

Zimring

(2006) The Great American Crime Decline, New York: Oxford University Press.