Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SILVIA DOMINGUEZ
Cultural Context and Intergroup
Relations: Latin Americans in Public
Housing
Keywords: Race, Class, Immigration, Contextual Triggers, Frames, Intergroup relations,
Integration, and Agency
As Latinos bring cultural, racial, and ethnic heterogeneity to public housing developments and
other concentrated areas of poverty, sociologists have a new opportunity to study intergroup
relations and how frames, or contextual triggers, manifest themselves in intergroup relations.
This article examines the role of frames in the specific context of a historically white Irish
American neighborhood that has a long history of animosity against African Americans. Using
ethnographic data collected over two years in Southville in Boston, this article shows that Latin
Americans who were moving into public housing for the first time had different frames that were
activated by different contextual triggers, than white Irish Americans or African Americans. The
research shows that Latin Americans had frames that helped them focus more on the
commonalities they shared with their neighbors, such as class, rather than their differences.
Because this focus on commonality challenged racial division, this research has implications for
urban poverty and immigration scholars and for policy makers who can begin to use cultural
heterogeneity in their urban planning.
The influx of Latin American immigrants to low‐income neighborhoods all over the United States
is changing the racial and cultural dynamics of these neighborhoods and demands changes in the
study of urban poverty. Traditionally, urban poverty and neighborhood effects researchers have
based their work on the idea that disadvantaged neighborhoods are racially and culturally
homogeneous. For years, the literature failed to apply cultural concepts to urban poverty
research for fear of reinforcing notions of self‐inflicted culture of poverty that relinquished
responsibility to the socio‐political and economic system. 1 But, recent literature has begun to
demonstrate that there is cultural heterogeneity in high poverty neighborhoods and has begun to
apply recent sociology of culture concepts to study mechanisms that explain different outcomes
in such neighborhoods (Harding 2007; Wilson 2009). But even these new studies focus on racially,
ethnically and socio‐economically homogenous populations. Immigrants bring with them different
cultures and ways of seeing the world. In fact, immigrants introduce cultural heterogeneity in
poor neighborhoods. Yet, what is still absent from the literature is the consideration of shared
spaces where different groups come together in contexts of concentrated poverty.
Trough ethnographic data, this article contributes to urban poverty literature by reporting
findings from public housing developments where whites and Latin American immigrants came
together to describe how intergroup relationships worked in a locality where whites, Latin‐
American immigrants and others came together and interacted. Southville, a historically white
Irish American neighborhood in Boston, offers a relatively rare opportunity to study a low‐income
neighborhood that consists of different cultural, racial, and ethnic groups. Irish Americans had
lived in Southville since the 1600s and had invested tremendous social, symbolic and cultural
1
In the context of the civil right struggle, the release of Patrick Moynaha’s XXXXXXXX caused a release of
works on the culture of poverty and a backlash that did not subsided until after the seminal work of William
Julious Wilson who explained urban poverty from a structural basis. We are finally now, starting to be able
to use sociology of culture’s concepts to study urban poverty.
2
capital in defining and reinforcing their ethnic identity as tied symbolically to this space. When
forced integration began, this strong ethnic identity fueled animosity against African Americans.
In the early 2000s, this animosity continued to inform the white residents’ feelings about
outsiders. Meanwhile, as newcomers, Latin Americans were unaware of the meaning and
symbolism of this space and focused more on the common structural position they shared with
Irish Americans, rather than any racial or ethnic differences.
I ague in this paper that intergroup relations between Irish Americans, Latin Americans
and Irish‐Americans in Southville in the process of integration could be captured by cultural
concepts like frames and contextual triggers. Frames are mental orientations that organize
perception and interpretation (Goffman 1971), and in the context of intergroup contact, frames
can dictate whether one group is willing to develop contact with another group. Contextual
triggers are symbols, places or artifacts found in the context, which once identified, set in motion
some course of events 1 and activate interpretations and reactions embedded in frames.
Contextual triggers are integral to the theory of frames because they activate interpretations and
reactions embedded in frames. Because contextual triggers and frames are based on culture and
structure, these concepts are well suited to the study of heterogeneous groups interacting in
diverse social contexts. I apply them to this case study of Latin‐Americans immigrants integrated
through court order into a public housing development to live with Irish‐Americans and African‐
Americans and how they interacted with each other in a shared space to show that despite a long
history of interracial group antagonism in Southville, Latin American immigrants who had
diversified the neighborhood by the early 2000s were willing to develop contact with Irish
Americans because they approached them with frames that focused on commonalities rather
than differences.
3
Frame Analysis & Contextual Triggers
Cultural and structural concepts like frames and contextual triggers can explain intergroup
relations between Irish Americans and African Americans during Southville’s early history and
those between Irish Americans and Latin Americans in more recent years. Borrowing from
Goffman (1974), framing is a term that refers to how individuals organize experience to make
sense of events. Frames are problem‐solving schemata stored in memory and developed through
and condenses the ‘world out there’ by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations,
events, experiences, and sequences of actions within one’s present or past environment’ (Snow
and Benford, 1992: 137). As such, frames encode expectations and consequences of behavior and
the way in which various parts of the social world relate or do not relate to one another (Harding
2007). Frames help individuals identify problems, specify, and prioritize their interests and goals.
As cognitive maps, frames give direction to problem solving and help account for behavioral
outcomes (Bleich 2002). Contextual triggers can be people, scenes, objects, images settings, or
words that reinforce frames; these triggers lead to the thinking sequences that precede behavior
and are reinforced by a pre‐existing frame. An example can be conceptualized when smoking was
permitted in restaurants and bars and an individual would enter a bar, order a drink and that
context would trigger his thinking about having a cigarette, which would then result in the lighting
of a cigarette and the action of smoking.
While sociology has not picked up contextual triggers as a concept to help explain social
behavior, psychology and psychiatry have done so. Many studies explore contextual triggers as:
being a factor in alcohol and other drug relapses (Zironi et al. 2006); determining depressive
symptoms (Jacobson, Martell and Dimidjian 2001); leading to sexual promiscuity (Parsons et al.
2007); leading to episodes of Attention Deficit and Hyperactive Disorder (Psychiatry 2006; Teeter
4
1998; Whalen et al. 2006); and leading to informal and accidental learning (Marsick and Watkins
2001). These studies demonstrate that contextual triggers influence cognitive processes and
behaviors. Consequently, contextual triggers are likely to influence any sense of discrimination
and oppression, or options and opportunities among others. Because contextual triggers act
between structure and agency, they influence, nurture, and reinforce frames.
While the concept of frames is commonly utilized in the literature on social movements
and resource mobilization and the conceptualization of “collective action frames” (Goffman 1986;
shown, for example, that political leaders in the former Yugoslavia manipulated frames to
exacerbate the ethnic conflict that resulted in that country’s breakup. Oberschall (2000) explains
that the residents of Yugoslavia possessed two ethnic frames—ethnic cooperation and peace for
normal times—and a crisis frame anchored in memories of World War II. Oberschall (Ibid)
documented how elites and media propaganda awakened the dominant crisis frame and
suppressed the normal frame, thereby spreading insecurity and ethnic conflict. More recently,
Picca and Feagin (2007) used Goffman’s concept of frames to develop an intergroup interactions
theory. They argue that Whites hold onto a “White racial frame” in relation to African Americans,
which is a very deep, normalized, unconscious, and easy to call up frame. The White version is a
very emotion‐laden, image‐riddled frame based on many deep anti‐Black emotions and
stereotypes. “This is a generic meaning system that has long been propagated and held by most
white Americans—and even, at least in part, accepted by many people of color” (Picca and Feagin
2007: 8).
Urban poverty researchers have only recently begun to use cultural concepts like frames
to study neighborhoods and dynamics in high poverty neighborhoods. Applying framing analysis
to the study of neighborhoods. Small (2004) conceptualized neighborhood framing as a “process
5
and interpret how residents can have a role in the development of their neighborhood frame
while being affected by them” (Small 2004:71). Focusing on neighborhood organizations, Martin
(2003) extends the concept of framing and creates the term “place‐based collective action
frames,” or “place‐frames,” to highlight the relationship between neighborhood action and
neighborhood identity. Meanwhile, researchers have begun to use frames to understand
behavior in high poverty neighborhoods. Harding (2005, 2007) pushed the understanding the
there was cultural heterogeneity in high poverty neighborhoods and demonstrated that through
the look at adolescent frames in terms of sexual behaviors, romantic relationships, pregnancy and
violence. Lastly, Wilson (2009) believes that a significant effect of life in high poverty
neighborhoods is the fact that it creates cultural frames, or cultural schemata (shared group
constructions of reality) that produce perceptions and behaviors that in ways can reinforce racial
inequality.
For this study, frames are useful to understand how history and neighborhood identity
have resulted in frames, which embody the collective identity of Irish Americans in Southville
differently than that of the new residents, the Latin American immigrants. Using the ethnographic
data, this study looks at how frames and contextual triggers affected the interactions between
the different groups (African‐Americans, Latin‐Americans and Irish‐Americans) as they came
together to live side by side in that locality.
Setting ‐ Court‐Ordered Public Housing Integration
Residential segregation prevailed in public housing developments because local politics
maintained segregated neighborhoods. Despite numerous attempts to stop systematic placement
according to race, many cities continued this discriminatory dynamic for several years beyond the
civil rights movement and the passage of laws outlawing housing discrimination (Vale 2000).
Court‐ordered integration became a practice of last resort in public housing developments, and
6
this mandate brought in Black residents to previously homogenous White neighborhoods (Vale
2000). On many occasions, these minority residents were not only sent to live in new
neighborhoods, but to minority‐resistant neighborhoods that had a history of combating
integration. Arguably, no court ordered intervention was more contentious than in the Irish
American defended neighborhood of Southville (Lehr and O'Neill 2000; Lukas 1985; MacDonald
2000; O'Connor 1994a).
There has been antagonism between the Irish and the African‐Americans for the past
three hundred years in Boston. When the Irish started to arrive in Boston, they were heavily
discriminated against by the Protestant elite as they brought with them a different culture and
religion. The Irish were treated in the same way as African‐Americans were treated for a long
time, formally categorized as black for a time in the last century and were counted as such in the
census. Eugenics placed the craniums of African‐Americans at same level as those of the Irish. At
the beginning of the civil war, the Irish did not want to participate because they felt that freed
slaves would take their jobs (O'Connor 1994b). While they finally joined the Union army they did
so in order to demonstrate to the Protestant Elite that they were patriotic but they did so
reluctantly because they did not want to loose whatever position they had achieved to the freed
blacks (Bobo and Hutchings 1996). There were “Irish need not apply “ signs well passed the
1900’s. The two groups were jointly confined to the worst areas of cities, where they routinely
fought the police and each other. In the mid‐19th century, Negroes were sometimes called
''smoked Irish'' and the Irish, in turn, were ''niggers turned inside out'' (Staples 1999).
The Irish began to earn their ''whiteness'' in the wave of racialist sentiment that arose
when newly freed blacks began to challenge whites in the workplace. The Irish quickly got
involved in politics and started to elect Irish individuals throughout the electoral field. Many of
7
the elected officials came form Southville, a neighborhood that had been settled by the Irish and
maintained an Irish majority. Through relations of patronage, the Irish developed large voting
blocks and achieved power by galvanizing the population against threats to their ethnic identity.
They went to be elected in the city, state and federal governments, and in the process, were able
to infiltrate civil service occupations and resist any other group’s integration, particularly that of
African Americans (Connor 1996).
In response to this history of discrimination, the Irish American residents of Southville
developed a strong and well‐encapsulated frame of “us versus them” (with them being African‐
Americans), as well as a collective agency to reject intergroup relations (Briggs 2007). As Ignatiev
(1995) argues, the Irish “learned” to be white by distancing themselves, sometimes violently, from
African Americans. 2 Because Irish Americans had achieved control of local power structures, their
ethnic identity became a means for securing class mobility. In line with Weber’s (1968) theory of
social closure, Southville residents sought to maximize the rewards they had secured through
hard work and based on the solidarity they maintained and needed to restrict access to African
Americans whose identifiable social and physical attributes made them easy targets for exclusion.
The tight nature of their bonds, ethnic identity, and political representation made them feel that
they were “certainly not as poor as Blacks,” even when they were living in conditions described as
incredibly violent and with much substance abuse in line with “ghetto dynamics” but this
sentiment motivated them to defend their neighborhood and public housing communities against
integration (MacDonald 2000). The Irish‐Americans in Southville rallied against court ordered
2
There are no contemporary voices for the relationships between science, social and space dictated by
those with power which placed the Irish so close to the African. Even though the Irish did become white,
those hurts are still alive. For more information look at Ignatiev, N. 1995. How the Irish became white:
Routledge New York.
8
school desegregation in the 1970’s and court ordered desegregation of public housing in the late
1980’s.
(Table 1 about here)
As it turned out twelve years later, it was not African Americans, but Latin Americans who
were integrated into the public housing developments in Southville. 3 In a final move towards
integration, the BHA secured resources to develop and professionalize the tenant task forces and
its services and developed a policy that resulted in minority residents occupying 40 percent of the
MEM townhouse units by 2000 (Vale 2000). 4
There has been a rapid influx of immigrants from Puerto Rico, Haiti, Cuba, Colombia,
Honduras, and other parts of Latin America. In 1970, Latinos made up less than 3% percent of
Boston’s population; by 2000 Latinos represented over 14%, the largest gain of any ethnic group.
While 70 percent of Boston Latinos were Puerto Rican in 1970, by 2000 that figure went down to
32 percent. Boston’s Latino population is increasingly an ethnically and racially diverse group but
many live in poverty, which is reflected in the high number of Latin‐Americans qualifying for
public housing. http://www.lib.neu.edu/archives/voices/l‐intro.htm
Background and Methods
The findings I report in this article draw from a larger study (XXXXXXXX) that examined the social
networks and access to social services of Latin American immigrant women living in public
housing in Boston. The larger research project used longitudinal ethnographic data from the
3
I was never able to ascertain whether or not moving Latin‐Americans instead of blacks was planned or an
aspect of the demographic changes and populations qualifying for public housing.
4
The field observations are substantiated by a marked decrease in racial incidents according to
Boston police. As Table 1 demonstrates, there was a reduction in racial conflict in Southville from
111 incidents in 1996 to 24 incidents in 2004.4
9
Boston site of a major study called the Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three City Study (the
Three City Study), and I conducted additional fieldwork with institutional review board approval.
The Three City Study was a multi‐site, multi‐method, multi‐year, and multidisciplinary inquiry
conducted collaboratively by researchers from several universities, and designed to evaluate the
consequences of welfare reform in the lives of low‐income African American, Latin American and
Euro‐American urban families with young children in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio.
ethnographic interviews between 1999 and 2002 with 10 Latin American immigrant women living
in public housing in Southville. I also attended meetings and events and interviewed 51
informants such as merchants, activists, and service providers. I recruited some women through
service providers familiar with public housing residents, and others by identifying mothers with
children in parks and outside areas. Lastly, I relied on newspapers, policy papers, needs
assessments from institutional players, and other publications for historical and contextual
information.
I employed a method of structured discovery by making use of semi‐structured interviews
that focused on specific topics but allowed the opportunity to capture unanticipated data
(Winston et al. 1999; Burton, Skinner, and Matthews 2005). I coded over 200 field notes and
other multiple data sources for entry into qualitative data management software, initially using a
general topical coding scheme developed by the Three City Study principal investigators, including
about the neighborhood, service access, service utilization, social networks, and informal
support. 2
I used QSR N6 qualitative analysis software to facilitate targeted searches of coded data.
This targeted search and pattern identification used axial coding techniques that were adapted
10
from comparison methods of analytic induction (Strauss and Corbin 1998). I developed enhanced
data credibility and dependability and additional codes such as acts of racism, acts of
discrimination, and responses to discrimination (Lincoln and Guba 1985), through extended
engagement in the field, the substantial development of rapport with the women and informants,
my bicultural and bilingual capabilities, and the thorough examination of data.
Of the ten Latin American immigrant women I followed as part of the study in Southville,
four were from Puerto Rico, four from the Dominican Republic, one from Honduras, and one from
Nicaragua. Half of the women were Afro‐Latinas. Six were first generation and four were second‐
generation immigrants. Six lived in households with more than one adult and four lived alone
with their children.
The methodology examines events and patterns over time, and the longitudinal
ethnographic fieldwork allowed me to explore the dynamics behind the different frames at play
between the native Irish American and African American populations and the immigrant Latin
American population.
Demographic Changes
(Table 2. about here).
Until the 1980s, Southville was overwhelmingly White, but the forced integration of public
housing changed the demographics and dynamics of its public housing developments. As the
chart demonstrates, Southville maintained its ethnic homogeneity outside of public housing, but
the percentage of Whites in public housing decreased with court‐ordered integration (BHA
Statistics: 2002; The Boston Foundation 2004). By 2002, Latin American immigrants had become
the majority population at the Norfolk Public Housing development in Southville. This
demographic dynamic caught the Irish Americans by surprise. While they shared a historical
animosity towards African Americans going back several decades, they had neither familiarity nor
11
history with Latin American immigrants. As a result, their frames and contextual triggers
mismatched and this had a significant effect on the relations and interactions in Southville.
The rapid increase of the Latin‐American population in public housing changed racial
dynamics that had developed though history in the neighborhood. Whites had experience with
African‐Americans, but they had no previous history or experience with Latin‐American
immigrants. The contextual triggers that oppressed them in their country of origin are no longer
present in the US. As immigrants, they are in the process of developing contextual triggers and
having the focus on particular. Latin‐American immigrants reacted differently than African‐
Americans to racial antagonism, felt differently about public housing, Irish‐Americans, African‐
Americans and their social mobility prospects. The locality and shared space where African‐
opportunity to see how these groups interacted, how they understood each other and what their
place and motivations lied at this particular time. I will first provide evidence for the distinctive
frames and contextual triggers between the immigrants and native populations. I will then focus
on the role of race and class as seen differently between the immigrants and the native born
populations and then I will present evidence for the differing frames between immigrants and two
types of native born populations: African‐Americans and the rarely studied Irish‐American
underclass.
Different Frames and Contextual Triggers
1) During one morning in Southville, I walked along the path that followed the boundary
between the three‐story brick buildings and the townhouses, which had separate entrances and
front yards. The Irish‐Americans held on to these townhouses the longest and they had only
recently been integrated. Ahead, I saw a Latin American man planting flowers in his new front
yard. Just ahead were two White men. When they reached the Latin American man’s home, they
12
stopped walking and directly looked at him; the contextual trigger (brown man gardening in what
were their lawns until very recently) had activated their race frames. One of the men pointed
with his finger to the Latin‐American man and said something to his partner that I could not hear.
The other man then yelled at the Latin‐American man. “Why don’t you go plant where you came
from?” I anticipated a confrontation, but instead watched the man look up with a smile. He
looked right in their eyes and said, “Buenos días señores” (Good morning gentlemen). The two
men looked surprised and after looking at each other resumed their walk. I waited for the two
men to disappear and then approached the Latin American man to ask him about the exchange.
He reiterated what I had just seen and said that he knew the men were being provocative. He
said that he was used to these types of incidents and that “they happen a lot.” He felt it was
better to respond “[a]s [he] would have liked to be treated on a beautiful morning like today.” He
added,
I know they do not like us . . . but we have to live together here and we can’t do that
fighting. After all, I did not come here for that…I am not here to get into silly fights.
The Latin American man demonstrated a frame focused on making the best of his opportunity as
an immigrant. He was not going to spoil it by getting into fights. By responding pleasantly in
Spanish, with words many English speakers understand, he de‐escalated the situation and
avoided a confrontation.
One night while visiting Camila, a young Dominican woman she told me about her
experiences in Southville. Camila and her family moved into Southville at the beginning of
integration and they were Latino pioneers in that neighborhood.
When we moved here, girls used to tease us . . . they would spit on the ground
and call us spics…it is still pretty bad…. This place is not good for Miranda [her
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child] . . . These kids out here do not want to play with her . . . they call her names
. . . I don’t like it because she is little and can’t defend herself.
As Camila explains, seeing her and her sister walk was the contextual trigger that invoked the
race‐based frame which dictated the offensive behavior. Years later, Camila still sees them
reacting but now against her daughter. Camila had tried talking to their parents but found that,
They are ignorant . . . it’s like they want to fight . . . and they don’t like the fact that I
go to school and I am getting an education . . . they say that I act like I am better . . .
well . . . my parents struggled to come here you know . . . and I am not staying here.
They act as if they like it so much but why wouldn’t they also want to leave this
place? I am doing what I need to do and I am moving on…it’s a matter of time.
In this quote, Camila demonstrates how her immigrant‐based frame prevents her from fighting
while keeping her focus on education and leaving public housing. It also demonstrates the
different value that the housing development had for the two groups. While Camila saw it as a
stepping‐stone in her trajectory to social mobility, the Irish‐Americans saw it as a turf they needed
to defend. During the second year of the fieldwork Camila moved out of public housing and she is
now an assistant bank manager.
Although the presence of Latin American immigrants in public housing has buffered racial
antagonism in Southville, the “White versus Black” frame still operates for Afro‐Latinos and
African Americans. Josefa, an Afro‐Honduran who lives at Norfolk, talked about Samuel, her
cousin. Samuel comes over to see Josefa and, as an Afro‐Latino, he is commonly mistaken for an
African‐American, which is a contextual trigger for the neighbors to use their race‐frames and
racially harass him.
14
They pinched his tires and yell insults to him.” How does he react to that? “You
know . . . he will never do anything to get me into problems, here where I live, so
he just puts up with it. He thinks that eventually they will give up, because it is kind
of stupid, you know? Do they really think that my cousin will stop visiting? He is
family and nobody will break that up...imagine that…after we travelled so far to get
here?
In this statement Josefa trivializes the harassment while refocusing on how strong family ties are
for her and how silly the harassment seems in the context of how far the family had travelled to
immigrate. In fact, this quote reflects the gulf in life experiences between these two groups. While
immigrants were planning and making possible a migration across borders, leaving everything
behind and embarking on a new chapter in their lives, the Irish‐Americans in Southville had been
busy fighting integration and taking pride in their ethnic identity and neighborhood as being
superior to others. Despite this harassment, Samuel continued to visit Josefa and eventually seing
no response the neighbors stopped harassing him.
Lisa, an Afro‐Nicaraguan who had been in the United States for about 10 years, had
recently graduated from college, and had one young son, Daniel. Like Samuel, she was easily
mistaken for African‐American and was subjected to substantial discrimination in Southville. As
she commented,
There is a lot of racism . . . a lot . . . and it is tiring . . . but you have to keep your eye
on what is important and go on living….I tell Daniel that there are people who don’t
like it when you are doing better than them and those are the people who then
bother others and try to cause problems…but we can’t respond to them… the only
way to respond is to fight for our rights and to keep moving…..
15
Although Lisa acknowledges the racism, she is able to cope with it because of her status as a first
generation immigrant protects her against efforts to diminish her culture or identity and
developed internalization as minority status with accompanying contextual triggers. When
minority status and this is detrimental to their advancement outcomes (Khoury 1995; Vega and
Gil 1999). Instead, in her professional role, Lisa was an organizer who brought together Blacks,
Whites and Latin Americans in efforts to improve the conditions of the developments.
2) The difference in frames between Latin American immigrants and Irish Americans was
also evidenced in collective manifestations of racism, such as a community meeting in the
basement of Santa Christina’s church. 5 Racial tensions in Southville had flared up when an elderly
resident of Norfolk public housing development apparently died of a heart attack during the city’s
Puerto Rican Festival in 2001. The White residents at blamed the Latin American immigrants for
the death, and a task force organized a meeting to settle down the racial tension. The meeting
brought a number of city and state officials with ties to Southville, from former mayors to police
commissioners. Two hundred residents attended the meeting; all were White, with the exception
of eight African Americans and three Latin Americans who could not speak English. The Latin
American women Lucia, Marta and Rosa who attended wore bright colored dresses and had taken
care with their hairstyles, while the others in the crowd dressed very casually—some even
appeared disheveled.
5
Santa Christina’s church and basement had been used for countless meetings bringing together
politicians and residents to galvanize them to vote and to fight against integration. In 2004, the
congregation at Santa Christina’s became majority Latin‐American.
16
As in other defended neighborhoods (Suttles 1972; Rieder 1985; DeSena 1990), Whites
exaggerated their fears, and through protest they mourned the loss of a previously distinctive way
of life when there was cultural homogeneity and pride in the neighborhood. One elderly woman
yelled, “Loud music that is different!” Another woman in her 50s yelled, “Thirteen to fifteen
people living in apartments!” and a man in his 50s shouted, “They break all the rules and nobody
does anything about it!” However, the historically divisive political discourse was no longer the
response.
Mike McGuinn, an Irish American political leader who became the speaker of the State
Senate, urging Irish Americans to resist integration. But during this meeting, his response did not
urge racial conflict. Instead, he spoke about coming from Old Waterfront Public Housing
Development (next door to Norfolk) and complained,
We need a consistent police presence. Where is the police presence? Where is it?’
the crowd cheered.
A female resident, unhappy with McGuinn’s racially neutral response, got up and said loudly,
Look at this hall. It is full of white people. They are not here. They (Latinos) are not
here because they are guilty and they know it.
The crowd got really loud and Laura, a white woman who was born elsewhere and was a
professionally trained task force director stepped in and tried to calm down the crowd by
explaining, “that minority families came in with the same concerns to the task force.”
The Latin American women, Lucia and Marta asked me to translate the meeting. They
knew that, as Latin‐Americans, they were being blamed, but this understanding did not make
them defensive. Instead, they complained about safety in the neighborhood. Rosa said, “this is
getting really bad. There are kids out all day and they are just bothering people.” Lucia added,
17
“We need more police presence. The neighborhood is changing for the worse.” As Laura had
said, these women had the same concerns as white residents but did not have the same
appearance or attitude. In fact they were dressed well and behaved orderly in the midst of
disheveled appearances and disorder. Yet, it was this disorderly group who was protesting
against disorder. Marta added,
We know they are blaming us . . . but we have to live together . . . after all, we are all
in here (this development) and that means we are all the same . . . (Why did you
come all dressed up?) We came here because it is a community event. We have to
look proper and show respect.
At no point did Marta, Lucia or Rosa feel tension, despite the anger displayed by some residents in
a large and threatening crowd. In other words, the women did not react to that contextual
trigger. They instead concentrated on the commonality of the issues related to quality of life and
security and not the racial differences. Because the Latin‐American women were dressed up, had
their hair done and did not act unruly, this confused the Irish who were otherwise imbedded in
contextual triggers developed historically and manifested in that hall but that could not act
offensively against the women. The different understandings and significance exhibited by these
two groups in this event were remarkable.
3) The difference in frames was also evidenced in the human service worker’s statements
about who was taking advantage of the services they were providing and who wasn’t. As a
bilingual and bicultural single mother and fellow public housing resident (in another
development), Anabel was very effective in her position. She understood the needs and realities
of the people on her caseload. She had a welcoming and warm disposition that allowed her to act
as a bridge by reaching across ethnicity and race and a frame that made her persist when faced
18
with discrimination. When I asked her about the population that most used her services, she
explained,
I have to say that it’s the Latinas mostly and maybe the Asian women second and
then black women…few white women are ready and they do what is necessary but
they are a minority…sometimes...I have to go to their houses to get them so that
they won’t miss appointments and that is a lot of pushing that I need to do.
There was a general concern among the service providers about outreaching to Latin‐
Americans because of the concerns they had about the insularity of the community. At the same
time, many expressed ongoing concern about the absence in their client population of Irish‐
Americans from the public housing development. One Irish‐American service provider of a
neighboring community health center told me that they came to her center “to get clean from
drugs” avoiding neighborhood centers where they could be recognized. In fact, came to
understand their unwillingness to involve themselves with the Latin‐American community as
networks. On the other hand, getting involved with substances was not in par with their
from Sandra, an African‐American woman who directed the task force at another public housing
development in Southville. She alludes to differing frames based on their different life
experiences in her explanation:
The Irish and the Latinos don't communicate and they don't know each other’s
experiences. The Whites don't know where they [foreigners] came from or what
socio‐political history they left behind. On the other hand, Latinos don't understand
19
why the Irish‐Americans treasure this place so much and don't see a need to move
3
on.
These examples make clear that the Latin‐American immigrants had very different attitudes about
public housing, objective behind immigration and their relationship to the other residents in the
development. The conceptualization of race‐based frames has developed in the context of Black
and White relations, but has not been applied to Latin American immigrants. Because immigrants
make great sacrifices to have a better future, they are focused on negotiating their new
environments to improve their economic standing. Their frames are embedded in two different
narratives related to immigration: (1) the dual frame of reference which helps immigrants
evaluate their situation in the United States by comparing it with that of their peers in their
countries of origin (Ogbu 2000; Suarez‐Orozco and Suarez‐Orozco 1995); and (2) the immigration
narrative of struggle that convokes the sacrifice they or their parents made in the process of
immigration (Dominguez 2005). These narratives provide immigrants with roadmaps to make the
best of their circumstances and focus on getting ahead. On the other side, outsiders provide the
contextual trigger to their race‐based frame, which divided the world between “us” and “them”
and automatically invoked an offensive manifestation that died prematurely when immigrants did
not respond defensively. The mismatch contextual triggers and frames aided in the decrease of
ethnic tension in the development and demonstrated that immigrants are interested in getting
ahead and not in engaging in conflict.
Race and Class
Lisa and the women in the protest focused on commonalities they shared with the Irish‐American
residents. As the meeting ended, the women once again referred to similarities they felt with
those at the meeting.
20
We are all in this place together and no matter what they say . . . neither is better
than the other. We are in the same situation.
The next day I asked several Latin American families about the previous night’s events. Some
individuals, like Carmen, the first elected Latina board member, showed concern for the situation,
It’s a shame that they have to be so angry . . . it is so hard for them to see that we are
all in the same situation; don’t we all live here in the same place? Why can’t they
just get along with us and see that together we can work better than divided which
seems to be the way they want it.
This sentiment was repeated often during my fieldwork. It manifested an understanding about
the commonality of their condition and situation as residents of public housing. This commonality
was along class interests and not divisive along racial differences. This commonality was also
evidenced in the organizing work that Lisa and Carmen were doing building coalitions to improve
the conditions in the development. Towards the end of the fieldwork, gentrification in Southville
also affected the Irish‐Americans who were loosing access to affordable housing and being driven
to the outskirts of Boston. This threat changed the focus from race to class. As Alison, a young
white woman with generations of family in Southville, and worker at Head Start in Southville,
indicated:
I am really happy to work with the women in my group [some of the Latin
American women in public housing worked at Head Start]. Everyone is nice and
we help each other all the time. Sometimes I need to change schedules with
another and it is never a problem . . . what is really a problem is that all these
yuppies are moving in and we are having to move out of Southville because rents
21
are going through the roof. I am angry with this because my family is from
Southville and I can’t live here anymore.
After a history of building animosity towards Blacks, the capacity of the low‐income
population to stay in the neighborhood was threatened. This led to a change in what was most
salient; the focus went from race to class. As Salon.com reported in 2000:
estate is hot, with a commanding view of the Boston skyline. It's a 10‐minute train
ride from downtown, a haven for moderate‐income White folks who are being priced
out of other neighborhoods (Raposa 2000).
While the Latin‐American immigrants had contextual triggers and frames along the commonalities
along class interests, the Irish‐Americans maintained a race‐based frame that divided them from
the Latin‐American immigrants. Gentrification threatened them economically and symbolically by
removing much of the affordable housing. While the immigrant’s class frame was inclusionary,
the Irish experienced their class‐based understanding in the same way that they experienced their
race‐based frames, in exclusionary ways.
Immigrants Vs Native Born
This case study of Latin‐American immigrants integrated into a public housing development and
their interactions with the Irish‐Americans and African‐Americans has given rise to the fact that
when it comes to cultural heterogeneity in a shared and localized space, what is clearest is that
there are significant differences between the immigrants and the native born. Anabel is the
college‐educated first‐generation Salvadorian woman in charge of employment services for the
Norfolk tenant task force we met earlier. I heard her introduce herself at a community meeting
where she said:
22
I will tell you that I wasn’t prepared to deal with all the racist baggage in this town . .
. I feel that I have largely circumvented all of that because women have needs and I
needed to be accountable. They really need what I am doing here for them. I do
what is necessary to gain their trust and I do what I can to get them the resources
they need...no matter who they are. If they want help, I am here…
On the other hand, Jocelyn was the employment advocate at another housing development in
Southville. She also had a warm and positive disposition but as an African American having been
socialized within white racism over several generations, her experiences with whites were more
discouraging than Anabel’s. When asked about her effectiveness at her development, Jocelyn
stated:
When I first came here, it was bumpy at first. Joseph, a youth worker born at West
Broadway took me around knocking on all doors introducing me. I thought it would
get better but my color is a big issue and I can’t reach further.
Jocelyn said that she can walk anywhere at midnight and feel safe, but not in Southville.
“I have had a lot of hostile reactions, especially when I stand up for a particular opinion.” She
added,
I have had many doors slammed in my face [by white residents] even after I met
them through Joseph . . .My color is an issue here and I can’t be more effective.
Jocelyn wanted to leave and go to work where African Americans live. “It is not like they do not
need help . . . and here I am working with these folk who don’t like me.” Faced with racial
discrimination, Jocelyn’s tolerance has dwindled through generations of discrimination and
exclusion and makes her respond according to the “White versus Black” race‐based frame.
Anabel, on the other hand, had an immigrant‐based frame and, with limited history in the United
23
States, she had not developed a minority identity based on marginalization (Suarez‐Orozco and
Suarez‐Orozco 1995).
Mark is an elderly man who had lived in Southville all his life and liked to talk about what
he considered being the “good times” when
The politicians, the neighborhood Whitey and us…we were all together…fighting for
what was ours…it was a different time…now they say that we were poor but we
never thought that we were poor…. we thought we had everything we needed… and
this was ours and nobody was going to take it away.
Mark manifests how valuable this locality was to the Irish‐Americans and the fact that they felt in
the same structural position despite the fact that there were people in Southville that were much
better off socio‐economically that those in public housing. In fact, Michel MacDonald (2000) has
uncovered the hidden truths about the Irish‐American underclass in Southville in a book that is
referred to in advertisements as being about an “Irish Ghetto in Boston”. Yet, what was missing
structurally was compensated though their ethnic identity and pride in their neighborhood.
Feelings of nostalgia about the neighborhood were expressed in the protest meeting where I met
Mark. I asked him what was most problematic for him in terms of the forced integration. He said,
“having Blacks living here in the same space with us . . . and the degradation that they made of our
community was too much to deal with.” When I commented that it was Latin‐Americans that had
moved in and not blacks. He said,
I don’t know what happened…I just know that everything has changed…we are not
what we were before and they…they are different, you know? They really don’t care
about Southville. Its as if they are just passing by and they are just passing by us….
24
Mark’s frame was not prepared to navigate Latin‐Americans as a culturally different group
without the historical relationships to race and power in this country. As Mark expresses, the
Irish‐American population did not have the frames that allowed them to deal with other than
themselves and African‐Americans. Furthermore, Mark expresses the sentiments of a population
that was galvanized to fight the battles of the Irish middle and upper classes and the politicians
and who risked their futures by expressing the most violent components of protests. 6 This
population, which is, composed of third and fourth generation Irish immigrants, is a population
that is stagnated and unable to move out of poverty.
Gentrification was the last straw for Whites in public housing in Southville. They were left
stranded and without the opportunity to feel part of Southville. As Sandra said:
Gentrification has taken away the only plans they ever had . . . to leave public
Gentrification has changed all that and now they feel stuck and abandoned. They
see others [Latin Americans] moving on with a plan and they know that they can't
move out because housing is too expensive and out of their reach now. They feel
restricted to public housing.
The native born groups were both communities with intergenerational poverty dynamics.
In fact, the only thing that the Irish had over the African‐Americans was white privilege and
internalization affects their ability to tolerate discriminatory offenses, which only reinforce their
6
The residents of public housing in Southville suffered tremendous consequences for their
participation in the protests against integration. As Michael McDonald (2000) tells, many of the
children who boycotted schools being integrated as part of the protests, never returned to school,
many died and many others are still living in the public housing developments and they are there
stranded in poverty and involved with substances.
25
alienation. In turn, the privilege leaves whites without the skills to negotiate around setting like
this one where they are not given deference and Latin‐Americans are passing them by on their
way elsewhere better. They see Latin‐American immigrants who are not moved by provocation
and who dress up and get their hair done for meetings and who are participating in programs and
bettering themselves. They see Latin‐American immigrants moving on “passing them by” and they
do not understand what happened. The newcomers are not responding to the same structural
triggers as the Irish or the blacks. As a result, the newcomers don’t show deference and in this
way they do not legitimize their white privilege, which is really all they have on the rest of the
non‐white populations. Privilege undercuts the ability to deal with its loss and ill prepares
individuals to navigate back into a community of human beings not defined by differences but by
commonalities. The Latin‐American immigrants were willing to forge coalitions and to see
themselves along the similarity of their economic position. 7 Many, like Carmen and Lisa were
actively working to organize the community across race and ethnicity in an effort to bring change
and improve their collective lives. In effect, they had transitioned from a fight to preserve their
human rights through immigration and now in a fight to improve their civil rights in the place
that fights for justice for themselves and others is a question for further research. The Irish in
Southville who for generations were able to rise from poverty moving into affordable housing in
the surrounding neighborhood aided by Irish politicians for who they voted and received favors in
return, now had nothing. They are now fourth or fifth generation immigrants in poverty and very
likely to never leave that status?
7
Consistent with what I found, there is literature suggesting that immigrants are class conscious.
Look at Portes, 1995 and Portes, Parker and Cobas, 1980.
26
In the end, Irish American public housing residents lost the most as a result of all those
years of racial politics, discriminatory practices through civil service institutions, integration delays
often endure the most of social experiments, like court ordered integration, because they lack the
resources to take themselves out of contentious situations. 4
They are what could be called a white underclass complete with high levels of fatalistic
risky behaviors like substance abuse including heroin, which was widely used, by the Irish‐
American population. This is a population that by the mid 1990's was hit by a staggering epidemic
of teen‐age suicide. Just in 1997, about 70 teen‐agers, most of them male, were hospitalized for
attempting or considering suicide (Staples 1999). This is a population that has been forgotten by
politicians and the rest of the Irish Americans in Southville. Urban poverty researchers have also
forgotten poor white populations in northeast cities like the one in Southville. In fact, poor urban
whites are absent from the literature. What this study finds is that these populations are in dire
need of attention.
The decrease in racial tension is further evidenced by the incidents of hate crimes
recorded. According to the Boston Police Department, hate crimes tended to occur in areas with
an increase in racial diversity. About 30 percent of all hate crimes were reported from public
housing developments in 1999, with the Old Colony and West Broadway developments in
Southville reporting the highest number of incidents. By 2002, hate crimes in these developments
had declined to 15 percent of the total number of incidents (Boston Indicators Project by the
Boston Foundation.
Conclusion
Blacks and Whites have been involved in a historical racial struggle in this country which has
resulted in segregated communities that maintain a cultural homogeneity. This homogeneity
27
reinforces race‐based frames and contextual triggers that keep blacks and whites separated by a
tremendous gulf of experience. When there is contact or the expectation of contact, Blacks and
Whites invoke corresponding frames based on offense and defense. As we saw with Jocelyn,
when whites are offensive, she responds defensively, which caused her to give up her job and
leave Southville. When Whites were offensive to Latin Americans, on the other hand, the Latin
Americans did not respond defensively as expected. They responded differently because they are
immigrants. Latin Americans, constituting the largest population of immigrants, have thrown
what we know about intergroup interactions, racism, and urban poverty into a new spin (Patillo
1999; Wilson and Taub 2006). Latin American immigrants are changing our understanding
because, unlike African Americans whose ancestors were slaves and Mexican Americans in the
Southwest whose ancestors were colonized, they are voluntary immigrants, and they are coming
here with the expectation of improving their economic standing and that of their children (Ogbu
1993).
sharing the same geographical area, but this has typically been a result of the largely fortuitous
mechanisms of housing acquisition (Frey and Farley 1996). One lesson of this study is that
diversity in the form of first generation immigrants can be an effective mechanism in the
resolution of racial conflict and potential coalition building. While diversity is often considered a
desirable goal, it may also be a valuable tool for catalyzing positive outcomes in social dynamics.
The underlying mechanism seems to be the change of pre‐existing frames for struggle developed
historically in both the receiving and the arriving population.
conflict and their mismatch can have ameliorative effects. Because a frame is a cultural concept,
it allows the understanding of perceptions, expectations, and behavior of different groups in a
28
context of intergroup interactions. As such, frames and contextual triggers provide a way to study
intergroup interactions beyond the black versus white dichotomy that has for so long dominated
intergroup interactions in the United States. By studying frames and contextual triggers, we can
understand how groups are interacting in a context of diversity brought to us by immigration.
29
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1
An example of contextual triggers is entering a bar and having a drink, which triggers the
http://web.jhu.edu/threecitystudy.
3
What these residents treasured was the ethnic‐based tightly knit social capital that Southville
enjoyed as a homogenous community before busing and public housing integration. That social
capital gave the poor residents in public housing the sense that they were not poor. Michael
MacDonald’s All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (2000) describes this well.
4
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were numerous accounts of heroin overdoses and
suicides of young people among the Irish‐American resident community in public housing in
Southville.
36