Blogging Social Difference in L.A.: Week 10

This week, I read Rebekah Fitzgerald's blog post from week 8, in which she visited her sister in a neighborhood near Koreatown. The following is a copy of my comment:

Hi Rebekah,

As I read your blog post, I realize that it conjures up several readings and lecture topics from class over the past couple weeks. When you mention that your initial impression of Koreatown was that there were not many Koreans, I found that interesting; I'm sure many people would assume that in a place called Koreatown, that the majority of the population would be Korean. This has to do with race as an axis of social difference--as Stuart Hall suggests, race is a floating signifier, meaning that it can signify various ideas and beliefs that people hold. In this case, the floating signifier of Korean race was that of a geographical implication, that Koreans would be drawn to live in Koreatown. In reality, you said that the majority population you observed was Hispanics, which is interesting as well.

Another idea that came to mind when I read "the streets had a lot of trash littered on them... [and that] the area is mainly composed of low-income Central American/Hispanic families" was that of Majora Carter: environmental justice in minority neighborhoods. I realize that the area you described is probably nowhere near that of the South Bronx, but it still represents that lower income neighborhoods lack access to environmental justice, in that the streets are not clean, and there is a lack of nature sites, which are necessary for one's physical health.

However, the fact that your sister "would walk home many times alone after she got off work after midnight and was never once bothered" implies that crime rates are low in the area, which is interesting because it has been shown that low income neighborhoods have high crime rates. It would be interesting to figure out why this is, and to figure out ways to transform other low income neighborhoods to also represent these proposed low crime rates.