The reading, South Central Farmers and Shadow Hills Homeowners: Land Use Policy and Relational Racialization in Los Angeles explains the dichotomy in land usage and advocacy within two different identity groups. The central argument within the piece uncovers how current policies that affect how land is utilized and navigated is dependent on historical context. In the past, land distribution and accessibility were catered to White people and ensured that the land accessible to people of color, primarily Latinx communities in Los Angeles was embedded with uncertainty. An important concept includes: “The racialization of space achieves its own momentum, setting the geographic framework within which activists struggle to maintain or improve their social status and quality of life” (171). This emphasizes that mobilization becomes difficult when systematically intentional barriers are placed to cause challenges when attempting to amend policies that disregard the communities established in land spaces. The comparison in socio-economic status between South Central Farmers and Shadow Hill is important to understand as it relates to the segregation Los Angeles has between the communities established there. This connects to the intentions to ensure that community groups are not integrated but separated by space. These discriminatory actions are focused on creating towns, cities, and areas of living/working beneficial for White middle-upper class people and disregarding the experiences of Asian, Brown, and Black people who live in Los Angeles. It was evident that areas with a large population of people of color were correlated to underfunded areas, lacked essential resources, and were isolated from successful areas. To ignore the dichotomies and refuse to question the establishment of land is a failure to understand how the United States attempts to maintain a separation of people in inexplicit ways. This connects to the dangers of gentrification as this initiative that is portrayed to focus on technology advancement, remodeling, and creation of a better place of living in actuality invests in a cheap area, displaces community members, and creates spaces for those that are wealthier. The context of advancements hides the harsh histories and present-day situations of housing displacement, barriers to community spaces/mobilization, and stories of those directly affected by unjust policies.
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