Customer Reviews

Ethnic Los Angeles

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Waldinger looks at the myriad ethnic entanglements of Los Angeles. The book is a collection of papers by various authors, that delve into the recent history of the ethnic groups. Written shortly after the 1992 riot, and when LA was still stumbling out of a combination of that riot, recession and the 1994 Northridge quake, the book offers a good study of 90s LA.

Now, ten years hence, much of the book is still quite germane. Though LA has grown strongly since then, in years of considerable prosperity that have reduced much of the tensions within the city.

Interesting read with lots of statistics, for which it won an award ten years ago. However, the book fails on describing where it bases its statistics (e.g. geography, social categories, facial resemblance or something else). For example, "Asians" are listed as East Asians (i.e. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pilipino, Indian, etc.), yet another section lists "Middle Easterners" - who are Central Asians - in a different category as namely "Middle Easterners." These categories are probably based on U.S. Census statistics, but there's not even a footnote that conveys this message.

Another section labels Russians - who are from Europe AND Asia - as "Anglos", yet never really explains why Russians from Asia have effectively been excluded. Do those people just not go to Los Angeles? The authors never say, "We have labeled them this way because..."

Still, there's lots of facts and figures that the authors have collected, which are surprising and even alarming, such as bilingualism, acculturation, etc.

Read it if you want, but there's better books out there.