What I Have Gained from this Class

After taking this class I can definitely say that generally, I have gained a greater understanding of the race relations and development of minority culture within a specific community. Learning about the history of different racial groups within the Los Angeles community significantly expanded my knowledge of the details of defining racial and cultural status, interactions between minority groups over time, and how minority cultures were grew from, or in some cases, struggled with the complex relations they were involved in.

As the class has come towards the end I have considered the array of material we covered over the course of the semester, and remembered back to the first day when we all went around saying our individual perceptions of LA. Similar to what we briefly discussed in class today, I have thought about how I no longer perceive LA to be a beach scene with sprawling population, smog, traffic and celebrities. Although these are definitely characteristics of LA, there is a much broader description of LA encompassing much more of its history and growth that we have studied and discussed during American Studies. Studying the interactions between individuals, movements to improve minority status and rights, jobs and work life of minorities, public transportation, and housing distribution have all helped me gain an expanded understanding of the complexity of race relations and how they define the city outside of just popular culture.

Specifically I really enjoyed studying the South central gardeners and how the community came together to establish the garden, share it with many people, and fight for it as they learned they were losing it. Hearing the teenagers talk about their involvement was very interesting particularly because they were students, our age, who had found their passion in keeping this community together through an activity involving nature in a city I previously did not consider to be very natural and fertile. Overall, their story was fascinating in how they found the positive lights and moved forward with their passion.

I also enjoyed exploring the article about Compton and how it explained the growth of a community beyond its nationally known negative reputation. Previously, I had only known Compton to be the “ghetto” as many people explained it when talking about the neighborhood surrounding USC. However, the article broadened what I know about the neighborhood, from its history, to its reputation and associations, to what the direction it is moving in.

Last summer I worked with a nonprofit organization helping organize community volunteer events. With this internship I became very interested in community development and ways in which to bring a community together. Although these were a theme of our studies, the story of the South central gardeners and the article about Compton particularly interested me because I was able to look at common issues in communities everywhere, and how they were approached within the context of Los Angeles, whose history I now have a thorough understanding of.