More on the Metro Gold Line and transportation racism . . . July 2, 2008

The view from Mariachi Plaza

Originally uploaded by Francisco Cendejas

My last post regarding the metro gold line received some interesting comments, claiming that I was making something out of nothing. I’m going to suppress the impulse to rant about color-blind racism in favor of a more lengthy explanation about transportation racism in East Los Angeles.

Let’s start with me, because it is really important that you get some understanding of the complicated and privileged perspective that I’m coming from. I’m a white, upwardly-mobile, queer woman living in Boyle Heights. Boyle Heights has historically housed immigrant communities; it was a center of Jewish, Mexican and Japanese immigrant life in the early 20th century, and also hosted large Yugoslav and Russian populations. Today the community is reportedly 93% Latino, although the demographics have already begun to change due to gentrification (a process that I am undoubtedly adding to). When I moved to Los Angeles for a new job, the only rent that I could afford was in Boyle Heights, and I had loved living in a Latino community in Pomona. However, I am currently looking for a new apartment in the mid-Wilshire area (read: leveraging my own white privilege) for many reasons, largely because I don’t feel safe in my neighborhood as a queer woman with a transgender partner.

Ok, back to the Gold Line. My last post argued that MTA has entirely forgotten East LA families during the Gold Line extension, by shutting down bus lines, re-routing the few remaining lines on a weekly basis (with no notice except a sign at the new stop), and providing only electronic notifications of construction updates even though most residents do not have regular access to computers. Although commenters thought that I should stop ranting about a short year of inconvenience, I beg to argue that these occurrences should be viewed as transportation racism, and not written off as more annoying construction.

Furthermore, once the extension is completed, the current residents will continue to suffer as white landlords raise their rents, as chain stores push out local Latino business owners near the Gold Line, and as police presence skyrockets in an attempt to “clean up” the neighborhood (clean those sketchy brown people out so the white, honest people will feel safe). On the surface one might think that next year “the residents of East L.A. will enjoy using their new subway to get around,” history has proven that to be incorrect. Hopefully I will be proven wrong and only a few blocks of Boyle Heights will change, but considering the lack of consideration for residents during construction and the dramatic changes that have occurred in the area since January, I think I’m correct to call a spade a racist spade.

Sure, you could chalk all of this up to “good for business” gentrification – although I’m never going to embrace the notion that gentrification is a natural, rather than racist, process – but I think that it still is important to call attention to the complexities of transit expansion through low-income neighborhoods. We cannot simply embrace the paternalistic notion that the Gold Line will rescue the communities of East LA, instead we must be (perhaps overly) skeptical and attuned to the racist underpinnings of gentrification.

If MTA were expanding the Purple Line farther down Wilshire, they would never dream of shutting down Wilshire Blvd. for an undetermined length of time, or eliminating several bus lines that traverse the Miracle Mile. What do you think? Is this a far-fetched analogy? Leave me a comment with your opinion.