Isn't Compton a suburb of LA?? (San Diego, Orange: crime rate, credit, employment)

[brajohns81]

Why is it so ghetto and dangerous??

[Charles]

Yes.

Why are there dangerous suburbs in other cities?

[Mike121]

Well, that's a complicated question. The short version goes like this.

In the 1930s and 1940s, blacks in the south gave up being sharecroppers in huge numbers, and headed for cities in the north and west. Tens of thousands came to LA.

Up until the late 1940s, it was still legal for a city to exclude people by race. Compton was a white only city by law. Most of the cities were. So neighborhoods where blacks lived, like South Central and Watts, were hugely overcrowded.

In about 1948 or so, the Supreme Court said it was no longer legal to have racial restrictions. So those neighborhoods next to South Central and Watts, like Compton, suddenly had blacks moving into them.

White tried to keep blacks out by force. White gangs fought black gangs. The gangs that became the bloods and the crips got started because of this.

At the same time, the government was struggling to deal with the housing problems of all the returned World War 2 soldiers and their new baby-boom families, so they instituted a bunch of policies to subsidize the creation of new suburbs: highway subsidies especially.

Whites, horrified that blacks were moving in their neighborhoods, fled for the new suburbs like Orange County, taking their money and tax dollars with them.

In the 1950s there was still quite a bit of union manufacturing work here in LA, centered in areas like Compton, South Gate and Wilmington. Especially aerospace work, but also auto manufacturing. Aerospace had become concentrated here in LA during WW2. But the manufacturing jobs began dissapearing, for a bunch of reasons. Good paying jobs were replaced with poor paying jobs.

People got angry. The Watts riots happened, scaring off the last remnant of the white people.

But people in areas like Compton still had union service jobs to work on, like janitorial work and restaurant work. But then, in 1968, they passed the new immigration bill that really opened up the number of immigrants. With so many people willing to work for cheap, service jobs paid less and less and by the 1980s, the unions were basically dead.

So tons of people were out of work. There was Welfare to fall back for people with kids, but, welfare paid better to people that weren't married, so being married was totally reduced in neighborhoods where jobs were hard to come by.

Then gangs, which were still around from the 1950s, started becoming money-making machines: turf wars, and crack takes you up through the 1990s.

And here we are.

But, Compton is much safer than it used to be. It really isn't that bad, now that the crack war is basically over.

[bhcompy]

To simplify, in the evolution of a metropolis, inner ring suburbs are the first to go "bad". No one ever said suburb meant it was good, and LA itself was a horrible place to live in the 80s which in turn affected all of the inner ring areas.

[bouncethelight]

Mike121, that was really interesting! Thanks for the history lesson!

[kettlepot]

And the last bit of Mike121's history lesson should mention that Compton is no longer a black majority city. The upcoming census data will probably show that it is 75% Hispanic now.

And let's not sugarcoat the improvement in Compton's crime rate too much. There were 36 murders in Compton in 2009, a city of 93,000. In 2009 there were 41 murders in San Diego, a city of 1.4 million. That's a difference of 12 1/2 times!

But I agree, Mike121 that was a great history lesson.

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

Way to go Mike121. Kudos to you.

[SloRoller]

Originally Posted by Mike121

Well, that's a complicated question. The short version goes like this.

In the 1930s and 1940s, blacks in the south gave up being sharecroppers in huge numbers, and headed for cities in the north and west. Tens of thousands came to LA.

Up until the late 1940s, it was still legal for a city to exclude people by race. Compton was a white only city by law. Most of the cities were. So neighborhoods where blacks lived, like South Central and Watts, were hugely overcrowded.

In about 1948 or so, the Supreme Court said it was no longer legal to have racial restrictions. So those neighborhoods next to South Central and Watts, like Compton, suddenly had blacks moving into them.

White tried to keep blacks out by force. White gangs fought black gangs. The gangs that became the bloods and the crips got started because of this.

At the same time, the government was struggling to deal with the housing problems of all the returned World War 2 soldiers and their new baby-boom families, so they instituted a bunch of policies to subsidize the creation of new suburbs: highway subsidies especially.

Whites, horrified that blacks were moving in their neighborhoods, fled for the new suburbs like Orange County, taking their money and tax dollars with them.

In the 1950s there was still quite a bit of union manufacturing work here in LA, centered in areas like Compton, South Gate and Wilmington. Especially aerospace work, but also auto manufacturing. Aerospace had become concentrated here in LA during WW2. But the manufacturing jobs began dissapearing, for a bunch of reasons. Good paying jobs were replaced with poor paying jobs.

People got angry. The Watts riots happened, scaring off the last remnant of the white people.

But people in areas like Compton still had union service jobs to work on, like janitorial work and restaurant work. But then, in 1968, they passed the new immigration bill that really opened up the number of immigrants. With so many people willing to work for cheap, service jobs paid less and less and by the 1980s, the unions were basically dead.

So tons of people were out of work. There was Welfare to fall back for people with kids, but, welfare paid better to people that weren't married, so being married was totally reduced in neighborhoods where jobs were hard to come by.

Then gangs, which were still around from the 1950s, started becoming money-making machines: turf wars, and crack takes you up through the 1990s.

And here we are.

But, Compton is much safer than it used to be. It really isn't that bad, now that the crack war is basically over.

Mike - that is indeed a very interesting thumbnail history, but I would like to clarify a couple of points:

Up until the late 1940s, it was still legal for a city to exclude people by race. Compton was a white only city by law. Most of the cities were. So neighborhoods where blacks lived, like South Central and Watts, were hugely overcrowded.

Actually, much of what is considered South Central L.A. today remained all or nearly all white until the very late 1950s - mid 1960s. In fact, realtors would not even show properties South of Slauson Ave. to blacks in the market to purchase a home. Inglewood was considered off-limits to blacks until well into the 1960s. I'm talking about just walking or driving through Inglewood, let alone trying to live there. There was no real overcrowding that I recall from the late 50s - early 60s in South Central (Arlington on the West, Alameda on the East, Santa Monica Freeway on the North, Slauson Ave. to the South).

People got angry. The Watts riots happened, scaring off the last remnant of the white people.

White flight started many years before the Watts riots. Initially it wasn't that whites were afraid of angry blacks. It was that they simply did not want to live near black people, plain and simple. I remember this firsthand. There were number of issues that led to the riot:

1). Depressed local economy with limited employment opportunities.
2). Poor living conditions.
3). A long history of Police abuse and brutality heaped upon the residents of Watts and surrounding black communities. It was like living in an occupied state. You didn't have to be doing anything suspicious or illegal to incur the wrath of LAPD. This I know firsthand. The attempted arrest of Marquette Frye for Drunk Driving was the tipping point.

White tried to keep blacks out by force. White gangs fought black gangs. The gangs that became the bloods and the crips got started because of this.

With respect to the Crips and Bloods, that's not quite how it happened. The Crips originated circa 1970-71. By this time there were barely any white people, and no white gangs in South Central. They were long gone. The Crips started as a kind of rekindling of Black Nationalism (The Black Panthers, US Organization, The Black Muslim Movement) from the 1960s. That movement was pretty much splintered by the FBIs CoIntelPro program, along with local law enforcement agencies. Raymond Washington is credited(?) with founding the Crips, basing it on the principles of controlling your own community and neighborhood. Obviously, that got out of hand very fast and led to what we have today. The Bloods came about as a direct response to the agression of the Crips in those neighborhoods where Crips were considered intruders or enemies.

[Mike121]

Originally Posted by SloRoller

Mike - that is indeed a very interesting thumbnail history, but I would like to clarify a couple of points:

Thanks very much for your clarifications. I'm more familiar with the Anglo side of this story that the Black side of the story. My family lived around Manchester and Vermont up until 1950 or so, and fled to the suburbs. It had been interesting trying to piece together family history and to divide truth from legend.

So, I wasn't actually around at the time, and this is what I've gathered from my conversations of others. I guess it is back to the history books for me.

[nmnita]

Originally Posted by brajohns81

Why is it so ghetto and dangerous??

Do you think just because someplace is a suburb it can't be dangerous or a ghetto?

Nita