“Living in Each Other's Pockets”: The Navigation of Social Distances by Middle Class Families in Los Angeles

Abstract

In Hollywood movies and dystopian critiques, Los Angeles is two cities: one wealthy, white, and gated, the other impoverished, dark, and carceral. This depiction verges on caricature, eliding the diversity and maneuvers of the region's middle class. Drawing upon ethnographies of middle class families (black, white, Latino, Asian) in affluent areas of West Los Angeles and the Valley and in the low‐income areas that are located south and east of downtown Los Angeles, I explore how and why, and at what costs, parents engage in daily maneuvers to place their children in beneficial settings across the region's vast sprawl. I describe these maneuvers that resemble a game of “musical chairs” as selective flight. In contrast to middle class flight to the suburbs, selective flight involves diurnal rather than residential shifts. Enabling middle‐class families who reside amidst the crumbling infrastructure of the urban core to chase cultural capital and physical safety in ever‐receding advantaged areas, the post‐Civil Rights State expands spatial mobility yet does not close racial distances. The pursuit of ever‐receding spaces of advantage is particularly paradoxical and burdensome for black middle‐class parents.

Involved fatherhood? Exploring the educational work of middle‐class men

“…In the compact that the California Department of Education (2007) proposes, parents are expected to communicate with school, take an active part in school through, for instance, volunteering in the classroom, monitor their children's educational development, monitor TV watching, and provide a quiet time and place for homework. Many middle-class parents, who often regard themselves as having primary responsibility for their children's education, express a similar emphasis on parental involvement (Kremer-Sadlik and Gutierrez, forthcoming;Lareau 1989;Montgomery 2006;Wingard and Forsberg 2009). According to Lareau (2003), middle-class parents' assumed responsibility is connected to their compliance with a notion of childrearing she calls 'concerted cultivation', where parents are seeing their active engagement as crucial for their children's development and well-being.…”

“…So even though Louisa and Chris take joint decisions about their children's education, she is the one both investigating school options and choosing the teachers. Similar to the Roland-Santos', the Richardson's educational orientation is also materialised in their housing; they deliberately bought their house in a school district with a better reputation than the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), which is infamous for its low test-scores and high student-teacher ratio (Cooper 2007;Montgomery 2006). According to Chris, education is crucial in order to gain and keep social status:…”

The Sight of Loss

“…It makes me so depressed. So much is gone.” Similar to many affluent African Americans, she engages in “selective flight”—she resides in a black urban area, but she drives beyond the area for basic amenities (Montgomery 2006).…”

Racial Residential Segregation in Urban America

“…Scholars examine this form of mobility in relation to participation within formal (Ellis et al. 2004) and informal sectors of the economy (Duneier 1999), child rearing strategies (see, e.g., DeSena 2006; Montgomery 2006; Roy 2004), school‐based social ties (Mouw and Entwisle 2006), and suburban police work (Bates and Fasenfest 2005), among others. Roy's (2004) work, for example, documents how poor, black, single fathers’ criminal histories and gang ties constrain their daily movement within segregated Chicago neighborhoods.…”

“…In other words, the daily movement of white, middle‐class children into institutional environments outside of their residential neighborhood works to undermine community cohesion, racialize social privilege, and reproduce social inequality. Montgomery (2006) finds that several of the same consequences accompany residentially segregated middle‐class black households’ daily mobility strategies. For middle‐class black parents, segregated space possesses a contradictory character.…”