Chinedu writes: Baldwin Hills begs to differ. Fox Hills begs to differ. Ladera Heights (“the black Beverly Hills”) begs to differ.
Ever roll through the Crenshaw area and see all those immaculately kept mid-century homes in those immaculately kept neighborhoods? Try it. There aren’t many whites there, they’re mostly black.
Most cities are not wealthy places for rich people. Most cities are middle class, upper middle class, lower middle class, working class or poor. When most of those places go from White -> Non-White, there tends to be a decline. Upper middle class cities and towns don’t usually change over anyway. A White upper middle class city tends to stay that way.
Most cities and towns don’t go from rich White -> rich non-White. In that case, there might not be much of a change. How many non-Whites are rich? How many Blacks are rich? Only a few. Yes rich Blacks act better than most of the rest of them, but the vast majority of Blacks are not rich and never will be, so how does that help us solve our problem?
Anyway, in the vast majority of cases in the US, White -> Non-White = decline. The decline varies in severity from quite mild to catastrophic, but it’s usually there.
I met a teacher who lived in Ladera Heights and I said, “That’s a Black area with a high socioeconomic status, right?”
He looked very cynical and said, “Socioeconomically yes, sociobehaviorally, no.” The Black teachers sitting across the table gave him a sort of dirty look.
Actually Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights and the Crenshaw have a fairly high property crime rate. They are right next to South LA, and the ghetto Blacks from South LA move up to Ladera Heights and Baldwin Hills to prey on the rich Blacks. They can get away with it because they are Black and they can blend right in.
My father taught at Crenshaw High for a while and it was NOT paradise. I taught there myself for a bit, and yes, it was better than your typical Black school, but the place still had your typical Black problems. There were some hot Black teachers there though. I remember this one basically mulatta with glasses. She liked me too. I just didn’t have the guts to go for it.
3
20
20
20
Robert,
I grew up in a racially mixed part of West LA. By racially mixed I mean black/white. I would imagine that at some point the area was exclusively white. And growing up, it was still majority white but there were many black families like us in the area. My family previously lived in East LA. But because of the racism my brothers and I faced in predominantly Mexican schools, school administrators suggested we be put into predominantly black schools. My parents were African immigrants and had no idea that they were putting their kids in danger in a heavily Mexican area.
Anyway, the only way to go to a predominantly black school was to move. To give you an idea of the weird geography of Los Angeles, we moved into a neighborhood that was majority white, less than a mile from Beverly Hills, a few blocks from gang infested areas and still we were eligible to enroll in majority black schools like Shenandoah elementary, Louis Pasteur middle school and Hamilton high school.
The point is, the students you encountered at Crenshaw High came from many of those gang infested, low income areas. In fact most of the black people in places like Ladera Heights sent their kids to private schools. My parents ended up sending my brothers and me to private catholic schools and our youngest brother went to Page school, which is an elite private school where you’ll find the kids of movie stars and producers.
The area in West LA that I grew up in has now declined. When it was black/white there was no decline. The black people there were upper middle class professionals. Remember, there were no Mexicans there when I was growing up. But with the influx of Mexicans there has been a steady decline. I used to shoot hoops at Robertson Park, which is on the corner of Pico and Airdrome, essentially Beverly Hills. But Mexican gangs have been terrorizing anyone brave enough to go there. On a few occasions they’ve shot at people. Thankfully, no one was hit.