Summary Of What's Good For Boyle Heights

The assigned readings offered an engaging view of the new suburban life emerging in California during the postwar years of the 1940s and 1950s. During this time, California was becoming heavily populated and was experiencing an increased demand for housing. As a result, many homes were being built in suburban areas within California. D.J. Waldie, in Holy Land, discussed the rise of the suburbs in Southern California, the creation of tract housing, shopping centers, and the 1950s illusion that everyone could be middle class (Waldie, 4-85). As suburban areas were developing and emerging within Southern California, a city was challenging the conservative norm of the time by allowing racial diversity within its city. In George J. Sánchez's What’s

Sánchez's What’s Good for Boyle Heights is Good for the Jews’ for its social and racial significance. For example, in the city of Los Angeles city officials tried to separate American-born Anglo newcomers and foreign-born nonwhite residents within the city (Sánchez, 634-635). Most white Anglos were separated and lived in the Westside of Los Angeles while working class minorities lived in the Eastside of Los Angeles. The city issued specific zoning ordinances to keep nonwhites and whites separated. When I read this it made me cringe to think how racist the city government was segregating racial groups and preventing them from intermingling with whites. Before I read this article, I never knew anything about the housing discrimination many minorities faced in the 1950s. I learned how Los Angeles city officials carefully implemented regulations to separate nonwhites from whites. I feel that city officials and the government are supposed to promote general welfare for all residents of the United States. However, racist views dominated society in the 1950s and these views were implemented in government policies aimed at preventing minorities from obtaining property in the Los Angeles area. This section of the article reminded of the vast difference between low-income and high income neighborhoods. I use to live in South Angeles and I remember seeing rundown homes, streets that were broken and cracked, many homeless people, and a mass

Sánchez’s article, I was also upset when the government used real estate industry as a tool to keep racial groups inferior. In the article Sánchez states, “As agricultural land was turned into single-family tract housing, racially restrictive convents continued to run, but these new restrictions explicitly limited buyers to those of the “Caucasian race”( Sánchez, 638). The housing market excluded Blacks, Asians and most Mexican from purchasing homes near white Anglo Americans. What was shocking was that the United States Supreme court ruled “that racially restrictive convents were discriminatory and could not be enforced” (Sánchez, 638). Many real estate agents, property owners, and lending companies still practiced racial segregation in the housing field, even though it was “condemned” by the Supreme Court (Sánchez, 638). I felt bad reading about an African-American World War II veteran named Julius Blue who was trying to buy his first home in Van Nuys. The promoters trying to sell the house refused to show the man and his wife the floor plans and told them they could not buy a home because of the color of their skin (Sánchez, 638-639). It truly must have been an unpleasant experience living in the 1950s and being a minority. There were no opportunities for minorities to advance themselves or to move up in society because of the racist views many powerful city and government officials