Description

Immigrants, Racial Citizens, and the (Multi)Cultural Politics of Neoliberal Los Angeles

This article explores the contradictory and paradoxical claims of Los Angeles’ multiculturalist discourse in racially differentiating Asian and Latino immigrant populations from each other and fully enfranchised citizens. The author analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992 to define how interracial relations are interpreted, imagined, and diagnosed. The author uses the term multiculturalist nostalgia to describe an imagined time before immigrants when social relations were defined solely by black and white citizens.

multiculturalism, Los Angeles riots, black/white binary

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 35, No. 2 (2008-09): 36-56