H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-California@h-net.msu.edu (October 2005)

Review Essay: Recent Histories of Race Relations in California in World
War II and the Cold War

Reviewed for H-California by William Issel, Department of History, San
Francisco State University

The West--and California is no exception--imitates and magnifies the
American propensity for unembarrassed excess and outsized expectations.
A landscape of extremes peopled by a mind-boggling congeries from far
and wide seems to have always encouraged contempt for moral conventions
and an appetite for aggression. Cormac McCarthy's character "the
judge," in his novel _Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the
West_, captures this sense of the "Anything Goes" exaggerated
Americanism of the West in a campfire rant, as he and his fellows relax
after a hard day of bounty hunting for Apache scalps in the employ of
Mexican officials.

"The truth about the world ... is that anything is possible. Had you
not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it
would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a
fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither
analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tent show
whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is
unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.... The order in creation
which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a
maze, so that you shall not lose your way."[1]

The authors of the work under review here [2], appear to accept the
premise that a perennial war between chaos and order is a defining
feature of American culture, and they correctly identify periods of
intense social mobilization as ideal settings for investigating the
extent to which cruelty has warred with compassion in the settlement
process. The authors of the new work, indeed historians of the American
West generally, labor in the long shadows cast by pioneering historians
such as Thomas Cochran, who in 1948 called for the abandonment of the
"presidential synthesis" and for attention to social structure and
culture in the context of transnational economic development; and Earl
Pomeroy, who shortly thereafter demolished the myth of Western and
Pacific Slope exceptionalism.  Recent scholars are also alive to the
importance of the model provided by historical sociologist Charles
Tilly. Forty years after Cochran and Pomeroy made their
recommendations, Tilly urged historians to focus their attention on how
people experienced and lived the "Big Changes" set in motion by
nationalism and capitalism.[3] Specialists in the history of the
American West have domesticated, as it were, such recipes for
scholarship, as evidenced in the work of such influential scholars as
Gerald Nash, Patricia Limerick, Richard White, and Roger Lotchin.[4]

The notion that the Second World War, like the Gold Rush, brought the
world "rushing in" is not a new one, nor has there been any shortage of
claims and counter claims that World War II "transformed" California
[5] or that the Cold War dampened cultural creativity and deadened
policy innovation leading to racial liberalism or economic
redistribution.[6] The authors of the work under review here succeed in
pushing discussion of these nuggets of historical conventional wisdom
further in the direction of sophisticated scholarship. This essay
reviews these studies of race relations in California during World War
II and the Cold War, all of it completed during the past five years,
and concludes with a three part agenda for future work in the field.

Two works published in 2001 deserve attention both for their high
quality scholarship and because they foreshadowed important trends that
appear in subsequent studies. The first is _Seeking El Dorado: African
Americans in California_, an anthology edited by Lawrence de Graff,
Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor, which provides valuable insights
about the nineteenth and twentieth century generally, as well as the
World War II and Cold War periods.[7] First, the work accurately
depicts the primarily urban character of African-American experience in
California, an urban history demonstrated to have been the product of
both large-scale, dramatic periods of social change and the result of
the individual and group initiatives of countless African-American men
and women who sought out California because they hoped the Golden State
would offer greater opportunities for success defined according to
American, albeit African-American, standards. Second, the authors of
the volume's essays on World War II and the Cold War provide specific
historical data about how economic class and gender identities
complicate sociological and cultural processes of migration,
assimilation, and acculturation. Third, civil rights activism is
analyzed in relation to partisan politics and local political
institutions. This last feature of _Seeking El Dorado_, i.e. writing
civil rights social movement history so as to take account of the
interaction of national and regional economic and social dynamics and
local political culture, is a feature of the recent scholarship in
general, which constitutes a revival of interest in two central themes
of pre-1945 urban ethnography:  the degree to which "place" and "the
local political culture" shape race relations. [8]

Kevin Allen Leonard and Douglas Flamming explicitly address specific
features of Los Angeles political culture in their respective essays in
_Seeking El Dorado_ : "'In the Interest of All Races': African
Americans and Interracial Cooperation in Los Angeles during and after
World War II" and "Becoming Democrats: Liberal Politics and the African
American Community in Los Angeles, 1930-1965." Stressing the importance
of local political culture and detailing the degree to which
interracial cooperation marked race relations is also a distinguishing
feature of Matt Garcia's _A World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus
in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900-1970_, which was also
published in 2001.The book was co-winner of the 2003 Oral History
Association Book Prize. Garcia's particular strength, which can also be
seen in the essays by Leonard and Flamming, is his focus on the
importance of "cross-cultural exchange and meaningful intercultural
contact" in fostering progress toward "the realization of a more
equitable and shared society" (pp. 260-261).

Analysis of the concepts of "place" and "political culture," attention
to the processes of internal differentiation within ethnic communities,
as well as interracial contact and interethnic interaction also mark
several doctoral dissertations and first books derived from
dissertations completed in 2002 and 2003. The authors are Scott Tang,
Allison Varzally, Mark Brilliant, Charlotte Brooks, Deirdre Sullivan,
Shana Bernstein, Gina Marie Pitti, Chris Rhomberg, Josh Sides, Robert
Self, and Eduardo Obregón Pagán.[9] Robert Self's _American Babylon_
has garnered four major book prizes: the James A. Rawley Prize of the
Organization of American Historians; Best Book in Urban Affairs of the
Urban Affairs Association; the Ralph J. Bunche Award of the American
Political Science Association; and Best Book in North American Urban
History of the Urban History Association.

The strength of this new work can be illustrated by reference to the
work of several authors. Shana Bernstein makes a close analysis of the
history of civil rights activism during and after World War II in order
to better understand the degree to which the moderation implicit in
reformist's racial liberalism can be explained by the character of the
war years themselves and by the Cold War context that developed
immediately after the Second World War. Allison Varzally puts social
relationships--sometimes those of an intimate nature--under the lens of
micro history to test hypotheses about the causal relationship between
multi-ethnic proximity among servicemen and civilians and postwar
propensity to cooperate or to stay separate in subsequent social
movement and political action campaigns directed against white
supremacist cultural norms and racial discriminatory behavior in the
private and public realm. Gina Marie Pitti details the intertwining of
religion and social reform in the process of community formation, and
carefully assesses the role of gender in the process. Eduardo Obregón
Pagán revisits the often-told story of the Zoot Suit Riots and
demonstrates convincingly that the riot can best be understood "not
necessarily [as] the result of conspiracy, irresponsible journalism, or
racism unleashed" but instead as "a particular kind of vigilantism that
was designed not only to reassert the authority of the state but also
to shore up the segregated boundaries of race and class transgressed by
an increasingly assertive generation of young people" (p. 18).

Each of these works, like the new historiography taken as a whole,
makes a contribution to urban history, civil rights history, and
Western history by addressing the questions of how did "minority"
ethnic groups relate to one another and to white residents, especially
in positions of economic and political power, and especially in pursuit
of civil rights. The authors make very good use of numerous collections
of primary sources pertinent to the themes of interracial cooperation
and the impact of national and even international events on the
discourse and practice of racial reform activities. The new
information--for instance on how Jewish activists interacted with
African-American, Mexican-American, and Japanese-American reformers,
and how the Catholic religion shaped the thinking of Mexican American
activists--is impressive. The scholarship in secondary sources is also
very good, especially the use of unpublished theses and dissertations,
and articles in various professional journals.

The recognition already accorded to this new work suggests that this
work collectively has the potential to make a major contribution to
twentieth-century American history and the history of California and
the West. The authors' conceptualization demonstrates a sophisticated
understanding of the complex character of the urban political landscape
in American cities in general. For the most part, the authors recognize
the constraints that racial reformers faced at the time. The analysis
in this new work gains considerable authority by judging the reformers'
efforts in relation to their own goals as well as in relation to what
could realistically be accomplished. The new work also benefits from
its attention to political economy and to the relationship between
local economic history and national economic trends.

The scholarship overall is very good and the authors have made
excellent use of numerous collections of primary sources pertinent to
their hypotheses. Their sources pertain to wartime and postwar
demographic changes; equal rights activism; racial discrimination; and
both ethnic identity and immigrant acculturation and assimilation
during World War II and the subsequent Cold War years. Given the
importance of adding the West and California to the story of how the
"Big Changes" may have influenced activists who were "people of color"
in their decisions about how, and to what extent, they should build
broad based coalitions or fight for change with narrowly constructed
constituencies, this new work is as invigorating as a breath of fresh
air.

This recent work, for all of its strengths, pays too little attention
to the opponents of racial reform. Future scholarship needs to develop
a better command of the primary and secondary sources produced by
defenders of exclusionary notions of liberty. We would be well advised
to take seriously the point of view of the "defensive" players in what
were, after all, contests over power, privilege and prestige that took
place. This is not, of course, the same thing as sympathizing with the
white supremacist assumptions and racist practices of exclusionary
bigots. In a recent study of white segregationist politics in the South
during the 1945-65 years, George Lewis addresses this issue when he
writes that "the conservatism that grew in stature in the postwar
decades not only shared the Agrarians' belief in slow, organic change
but also reflected the fundamental belief that any ideology that
embraced a program of planned change should be demonized. In that
context, then, anticommunism was the perfect weapon for southerners
wishing to oppose the federal government's attempts at forcing racial
change in the South. Equally important, the way in which the new
conservative ideology relied upon traditional southern ideas
increasingly allowed southerners the national voice that many had for
so long craved. By the late 1960s, a strong sense of tradition, the
maintenance of 'social stability,' an antipathy toward centralized
government, and, of course, a staunch anticommunist outlook were no
longer simply and solely the preserve of one peculiar, anachronistic
region of the United States."[10]

The next assignment will be to take such conservative ideas and
ideology seriously, and not merely, as in Robert Self's work, as a
feature of "capitalist logic" or a cynical manipulation of rhetoric
that masks material interests. Historians need to analyze the causal
power of a belief in economic (property rights) liberalism and the
corresponding socio-cultural (racialist) conservatism as intellectual
and cultural dynamics that complicated the difficulties inherent in
moving beyond economic liberalism to racial liberalism in multi-ethnic
Western cities in the context of war and cold war. For instance,
distaste for and unwillingness to provide an empathic account of the
critics of racial liberalism pervades Self's _American Babylon: Race
and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland_. This is especially troubling in
light of the degree to which he criticizes reductionist explanations
and rejects simplistic formulations. His account is effective in
detailing the highly contested political and economic process by which
the economic and social progress of Alameda County's postwar suburbs
occurred at the cost of the City of Oakland's economic and social
integrity. He also quite rightly emphasizes, but this is not an
original insight, that race relations took shape in the context of
bitter contests over property rights, tax policy, and social policy.
However, his work is weakened because he adopts a moralistic master
frame for his narrative. The ideas of Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver
give rise to one of "the most creative and inspired political projects
on the American scene" (p. 223), whereas the point of view of Oscar
Brinkman of the Apartment Owners Association amounts to "purposeful
deception," and white home owners in San Leandro who wished to preserve
their segregated neighborhoods are guilty of "racism and false
consciousness" (pp. 265, 267). Self acknowledges the existence of
"rights based counterclaims" to open housing policy, but he refuses to
allow legitimacy to the ideas behind such claims and he belittles their
integrity by characterizing them as mere "appeals to hallowed American
rights traditions" that were "intended to inoculate segregation and
white privilege against charges of racism" (p. 268).

This new work is important and will provide us with a better
understanding of the impact of Big Changes on strategies and tactics
utilized by racial justice activists and on race relations generally.
The authors correctly point out the degree to which studies of
struggles for racial equality and social and economic justice have
centered on cities on the East Coast, the industrial Midwest, and the
former Confederate states. This is all the more reason to urge that
their commendable efforts to discuss the experience of
African-Chinese-, Japanese-, and Filipino-American civil rights
activists and community leaders, and their white allies, must be more
fully informed by pertinent primary sources and historical scholarship
about opponents of racial liberalism. Apart from use of sources,
historians of race relations need to think harder about how to
conceptualize race and society in their work. One issue that
particularly needs more attention is an argument, sometimes explicit
and sometimes implicit, that rather than experiencing genuine progress
in racial equality, Chinese and Japanese Californians merely changed
places with African Americans and Mexican Americans in "an emerging new
racial hierarchy." Such generalizations require more systematic
analysis. Recent historians seek to answer crucial questions about the
causal relationship between large-scale social events and social
movement and political reform activity. Their conclusions will be
useful and reliable to the extent that they provide us with evidence of
as many cases as possible, over as broad a geographic scope and as
lengthy a time period as manageable, and with as much detailed
description as can be accomplished given the sources available. The new
scholarship successfully moves us along in that direction. Recent
historiography stimulates our interest, earns our respect, and whets
our appetite for more.

In conclusion, let me suggest that the next assignment for those
writing the history of race relations in California during this period
is to explore the degree to which it was a product of a contest among
competing interests and ideas. Three topics have still not received the
attention they deserve: the contested role of interracial cooperation
and religious activism; the conflict between centrist liberals and
leftist radicals; and the conflict between property rights
libertarianism and human rights egalitarianism. Developing such an
agenda will require, among other things, shifting the focus from the
reformers to the opponents of racial reform who defended exclusionary
notions of liberty. For a genuinely realistic history of California
race relations in this period, scholars will need to take seriously the
point of view of the "defensive" players in what were often high stakes
contests over power, privilege and prestige as expressed in race
relations. Just as historians of Europe now take seriously the
importance of a Counter-Enlightenment tradition, historians of the
American West need to accept the importance of a Counter-Liberal
tradition, and California race relations is no exception.

Notes

A version of this review essay was presented at the session on
Ethnicity, Race Relations, and Politics in Recent California History at
the Ninety-Eighth Annual Meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the
American Historical Association, Corvallis, Oregon, August 5, 2005.

[1]. Cormac McCarthy, _Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the
West_ (New York: Vintage Books, 1992; originally published in 1986), p.
245.

[2].  Lawrence B. de Graaf, Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Taylor, _Seeking
El Dorado: African Americans in California_ (Los Angeles and Seattle:
Autry Museum and University of Washington Press, 2001); Matt Garcia, _A
World of Its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los
Angeles_ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Scott
Tang, "Pushing at the Golden Gate: Race Relations and Racial Politics
in San Francisco, 1940-1955" (diss., University of California at
Berkeley, 2002); Mark Brilliant, "Color Lines: Civil Rights Struggles
on America's 'Racial Frontier,' 1945-1975" (diss., Stanford University,
2002); Charlotte Brooks, "Ascending California's Racial Hierarchy:
Asian Americans, Housing, and Government, 1920-1955" (diss.,
Northwestern University, 2002); Deirdre Sullivan, "'Letting Down the
Bars': Race, Space, and Democracy in San Francisco, 1936-1964" (diss.,
University of Pennsylvania, 2003); Shana Bernstein, "Building Bridges
at Home in a Time of Global Conflict: Interracial Cooperation and the
Fight for Civil Rights in Los Angeles, 1933-1954" (diss., Stanford
University, 2003); Gina Marie Pitti, "To 'Hear About God in Spanish':
Ethnicity, Church, and Community Activism in the San Francisco
Archdiocese's Mexican American Colonias, 1942-1965" (diss., Stanford
University, 2003); and Allison Varzally, "Ethnic Crossings: The Making
of a Non-White America in the Second Quarter of Twentieth Century
California" (diss., University of Southern California, 2003); Chris
Rhomberg, _No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in
Oakland_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Josh Sides,
_L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great
Depression to the Present_ (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2003); Robert Self, _American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for
Postwar Oakland_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Eduardo
Obregón Pagán, _Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race & Riot in
Wartime L.A._ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

[3].  Thomas C. Cochran, "The Presidential Synthesis in American
History," _American Historical Review_, 53 (1948): pp. 748-59; and Earl
Pomeroy, "Toward a Reorientation of Western History: Continuity and
Environment," _Mississippi Valley Historical Review_, 41 (March 1955):
pp. 579-600. Charles Tilly, _Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge
Comparisons_ (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984).

[4]. Gerald D. Nash, _The American West Transformed: The Impact of the
Second World War_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985);
Patricia Nelson Limerick, _The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of
the American West_ (New York: Norton Press, 1987); Richard White,
_"It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the
American West_ (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); and Roger
W. Lotchin, _The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Oakland, and San Diego_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).

[5]. For one of the more successful uses of the Gold Rush analogy, see
Marilynn S. Johnson, _The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in
World War II_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

[6]. The most well-informed and detailed account of this complex
relationship in a major American city is Martha Biondi, _To Stand and
Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York_ (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2003).

[7].  _Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California_.

[8]. Perhaps the best known example of such work is the 1945 study by
St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, _Black Metropolis: A Study of
Negro Life in a Northern City_, vols. 1 and 2, revised and enlarged
edition ( NewYork: Harper & Row, 1962).

[9]. See note 2.

[10]. George Lewis, _The White South and the Red Menace:
Segregationists, Anticommunism, and Massive Resistance, 1945-1965_
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), p. 174.




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