Seasoned Long Enough in Concentration

Abstract

Communities of color in post–World War II California sought, with varying degrees of success, to participate in the suburban dream of upward mobility. In the process, they reshaped the physical and racial geography of metropolitan Los Angeles, creating places like “the first suburban Chinatown” and “the Mexican Beverly Hills.” In the South Bay, hub of the region’s aerospace economy, Japanese Americans and African Americans purchased homes and became civic leaders in the neighboring suburban cities of Gardena and Compton, respectively. Japanese American realtors and businessmen actively exploited transnational social and kinship networks to attract Japanese corporate capital to Gardena, investment that helped the suburb survive loss of revenue from closing card clubs and aerospace recession in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At the same time, they cooperated with Anglo city and county officials to prevent the disinvestment and negative racialization impacting Compton from extending to Gardena. In their roles as suburban place entrepreneurs, Japanese Americans strategically manipulated the available roles of transnational broker and model minority to attain the full benefits of first-class citizenship tied to suburban homeownership.