Not Quite White: The Emergence of Jewish ‘Ethnoburbs’ in Los Angeles 1920–2010

Abstract

Not Quite White: The Emergence of Jewish ‘Ethnoburbs’ in Los Angeles 1920–2010 Bruce A. Phillips (bio) When scholars speak of situating Jews within the American racial landscape, typically, they are speaking metaphorically. How have Jews seen themselves? How have they been perceived others?1 I offer here an alternative, more literal approach to understanding the nexus of Jews, race, and place: How have Jews situated themselves in relationship to whites with respect to where they choose to live? Even though Jewish residential choices have been to some extent constrained both by their economic resources and restrictive covenants that excluded them, every major Jewish community has seen a succession of neighborhoods where Jews have been concentrated. Even if some neighborhoods might have been closed to Jews over the course of the twentieth century, Jews have made choices among neighborhoods to which they did have access. How have Jews chosen where to live? This is not a simple question to answer because Jews do not appear to behave like white ethnics, even though sociological theory has assumed that they ought to. Indeed, when the assumption of Jewish whiteness is lifted, Jewish residential patterns, especially in their Sunbelt variety, appear most similar to those of nonwhite ethnics generally, and to the Asian-American “ethnoburb” in particular. Jews, Race, and Place in Theory Two perspectives, both deeply influenced by racial understandings, have influenced the understanding of urban residential migration: spatial assimilation and place stratification. Spatial assimilation posits a pull of migrants to mainstream (i.e., Anglo — persons who are white but not Hispanic, Latino, or Jewish) communities and amenities. Place stratification posits a push of migrants away from economically and socially [End Page 73] stigmatized (i.e., black, Latino and poor) locales. Both theories, as we shall see, have been deeply flawed in their attempts to understand Jewish residential patterns, and, as a result, have had to defer to awkward caveats to explain Jewish differences from other white ethnics. The idea of spatial assimilation goes back to the beginnings of American sociology with urban sociologists Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess. They understood the city as an ecology consisting of concentric rings emanating out from the city center, where social and physical deterioration were concentrated. The most prosperous areas were to be found at the city’s periphery. Those with the means to do so moved away from the center to the periphery.2 Douglas Massey named this process “spatial assimilation.” The literature on spatial assimilation argues that upwardly mobile minorities leave their urban enclaves in favor of the superior amenities offered by the non-ethnic suburbs.3 The theory argued that an important outcome of socioeconomic advancement for minorities is residential integration within Anglo communities. A host of characteristics important to people’s social and economic well-being are determined by residential location. For example, health, quality of education, access to employment, exposure to crime and, of course, social prestige all depend, in part, on where one lives. As social status rises, therefore, minorities attempt to convert their socioeconomic achievements into an improved spatial position, which usually implies assimilation with majority members.4 A renewed interest in spatial assimilation arose following passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which replaced national origin (i.e., racial) quotas with a system of preferences based on immigrants’ skills and family relationships with U.S. citizens. Spatial assimilation applies both to Latinos and to Asians, communities that constitute most of the post-1965 immigration, as well as to the white ethnics who immigrated to the United States in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Spatial assimilation, in general, and postwar suburbanization, in particular, were also part of the process of being seen as white for Irish, Southern European, and Eastern European immigrants.5 [End Page 74] The attempt to use spatial assimilation as a model to understand the residential patterns of Jews goes back to the Chicago School. Louis Wirth, a student of Robert Park, observed in 1928 that when Jews left Chicago’s Maxwell Street ghetto, they re-concentrated in the Lawndale neighborhood, a move that did not fit the normative white-ethnic pattern.6 Wirth explained this failure of Jews...