Business as Usual: Ethnic Commerce and the Making of a Mexican American Middle Class in Southeast Los Angeles, 1981-1995

Abstract

This article examines the entrepreneurial and consumptive habits of Mexican Americans in Downey, California, during the 1980s and 1990s. It shows how Mexican Americans avoided ethnic entrepreneurship as they moved into and became the demographic plurality of middle-class Downey. By relying on existing networks of ethnic commerce, Mexican Americans in Downey could simultaneously partake of ethnic entrepreneurship or consumption while acceding to anti-Mexican standards of acceptable business. These place-specific commercial habits allowed Mexican Americans to pursue their new class interests as homeowners without sacrificing their cultural heritage through assimilation. In narrating the complex history of demographic change in Downey, this article suggests how racist assumptions survived as ideas of good business. It also takes seriously the tension between assimilation and ethnic retention, and considers the creation of a Mexican American middle class.