The Politics of Diversity

Immigration, Resistance, and Change in Monterey Park, California

John Horton

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781566393287, 9781566393270
• eBook ISBN: 9781439906422
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Advertised in Asia as "The Chinese Beverly Hills," this small city minutes east of downtown Los Angeles, became by the late 1970s a regional springboard for a new type of Chinese immigration—suburban and middle class with a diversified and globally-oriented economy. Freed from the isolation of old Chinatowns, new immigrants now confronted resistance from more established Anglo, Asian American, and Latino neighbors, whose opposition took the form of interconnected "English Only" and slow-growth movements.

In The Politics of Diversity, a multiethnic team of researches employ ethnography, interviewing, and exit polls to capture the process of change as newcomers and established residents come to terms with the meaning of diversity and identity in their everyday lives. The result is an engaging grass-roots account of immigration and change: the decline of the loyal old-boy Anglo network; the rise of women, minorities, and immigrants in the political scene; and a transformation of ethnic and American identities.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Maps, Tables, and Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Multiethnic L.A.
• 1. From Monterey Park to Little Taipei
• 2. Building Community at the Grassroots
• 3. Political Breaks and Transitions
• 4. The Backlash: Slow Growth and English Only
• 5. The Struggle for Minority and Immigrant Rights
• 6. From Nativism to Ethnic and Interethnic Politics
• 7. The Dilemmas of Diversity
• 8. Crisis of American, Ethnic, and Immigrant Identities
• 9. Negotiating a Culture of Diversity
• 10. The Practice and Politics of Diversity
• Notes
• Index