Street Meeting

Whether a formal Los Angeles school of scholarship develops along the lines of the Chicago School of Sociology, the recent wave of studies detailing the evolution of America's second-largest city has been impressive. We can now add the name of Mark Wild to a list of contributors that includes William Deverell, Matt Garcia, Greg Hise, and George Sanchez. Wild focuses on the daily interaction of racially mixed, working-class, central-city Angelenos during the opening four decades of the last century. While his final product may not be quite as conclusive as he wished, it does provide useful explanations for “the meanings and boundaries of racial and ethnic communities” (p. 5). And the author's keen eye for gender patterns markedly enhances his presentation. A rich harvest of oral histories and interviews as well as expert handling of contemporary theses and dissertations (especially from the University of Southern California) allows Wild to portray how African Americans, Asian Americans, native-born whites, and European immigrants mixed but never melted in neighborhoods to the east and south of downtown Los Angeles. Situated along key rail lines and major north-south streets that connected downtown to the harbor, these mixed-use neighborhoods filled with Jews, Italians, Mexicans, blacks, and some nonimmigrant whites who developed a greater affinity with their neighbors of color than with the prevailing “whiteness” that dominated the rest of L.A. Especially revealing are chapters on children and mixed couples, although the latter ultimately reveals that there may have been more racial interaction in matters of sex-for-money than in true romance. As for children, their entrance into young adulthood often ended fluid associations that previously crossed ethnic and racial lines. Part of growing up involved a recognition of how the adult world enforced social segregation. The limits of interracial experiences were also evident in the failure of the Church of All Nations, a Methodist ministry intended to bring together residents of all faiths, ages, and races

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