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Reviews
| The Truce: Lessons from an L.A. Gang War. By Karen Umemoto. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. xiv + 232 pp. Maps, photos, tables, graphs, notes, bibliography, and index. $57.50 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).
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Karen Umemoto's thesis in The Truce: Lessons from an L.A. Gang War is that gang conflict and violence is embedded in a constellation of complex social processes imposed upon disadvantaged communities. Umemoto's book focuses on a racialized gang war between black and Mexican gangs in a Venice neighborhood on the coastal edge of Los Angeles. Prior to this conflict, the Oakwood neighborhood was an established community where people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds had built strong social and family bonds. However, in a matter of weeks a gang war between two neighborhood-based street gangs resulted in seventeen people killed and more than fifty injured over a ten-month period. As a result, the community polarized along racial lines, with Mexicans and blacks as the antagonists. |
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The conflict began as a personal dispute between gang members but rapidly transformed into a full-fledged racial war through a process Umemoto identifies as "morphology of conflict" (pp. 86–87). She uses this framework to delineate the ebb and flow of events that took on racially charged meanings leading to antagonism and a polarization that went beyond the gangs. In the process, race became the most salient identity for most residents (especially for those more removed from the epicenter of the conflict); families; and, finally, the gang members themselves. The various meanings that the different groups gave to the conflict led to its morphing from individual conflict to one that engulfed the entire community and split along black and brown color lines. The author discusses at length how this transformation was based on the emergence of "multiple realities" as experienced by different groups and persons based on their individual perceptions and interpretations of events. This led to the formation of "multiple publics"—groups that identified with one another and shared interpretative lenses through which they saw the world around them. |
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This social process emanated in part from some of the macrostructural issues occurring in Oakwood (and Los Angeles generally), such as the efforts by white real estate developers to gentrify this inner-city neighborhood at the expense of long-term poor black and Latino residents. Oakwood is one of the last bastions of affordable housing in this highly desirable coastal region. The struggle against this gentrification process, led by related business interests, produced a solidarity among the diverse residents that was more class than race oriented. As a result, many Oakwood community-based organizations and associations, and even families and gang members, reached across race and ethnic lines in this struggle to save their community from developers. That is not to say that there were not differences among residents, especially in their competition for a shrinking pool of affordable housing. Moreover, blacks resented the rapid influx of Mexican-origin residents that was changing the demographic composition of the community, which had been traditionally black dating back fifty years. Despite these differences, Oakwood residents, including rival black and Mexican gang members, managed to coexist relatively peacefully prior to the outbreak of this gang war. |
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Well-known police suppression tactics facilitated the centrality of race as gang members' primary identity. These tactics especially polarized the situation between the two major gangs—V-13 and the Shoreline Crips. Law enforcement agencies imposed these hard-line policies in a manner that African Americans believed favored Latino community and gang members. Moreover, as these strategies were implemented, many innocent nongang members (especially blacks) were caught up in the arbitrary sweeps conducted by the police. As a result, black residents perceived the police's targeting of blacks over Latinos as a discriminatory strategy developed in conjunction with unscrupulous real estate developers to accelerate gentrification. This perception fueled the racial polarization process on both sides as they attempted to make sense of the events through their own interpretative lenses. |
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Sensationalized media coverage further racialized the war. Umemoto argues that this "idea of multiple publics and distinct frames of interpretation creates the basis for recognizing 'multiple realities' as experienced by different groups" (p. 27). It is in this manner that the conflict was advanced as well as, ultimately, the truce. That is, the violence subsided when the conflict was reframed and the issue was deracialized, especially with the application of a more social gang intervention approach rather than the repressive measures taken by the police. |
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Even though the events described occurred over ten years ago, this treatise is exceedingly relevant to two contemporary issues. First, the book provides an explanation for the recent proliferation of street gangs and violence in contemporary America and other parts of the globe (for example, El Salvador and Haiti). It becomes clear from this analysis that the etiology of gang and urban street gang–oriented violence is linked to larger macro issues (gentrification, deindustrialization, economic globalization, mass imprisonment, access to firearms, and so on) that go beyond the characteristics of individuals and particular situations of gangs in neighborhoods across the United States. Second, Umemoto delineates through this extended case study how tensions and violence between blacks and Mexicans develop and obscure larger matters that may be the real cause of these divisions. This black-brown problem is especially acute today in Los Angeles, where there have been several recent high-profile murders of innocent blacks and Hispanics targeted simply because of their race or ethnicity. In most cases, these homicides are occurring in black neighborhoods experiencing rapid demographic transitions as result of large-scale immigration of Mexicans (and other Latinos) and Asians in the face of shrinking resources. If not framed properly, these racially charged incidents have the potential to escalate to the broader community, leading to greater intolerance and bigotry. |
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The challenge for researchers is to go beyond description of these problems and develop public policy strategies to deal with this complex social problem. This means moving away from the highly punitive policies currently being implemented to more comprehensive, innovative reforms. How we meet this challenge will ultimately determine the direction black-brown relationships will take in cities like Los Angeles and perhaps provide a road map for Europe and others societies with growing multiethnic and diverse populations. Karen Umemoto's book provides an excellent resource for beginning this process.
Avelardo Valdez
University of Houston
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