The Shifting Grounds Of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles

By Scott Kurashige.
Los Angeles has attracted intense attention as a world city characterized by multiculturalism and globalization. Yet, little is known about the historical transformation of a place whose leaders proudly proclaimed themselves white supremacists less than a century ago. In The Shifting Grounds of Race, Scott Kurashige highlights the role African Americans and Japanese Americans played in the social and political struggles that remade twentieth-century Los Angeles.
Linking paradigmatic events like Japanese American internment and the Black civil rights movement, Kurashige transcends the usual black/white dichotomy to explore the multi-ethnic dimensions of segregation and integration. Racism and sprawl shaped the dominant image of Los Angeles as a white city. But they simultaneously fostered a shared oppositional consciousness among Black and Japanese Americans living as neighbors within diverse urban communities.
Paper: 352 pp.