I live in a beautiful racially mixed neighborhood in LA. A long time ago this was the first Beverly Hills, mansions and limos. Then the city grew all around it and white flight turned it into the place where wealthier African Americans lived undisturbed by the daily humiliations of racial laws which kept them out of the newly designated white neighborhoods. Then the freeway building began, trying to make this sprawling monster of a city accessible again. Several freeways were planned going east west across LA, the routes hotly debated. The one that was supposed to run along the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains through the white neighborhoods was killed by resident resistance, fears that the wrong elements could come in. So there is still no good freeway access to Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. But the major freeway, I-10, was the cornerstone, and after some debate, it was built bisecting the old rich black neighborhood of West Adams, destroying it overnight, turning the northern half of it into an extension of the teeming Koreatown, and the south half into the northern edge of the South Central ghetto.
The riots during the 90s swept freely though this neighborhood, but their traces are gone now. In their place came another wave of gentrification, as whites, driven east by the unholy real estate prices of the beach towns of the Westside, became attracted to the gorgeous and huge turn of the century homes here. And so they poured in. I became part of that wave as well, though I rent, not own. And that might be the big difference here. You see, my white neighbors, motivated primarily by the prospect of "cleaning up this neighborhood" and therefore raising the prices of their homes, and of course "thinking of the children" have been waging a brutal police campaign against the other residents in the neighborhood. They are so chummy with the police that cruisers stop by every few weeks just to chit chat and find out their concerns. They formed a neighborhood association (because obviously before they arrived, there was no community here), which invites cops and DAs to speak of the ongoing war on crime and drugs and so forth.
And most repugnantly, the whites continuously inform on everybody else. As my landlady puts it, "I turn off my light and make my quiet phone calls." Any person of color idling in their car, any group of teenagers, anybody acting suspicious (and that's pretty much everybody here, this is LA after all) gets the cops called on them. Cars are then searched, pockets patted down, names are run through the system and people end up on the ground in cuffs on an old bench warrant, a nickel bag of weed, a permanent market (unlawful tool of vandalism).
Not that it's ncecessarly a racial thing, I remember hearing similar stories when I lived in Venice, from the old timers proudly telling me how they used to call the cops on their mostly white neighbors all the time there, until the home prices began to soar and all the hippies that used to live there became homeless or went elsewhere. The guy who told me the most stories was a handiman who I swear would bring women over to fuck in my bed when I wasn't home. One time the leg of the frame was broken. Explain that, you horny snitching bastard. His own constant petty criminality never bothered him, but he was always ready to inform on a neighbor for the sake of the greater good.
The police love this sort of "community policing," when they don't have to do anything but wait for the phone call to get their probable cause add go stir some shit up, LAPD style, lots of cars parked diagonally in the street, black uniforms, helicopters swooping and blinding everyone with their spotlights. I once asked a cop why they always park in the most obstructive and haphazard way possible, even if there is no emergency. He told me it's part of their training, to impress the public with the urgency and importance of the police. Then he asked me where I lived and began to probe for weaknesses, but was obliged to desist in light of my whiteness.
Usually it's the African Americans who get it the worst. But at least they have their citizenship so they are back out on the streets in a day or two wondering why the fuck the cops swooped on them in the first place. If the Hispanics get picked up, there is the far scarier possibility that somebody's paperwork is not in order, and then a night in the county jail quickly turns into a stay in the ICE prison camps in the desert, tents pitched in the 120 degree summer blaze, guard towers all around. And then the best case scenario is a quick deportation followed by a speedy return, it costs about $4000 on average to cross the US border. But if they get picked up again, the penalty for illegal reentry is years in federal prison.
All of this activity hasn't driven the gangs out of the neighborhood, or prevented the annual drive by shooting that takes place on the basketball courts every summer like clockwork. All it does is clog up the bankrupt system with more bodies, more people needing to be housed, fed, processed, released, tracked, harassed, etc. I am afraid to go to the park with my kids if the white parents are also there, because I know my kids is about to witness some beefy pigs standing on some teenager's throat, and then I have to tell my three year old that the police are here to help and that is who he should turn to if he is ever lost or in trouble. And that's true, I don't think they would bust a three year old white kid, but what is going through his mind as he is seeing these guys doing everything he is told not to do (not to hit, not to be a bully, not to take things, etc.)
I grew up in a different country, where every third person was an informant but the popular culture was violently against them. There was a story they taught us in school about a boy who turned his parents in for counterrevolutionary tendencies and was later hacked to death by his grandfather for being a snittch. To the state, the boy was the hero, to the people, the grandfather.
Here it seems to be the opposite, informants are community heroes, just like the soldiers volunteering in the armies of occupation are the greatest among us. For all of their talk of freedom, Americans seem to crave the strong hand, the zero tolerance policy, the show of force, as a mans to quiet down the myriad of fears that gnaw continuously at their souls. And the funniest thing about it is that LA right now has the lowest cfimre since the 50s, as proved by the fact that I have lived in South Central for two years now and have only had one bike stolen. (My wife also had her bike stolen from in front of the courthouse where she works, which she took as a testament to how good she is at getting petty criminals out of custody.)
Instead of integrating into the neighborhood, the whites are waging a war for total control of it. The model being followed, the condemnation of uncivilized behavior followed by a recourse to organized violence, the cavalry raiding the native settlements until they are entirely demoralized and dependent on the dictates of the whites. It's like I'm seeing in microcosm the entire history of European colonialism around the world. And this is its nicest manifestation, I haven't seen any Boer punitive expeditions yet. Although the tools of enslavement, the concentration camps and prisons are fully represented here as well.
And if this is how I, a simple transient interloper, with no skin in the game, feel about it, how must the non-white residents feel, seeing their kids hauled off to jail every few days to appease the fears of the white mommies' club? Seeing the whites marching through their neighborhood hand in hand with the cops vowing to take back the night? How far away is that from what the Palestinians face from Israeli settlers in the West Bank, and how far away are we from an intifada here? Obviously that's an overstatement, but what will happen to all these white bastions when the next riot comes, as they seem to do every thirty years or so? And I must end by repeating the unofficial LA city motto, "I gotta get out of LA, man, this shit's not right."